[6] Buggles, ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’

I’m concerned I may have to defend this one. EASY. Just look at Junior finding the glee in the poignancy, making her plastic tiger leapfrog her plastic lion, all in time to the ecstatic pulse of the music. Watch her punching the air and performing the dance of the seven veils with her sister’s muslin square; it’s a dizzy representation of the song’s way with the possibilities of pop.

‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ suffers from the “novelty” tag, being, on the surface at least, a one-hit wonder with a chipmunk, quasi-synthesised chorus. Then there’s Trevor Horn, all bubble-perm and oversized specs, hardly projecting an image of a man about to push pop’s boundaries to glorious and ludicrous extents with ABC and Frankie Goes To Hollywood respectively. But we’re not interested in surface. The song’s depth is in the bittersweet nostalgia, the regret at the passing of an age of music even as it embraces the new world, and also in the symphonic electronica – crescendos, drop-outs, even a sense of the fat lady singing. MTV co-opted it as the anthem of triumph of picture over audio, making it the first song to be played on the station, and perhaps they hit the nail on the head. It’s a requiem and celebration rolled into one.

[7] Roxy Music, ‘Dance Away’

I saw a BBC 4 documentary about Roxy Music a few months ago, and it was fascinating to see the drift from glam intelligentsia to disco stylists through to smoother-than-silk lounge lizards, and to watch Brian Eno politely distancing himself from everything that came after his pivotal contributions. They were a very different beast by this point – clearly Bryan Ferry’s plaything – and although they’d always led from the front, notionally ahead of prevailing fashions, 1978’s Manifesto album was drenched in disco. Too late? Or an early example of what every other “rock” group was about to do anyway?

No matter whether Roxy were leading or following – ‘Dance Away’ and the more obviously discofied sister single ‘Angel Eyes’ were pure-spun class. I’m not as familiar with the earlier albums as I should be – they’re always on my list for a Fopp splurge – but there’s an effortless freshness to the RM sound that belies its age. ‘Dance Away’ is clearly the work of a craftsman, beautifully arranged, no note wasted etc., and in fabulous couplets like “She’s dressed to kill/And guess who’s dying?” it straddles the pithy/corny line that would become so familiar to Roxy Music in their twilight years.

Their reputation even seems to reach the pre-schoolers, with Junior asserting “I like Loxy Music” when I told her what was going in the tray. I don’t suppose she has much heartache to dance away, but she shook her hips and wrenched her sister’s arms from her sockets as per. “I like it; play it again.”

[8] The Sugarhill Gang, ‘Rapper’s Delight’

So I hinted ‘Good Times’ would be back, and back and back and back. Remember when sampling was a thing of wonder, prompting gasps and “they can’t do that”s and righteous indignation on behalf of the act being plundered? The wringing of hands over ‘Adventures On The Wheels of Steel’ and ‘Pump Up The Volume’? Well, that still happens – there are still dinosaurs – but the nifty steal is part of the rich tapestry now, and when it ain’t lazy (bow your head, P Diddy) it’s like fairydust.

But here we are at its mass-market dawn, in a perfectly silly rap song beset by wrangles over whose rhymes were whose but enhanced by its sheer length. That it never gets boring – through its 10 minutes or over 29 years – is testament to winning delivery and low-down base catchiness. Junior’s reaction is to get into a predictable groove – and then she throws me a curveball: “Is he black?” Well, yeah, he is, they are, they were, it’s just the subject of race has never been broached at home, and it’s not as if she’s hearing it. Now, we can debate how early identities are being nailed down at nursery, or we can just conclude that Junior’s never been introduced to Eminem. There’s a time for everything.

The Sugarhill Gang were paid back in kind, of course. By Las Ketchup. To the hip, the hop, the hibby…

[9] Tubeway Army, ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’

Hear that? Those are new gods marching over the pop scene to Prokofievian synth chords, punkbots on rollerblades gliding to a lipsticked new world order. You get the drift. Gary Numan may well have been a figure of fun – a slightly freakish, unsettling one, yeah – but what the hell did that matter to him when he was splicing Kraftwerk and Bowie templates to take his android aria to the top of the charts?

This sounds like the future, and it’s a lonely, terrifying one. In Numan’s high concept, “friends” are automatons, here to leaven the solitude and provide for, well, other needs. “Mine broke down,” he croaks and the flimsy tissue of solace rips apart around it. But the synth cycle transcends its forbidding tones and raises the song to epic status, delivering Queen-like rock in pure electronica. It’s stunning and still dominant even as Adina Howard, Richard X and Sugababes hijack it for their own saucy needs.

Back here in 2008, Junior performed all sorts of unlikely twists and turns to the music. It would’ve put my back out, but then, I’m not three. As we left the house 10 minutes later, she said “It’s cold outside.” Whoa.

[10] The Cure, ‘Boys Don’t Cry’

But, of course, they do. Yes, I’ve deciphered Fat Bob’s pouty-lipped whinings, a mere 29 years after everyone else did. What’s more, Pornography was just a rather ponderous slab of doom-pop and not, after all, some unbelievably unnecessary etchings of Bob and Lol Tolhurst in flagrante. And The Head On The Door was a dream.

Anyway, ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ – in which not-yet-fat-just-a-bit-pasty Robert Smith and gang invented desperately wan indie-pop for The Mighty Lemon Drops and (bringing it into the 21st century) Good Shoes to pick up and run with. But you can’t blame The Cure for everything; this is an honest song, packed with embarrassingly familiar emotion, and a tempo that crashes into itself, awkward as a teenage lad. It’s concise and warm.

