Prior to the interview, I asked the participants to ‘Bring three music tracks that help you tell part of your life story.’ They knew the subject of the study was the experience of both DVA and gang involvement, so I did not need to emphasize which parts of their stories I was particularly interested in; however, I was open to hear whatever they wanted to share. Journalistically, this approach has been made famous through the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs, where celebrities bring seven tracks to help discuss their life stories. We exist in a world where celebrities are asked about their lives and interests, but ‘ordinary’ people less so. Music used as a social research tool, alongside other expressive elicitation techniques, has been emerging in research for some time (DeNora, 1999; Keightley and Pickering, 2006). The term ‘music elicitation’, as a distinct method, was coined by Allett (2010) in a study about heavy metal fandom. In 2018, music elicitation has been used in group interview situations (dos Santos and Wagner, 2018).

The unusual research question piqued Eric's interest.

As the fieldwork was being completed it became clear there were many other benefits to this approach, including increased participation and co-production of the interview as well as garnering deeper and multidimensional data, including music videos and lyrics. This approach was successful in creating a bridge between the worlds of the researcher and participant in a way that may not have otherwise been possible. It encouraged the participants to consider what they wanted to share, articulate it more fully through the use of lyrics, or music videos, or use music to evoke and complement a memory