Mor-Than-Words

I Need A Dollar – Aloe Blacc This one popped up on one of those free CDs you used to get with the Sunday newspapers. Back when CDs were musical currency before streaming had taken over. I was captured by it's sound and I could certainly relate to the story inside. It's such a simple song but with a powerful message. The simple words, piano and brass backing are matched by a great vocal performance, all resulting in a very pleasing easy to digest sound. But the problem with simple songs is that they fast become ear worms, little phases of which get stuck in your brain and go round and round. In other words proper hooks, these make songs like this so catchy and remember able. Add in the 'hey hey's' and it's in there for keeps. The lyrics tell a tale of working hard and getting no credit for your efforts, the world not being a fair place and all you have to show for it is to be able to warn the next person in line. They could share their wealth and even things out

Wake Me Up – Avicii   Always liked this song, but after watching a documentary on Avicii last night I have a new understanding of it. As a teenager Tim Bergling (Avicii) loved to create music on his laptop and like all musicians wanted people to hear it, but as often happens with young talented creative people no one told him about the trappings of fame. With the stereotypical pushy manager and a larger and larger group of hanger ons, what started out as a dream began to take a toll on his mental and physical state. A performer who loved being up on stage in front of an entire stadium of people jumping to his every beat was tortured by the pressure of touring and the fear of letting people down. The stress of it all leading to multiple health problems. It's a sad tale and reading through the lyrics of this song, which featured on his debut album, it now reads like a warning to himself. Wake me up when its over, expecting his life to become clearer and easier as he got older, in o

  Stand By Me (2020) – Whispering Bob's All-Stars I was lucky enough to be on a Zoom call with the legend DJ Bob Harris as part of Country Music Week . I even got to ask him a question, I asked about how songwriters should go about getting there songs in front of established artists in the modern age. Social media being the main way to get noticed now. He told some great stories, my favourite being about Rosanne Cash , Johnny Cash her father put together a list of 100 Country songs she needed to learn just so he knew she had a real understanding of its roots and philosophy .  Bob has put together a version of this song to both celebrate 50 years in the business and to raise money to help COVID hit musicians. It's a real mixture of artists and is a good guessing game who's singing and playing which parts. Bob gets in on the act playing the triangle. Great to see Duane Eddy makes an appearance. I love this song, the Ben E King version is one of the most iconic songs ever

If It Makes You Happy – Sheryl Crow It's totally true, especially at the moment, if it makes you happy, just go with it. But do possessions and the like really matter, or do you still end up feeling like somethings missing. Sheryl Crow was another artist that grew on me over time, I didn't take much notice of her as each of her hits pilled up. Then I bought her Greatest Hits album and realised just how many of them I actually loved. Then it sort of dawned on me she's basically classed as Country now, so it all fits. Whenever you see Country royalty doing their benefit gigs you usually see Sheryl on there as a guest. Her voice is so strong and her song choices always seem to be about feelings. Also love ' All I Wanna Do ' is have some fun, can't argue with that either. Then there's ' Leaving Las Vegas' which is something I've had the privilege of doing a few times so brings back great memories. This song is basically a strange list of things an

Need You Now – Lady A This is one of those songs that I've been aware of since it's release in 2009, but it's grown on me a lot since then, to the point it's becoming one of my favourite songs. It's so well put together, great hooks and melody, then Lady A 's voices blend so well together. As part of Country Music week Radio 2 in the UK had them in session and this is a live version of the song, I think you can call this effortless. Just sitting there at the mic's and belting this out with so much emotion and power. I particularity like the simple piano riff, those few notes remind me of the rain and set the entire mood. The lyrics tell a story of making a drunk phone call to an ex, you get to that point that their going round and round in your head and you just need to speak to them. It's a simple thought but these lyrics put the hurt and remorse across so well. To get that amount of feeling into a song is really hard and the sparse backing adds to that

    Gimme Some Lovin – Spencer Davis Group   Hey! Spencer Davis died yesterday aged 81. He was the founder of this great group, named after him apparently because the rest of the band were to scared to do interviews. They had some big hits in the sixties, real power driven rock and roll, plenty of zip and upbeat tunes. More in the style of rhythm and blues riffs, dirty sounding guitars with heavy drums. They put this song together in just half an hour in the studio as they were under pressure to come up with their next hit. Love this song, another one on my 60s compilations. The organ work on this raises it above the normal guitar based guitar bands, it sounds out there and like a freight train is rushing towards you. Either get out its way or jump aboard and enjoy the ride. I'm so glad they made it. The other great use of this song was in the ' Blues Brothers ' movie, love that film and their version of this song with their big band really cooks. It's a crazy story o

  Get Here – Oleta Adams I've been lucky enough to be on some huge holidays over the years, I've been round the world twice. Love going to new places and having my photo taken at the biggest landmarks. There have been times I've been on me own, no one who knew who I was for hundreds of miles. You realise after a while this planet is one amazing ride and you should see and experience as much of it as possible. That's one of the cruelest tricks this Virus is playing on us at the moment. But wherever I've been I seem to taken this song with me, I can remember it spinning round on my Walkman, blank cassettes were a god send for taking huge chucks of your record collection with you. I can also picture being in the back of a hire car cruising down an American highway watching a freight train riding along beside us with this song telling me to 'Get Here' playing out of an early version of the ipod. You often hear it on Airplane radio playlists, its to perfect for a