Still, only a twerp with windmilling arms in a fraying, too-large, black woolly jumper could dance to it. Junior refuses point-blank, but says she likes it all the same. Asks for a repeat too. The Cure repeated it themselves seven years later, re-recorded and buffed up. Don’t do that.

[11] Squeeze, ‘Up The Junction’

Well, this is a right barrel of laughs; auspicious meeting, alcoholism and estranged fatherhood set to one of the catchiest tunes of the year. The ironic sing-along melody and clunky rhymes make for some rueful fun and pop scholars Tilbrook and Difford wallow in it all, throwing in forboding chords for “little kicks inside her” and dropping everything for the lad’s lonely kitchen vigil. Still, the return of the lovely organ refrain at the climax makes everything all right again.

“Within a year a walker”: Junior herself missed the window by a month, but seven-month-old little sis is looking active. This doesn’t stand out as a song to dance to, but Junior insisted on me copying a variety of steps before she took her sister’s hands for the final third. She zeroes in on the essential rhythms of these numbers, showing natural flair. We can say – with some confidence – she gets it from her mother. I just watch out for soldiers.

[12] Ian Dury & The Blockheads, ‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick’

It’s a song to be enjoyed on many levels, from enjoyment of high-falutin’ place names and cockney-sparrered franglais/deutschglish via a hard-nailed groove right down to – if you’re a three-year-old – a rasped exhortation to “hit me!” Hang on, Junior’s eyes gleamed, is this cast-iron permission to hit something without being told off? Nirvana!

So funky is this tune, played as it is by a band as tight as this month’s budget, you can get your freak on to it at seven in the morning. Back in ’79, as a Stanmore cub scout, Kilburn seemed like it was just down the road. Dury was our urban counterpart and we adopted his edge, even if he was the sort of chap we’d stop and stare at it in the street in our primary school gaucheness. Struck by polio, swarthy and impish, he made a lasting impression on Top Of The Pops, but he wasn’t a poor unfortunate to be laughed at in our playground huddle. This was grown-up rock, slightly intimidating and so out of its time that it’s as fresh now as it ever was.

[13] Elvis Costello & The Attractions, ‘Oliver’s Army’

He passed me by, really, only bleeping on my ’80s chart-kid radar with ‘Everyday I Write The Book’, and as The Imposter on ‘Pills And Soap’. That assumed name even got my goat as an eleven-year-old, Lord knows why. I didn’t like him. Something impelled me to buy Spike and Mighty Like A Rose at the turn of the decade, but I’d missed Blood And Chocolate, Imperial Bedroom, all the classic capers. Picked up My Aim Is True for a couple of quid a few years back, but I was The Imposter now.

Everyone knew ‘Oliver’s Army’, though. That earworm of a chorus and those ‘Dancing Queen’ fills. It’s a song that bears close listening as well, with the odd uncomfortable lyric and a whole heap of didactic about our mercenary, careless, imperial doings. Elvis has never been one to let you off lightly – I know now – but lately he’s only demonstrated this with unappealing music. And that old sneer’s a shock to hear on the new Jenny Lewis album.

The tumbling tune is an instant hit with Junior, who enjoys some prominent ivory-tinkling. I mime a bit of piano and confidently tell her, “That’s Steve Nieve.” She’s quick to fire back, “Who’s playing guitar?” Junior’s mum laughs. She’s got me. “Er… – oh, it’s Elvis Costello.” Phew.

[14] Blondie, ‘Sunday Girl’

Light as air, carefree and – what? – hard to get? Junior’s mum pointed out that Junior and Juniorer are both Sunday Girls (“You were born on a Sunday, J” “I was very born on a Sunday”) but perhaps not in the way Debbie Harry is hinting. We all love the song, know the words – even the French ones on this Best Of version – and Junior sways in front of her sister, hips in time to the gossamer rhythms.

Blondie were bang into their flow by this point, succeeding ABBA as the singles band du jour, knocking the classics out at a rate to make Paul Weller jealous; not that he was far behind. I’m always seduced by a band that respects the single, that can put so much care in for so sustained a period. You know the suspects: Wham!, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, Girls Aloud… hmmm. I feel like I’m coming out.

I shared a bed with Debbie Harry last year. Well, she draped herself across it, while I perched at the end, asking questions she’d answered a thousand times before. In all the excitement, my tape recorder broke, but she let me have an extra five minutes once I’d taught myself shorthand. Lovely. Anyway, that’s one for the After Dinner circuit.

[15] M, ‘Pop Muzik’

The creation of polymath and pop eminence grise Robin Scott, this is the handbook for a snazzy and sparkling pop life – “Wanna be a gun slinger, don’t be a rock singer… dance in the supermarket, dig it in the fast lane” – and hell, we’re all talking about it. Round and round it goes, devastatingly catchy, wiggly, irritating, practically perfect in every way. A bit knowing, a bit studied, but absolutely pop pop shoo wop.

Probably should’ve bumped it up a place, because Junior wasn’t it the mood for boinging bounce-pop, or any kind of jumping jack. She conceded it was “happy”, but she wasn’t. She was being made to put her shoes on.

Or perhaps she really did find it irksome. Let me hear you say, “New York, London, Paris, Munich…”