Soundtrack to my life: My Life is Murder writer Kathryn Burnett

Auckland screenwriter Kathryn Burnett, who's just started work on a new series of My Life is Murder. Photo / Clive Copeman

HEAVEN KNOWS I'M MISERABLE NOW
The Smiths
This was from my miserable 20-somethings when I was doing my first TV jobs and flatting with a whole bunch of people who were working in TV too. The really indulgent existential crisis you have in your 20s when you're still trying to work stuff out and have all those intense highs and lows where you're in the depths of despair one minute and excited the next. I love The Smiths and this song is just bang-on for that time period for me.

PASSIONATE KISSES (album)
Lucinda Williams
My then-boyfriend and I had turned up in Japan with all that confidence and enthusiasm — let's just get on a plane and go to Tokyo, we'll be fine! I was teaching English and we were living in a cheap guest house that was full of Israelis. A guy came to visit who had a huge bag of cassette tapes he was selling. He told me I could choose one to just have and this was the first one I pulled out. The crazy thing was that before I left New Zealand, I'd been flatting with someone who was a massive Lucinda Williams fan and had really loved this album. I just thrashed that little cassette and it brings back such strong memories of that time. I might even still have it somewhere.

IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
Sisters Underground
I came back from London in the 90s after about five years away and had seriously mixed feelings. I hated it for the first six months. But I loved this song because it made me feel like I was home. Somehow it represented the really lovely part of New Zealand; it was so upbeat and absolutely, unequivocally, a local song.

NO DIGGITY
Blackstreet
This is one of my all-time favourites. I'd come out of a long-term relationship and moved in with old friends who were flatting in Ponsonby and we just went nuts. It was such a wild party time and really good fun – not good for my liver at all.

YOU LOVE IT
Peaches
I got a VIP pass to the Big Day Out in 2007 through a friend and saw Peaches at the Boiler Room. These hard-core rock 'n' roll girls were so intense and blunt and incredibly sexual. I really dug it. It was a reminder of how much pleasure I get from powerful, unapologetic, kick-ass women. Any female artists or musicians who are so unapologetic about who they are, what they think and what they do really works for me. When you're a bit visible, there are always haters and people who knock you and judge you. It's good to be reminded not to let the s*** get you down.

STRANGE THINGS
Marlon Williams
I first heard this on bFM and it was so sophisticated and gothic - and weirdly also soulful. Wow, I loved it. I adore Aldous Harding, too. At the time, I felt I really had my life together. I was working hard and my career had picked up. It was awesome to see what a range of amazing work New Zealand artists were putting out and lovely to discover someone I could get excited about. I was like, how is he not a superstar? How is he not huge? But I think that about loads of New Zealand music. It's just so good and doesn't get the recognition here it deserves.

— as told to Joanna Wane

* Kathryn Burnett is a screenwriter, playwright and script consultant whose third play, The Campervan, was due to premiere in Auckland next month but has now been postponed. She was a writer on the second series of the Lucy Lawless crime-comedy drama My Life is Murder, which was filmed in Auckland by Greenstone TV, currently screening on TVNZ 1, Mondays at 8.30pm, and set for release in the US and Australia on August 30 by Acorn TV.