My greatest musical regret is having turned down the opportunity, aged 12, to learn the oboe. In tribute, therefore, to possibly the most underused but poignant instrument in pop music - nay, ANY music - let me present my Top Dozen Oboe Pop Songs.
#oboeclassics

Sure, it's from a troubling soft-core lesbian schoolgirl porno (which I've never seen, I assure you), but 'Bilitis Générique', the opening track to Francis Lai's score for David Hamilton's Bilitis, offers the oboe a gloriously sentimental backdrop.

This was @ChinaCrisisUK's only UK Top 10 hit, brought to mind recently by singer Gary Daly's wonderful debut solo album, 'Gone From Here'. Though the oboe's essentially decorative, it's still integral.

Thanks to Amanda Brown, this won't be the only time we see The @GoBetweens in this list. This is taken from what I consider to be their finest album, '16 Lovers Lane'.

I'm not sure this would be even half the song it is if it didn't have it's melancholic, oboe-fuelled coda...

The second single from @tanita_tikaram's debut is overlooked too often these days, perhaps overshadowed by 'Good Tradition', but it's a subdued masterpiece whose masterstroke is the oboe.

Those of a certain age will either be moved to tears or driven to rage by Art Garfunkel's 'Watership Down' theme tune, but goddamnit, just let that oboe do its work...

An oboe introduces this song, which to me always sounded like the end of the world, and that's just one of the reasons it remains one of my absolute favourite @JulianHCope tunes ever.

@TheJudyCollins' exquisite reading of Stephen Sondheim's 'Send In The Clowns', from 'A Little Night Music', puts the oboe centre stage, and rightly so.

Strictly speaking this may be cheating: I think the main reed instrument is the oboe's bigger sister, a cor anglais? Still, there's no good excuse not to play it, and face it: without @KateStJohn5, this list probably wouldn't exist.

You think Lee Hazlewood never needed an oboe? Think again: there's one all over the sublime 'Leather & Lace', almost certainly the second Hazlewood song I ever knowingly heard.

OK, I'm no great fan of Madonna's, truth be told, but when she's good, she's fantastic. This is one of those songs, with the oboe a key factor in its favour...

Ah, c'mon. It's called 'Gabriel's Oboe', and it's by Ennio Morricone, and I don't care how many times you've heard it: you're made of stone if this doesn't get you *right there*.

You thought I'd peak with yet more melancholy, but you were wrong. Here come The @GoBetweens again, with Amanda Brown rightfully hogging the spotlight, making this my favourite-song-ever-with-an-oboe.

"Because the door is open wide..."

Feel free to toss in oboe-embellished classics I've missed. And, in the meantime, here's to all the folk who mastered the oboe, which, in the wrong hands, sounds like A Brutal Duck Massacre (though, to be fair, that's one of the best Fall albums ever).

The eagle-eyed among you will have spotted that, in my excitement, I made that a Baker's Dozen. So, because there's no room for bad luck, here's a 14th tune that probably have been included anyway, though what it would have squeezed out I can't imagine...