‘I was the only person who didn’t know the words to Coldplay’: Anoushka Shankar’s honest playlist

‘I can’t listen to anything from my first three albums’: Anoushka Shankar. Photograph: Carly Hildebrant

The first song I fell in love with
Tana Mana by my dad, Ravi Shankar. In the late 80s he was experimenting with synthesisers and released an album called Tana Mana, an anomaly in his discography. I remember my imagination would light up with the title song – I would picture a village dance, and I’d be acting it out in my living room for my mum.

The first single I bought
Whatta Man by Salt-N-Pepa. I was living in California in the 1990s and there was a lot of R&B around. I bought a lot of Salt-N-Pepa and TLC as a teenager.