"Seeds of Love" is on the list, at No 45:

Rob says: 'This song started off the idea of professionally collecting music. No one knows exactly when it dates from – it may have been written in the late 1600s – but it was sung on one morning in 1903 in the Somerset village of Hambridge by a gardener called John England. Cecil Sharpe happened to be wandering past, heard John England singing this song, and it sparked off some sort of reverence in Sharpe. It made him take out a notebook and write down the words this guy was singing. That day he wrote a piano accompaniment, and it was performed that night at the vicarage in the local village by a local woman. That was the first time Cecil Sharpe had been inspired to collect a song, which then became his career.'

He then started collecting folk songs – mainly in the south of England, but later went to America to find the ones which had been preserved and taken across the Atlantic. Sharpe wasn't the first collector of folk songs but up until then it had largely been an amateur pursuit, more a kind of hobby like collecting antiques. He was the first one to see it as an opportunity to publish books of these songs. He pushed to have folk music taught in schools across the country, and a lot of folk singers like Shirley Collins and Martin Carthy do remember having to stand up and sing songs in the class room during the 1940s, so it did have an effect. And all because that song was sung at that particular time. It really was a defining moment.'


This rather overstates the case. Sharp wasn't the first collector, even in England (never mind elsewhere), although he did have the visions and energy to pick up the ball and run with it. But it was the meeting with John England which was the defining moment, rather than the song - it just happened to be "Seeds of Love" but could quite easily been a different song.

Like many of the songs in the list, the song was a bystander at a historic event, rather than the catalyst which actually changed something. There's no doubt that songs can be powerful agents, but I doubt any of them "changed history" by themselves.