    With A Little Help From My Friends – Joe Cocker This is another one I had on most of my 60s compilations . Think the production and emotion created into this is pure class. Especially compared to Ringo Starr 's version released by the Beatles . You believe Joe Cocker had a little help from his mates, the roar in this vocal is a master at work, is he out of tune? Who cares! What sounded like a nursery rhyme before now sounds like a huge cry for help. The subject matter is so true, we all need propping up once in a while, hard times are upon us and we need to look after each other. The other thing about this song was it was used as the title music for a TV program called ‘ The Wonder Years .’ Channel 4 in the UK showed it when I was a teenager. It was set in the 60s in small town America and the narrator was the main characters older self looking back on his younger days. Kevin Arnold had a best mate called Paul, my name being Kevin and my best friend being a Paul was enough rea

Stranger On The Shore – Acker Bilk   This reminds me of our family home movies. My Dad had a cine camera when I was a kid, when he used to play the films back to us on his projector screen there was no audio so we used to listen to songs like this as our accompanying soundtrack. My Grandad did similar with his slide shows, so when I hear this song it conjures up memories of birthday parties, family holidays and special occasions. Lots of my very young child hood recollections are based on those films, we never watched them in order so my whole child hood was one long mixture of various amounts of candles on cakes, different sized bikes and go-karts. It was always a special treat to watch these films, it was a big under taking to set up the projector and the big screen, we used to sit in the dark with the clacking of the camera as it transferred the film from one reel to the other and usually for fun back again in reverse. Reliving all those fun times. This song is so soothing, the vibe

The Love I Lost – West End feat. Sybil   I love finding out more about songs I love and remember. Back in 1993 in my night clubbing days, this song was a huge favouite, it was slightly different to other dance songs of that time which were even more beat heavy. This song has proper lyrics, a proper tune and is a stand out track which used to fill dance floors, it's had so many remixes I don't even know which is the official original version. It's one of those songs I hear and can suddenly cast my mind back to those days, visions of dancing with my mates and the bright lights spinning round our heads, speakers cranking out this at top volume. You could see everyone belting this one out as it's so singable and the subject matter is so universal, we all have a love that didn't make it. Sybil was one of those artists that fitted perfectly into a certain genre, releasing hits basically based on each other, everyone of them perfect pop tunes and instantly recognizable. A

  Imagine – John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band   This song to me is like a modern day hymn. I'm a big Beatles fan, all be it more their earlier pop stuff, than the later 'cool' stuff. I have huge respect for John Lennon as a songwriter and an activist. Anyone that has a song called ' Working Class Hero ' remembers where he came from and still speaks for the common man. John Lennon is in the news this week as he should have been celebrating his 80th birthday, the world was robbed of one of it's biggest voices in a music as well as global sense back in 1980. The video of this song, with that white piano is one of the icons of British music. The words and sentiment of this poem set to music are both haunting and almost a warning. The world may have changed a lot since it was written but sadly the messages in there are more relevant than ever. You have to be sure where you stand on things to be able to put into words what you think the world needs to hear and

I Can See Clearly Now – Johnny Nash Johnny Nash passed this week, he's best known for this song. It's an absolute classic, so soothing and makes you feel relaxed. The lyric sums up just how we all feel when we finally release we have managed to get through the worst of it and things are finally making a bit more sense. I'm a sucker for feel good songs, this song is almost a message on mental health, which is something we can all understand in these strange times. Lets just hope we all get to feel this way soon. For my generation I can't help hearing this and associate it with a famous advert from the 1980s for Nescafé. They used a cover version of this song to overplay a lady parking her iconic VW Beetle at a top of a cliff, she then fumbles around for a jar of coffee. She plugs in her drink warmer into the cigarette lighter and then stands beside her car watching the sunrise. The whole thing together somehow struck a huge chord with me, I love a good sunset/sunrise b

Jump – Van Halen Another sad post, as Eddie Van Halen died this week, he was only 65. To be honest I only really know him and the band Van Halen through this song. It's another one of those that I had on every Rock complication album I've ever owned, along with Jumping along with it more Saturday nights than I would care to remember. The chorus of this is so catchy, get a crowd together and just launch yourselves in the air. If it's meant to be a dance you can't get any easier moves than this, I've seen many a punter a bit worse for wear take the leap and then regret it afterwards, but that's the fun. The synths on this are so 80s, but guitar licks are timeless, Eddie certainly could make his Axe cry. I've read many tributes to him and all site him as a guitar god. When your mentioned in the same breath as Hendrix you must have got something right. When you see videos of him playing with his fingers just a blur you know that's a man in charge of his

Stagger Lee – Lloyd Price   I only know this song from a mix album I had of rock n roll songs. Back in the 80s they released a series on double vinyl albums that a DJ had mixed together, you only ever heard the first two thirds of each song. The song selection was more of the less well known songs from the 50s and 60s with some odd intersections between them. I found a lot of great songs listening to them.  This song always struck me as so joyous, but the fun backing covers up a very dark song matter. The way the song bounces along it sounds like it should be a fun song but when you read the lyric you find out it's a about a two gamblers that fall out. One then gets his revenge as he shoots down poor Billy. Then it turns out it's based on real life people it becomes even an odder thing to pen a song about, but old time tunes were often ways of telling stories before radio and TV came along. Then they became hit songs being covered many years later by the pop stars of the day by

In The Ghetto – Candi Staton This song is epic. Sadly it's writer Mac Davis died this week, so I thought it fitting to feature it, it's best known as a huge hit for Elvis . He also penned other Elvis hits such as ' Don't Cry Daddy ' and ' A Little Less Conversation .' Here's Candi Staton 's version of In The Ghetto, I was watching a documentary about Soul music and they told the story of how she ended up recording this. Her husband of the time, Clarence Carter, was recording his own album and was thinking of covering this song. At some point they decided to try a women's voice on the track and Candi smashed this in one take. When you hear it with a women's voice, it sounds like that poor boys Momma crying for her son. I think it adds another layer to an already emotional song. To sit down and write a social comment like this takes guts, opening the world's eyes to it's problems is never going to make you friends. But music is a bril