Mor-Than-Words

      Stick That In Your Country Song – Eric Church   I saw Eric Church perform at Marty Stuart ’s Late Night Jam in Nashville back in 2015, I didn’t know who he was before he came on stage. He was introduced as one of the latest outlaws of Country music. His songs and lyrics are definitely more honest than lots of other modern Country, he tells it as it is in the Willie and Waylon way. One of his latest offerings is a comment on what he must think of current Country music. The lyrics of this song pointing out all the subjects that are no longer sung about and the issues the world is facing. There are a lot of current songs about drinking, bars and trucks, but as always with trends in music once something becomes popular and makes money everyone has to have a go at replicating it. Then the next phase is for someone to highlight that and do an anti song and then that becomes the new trend and it repeats the cycle. A good and bad thing, if it throws out song’s like this one the

    Gloria – Them I was terrible at English lessons in school, I'm pretty sure I’ve got dyslexia and can spell to save my life. We used to be set assignments to read books and write long essays about them. Being a slow reader I was always still reading the book when I was meant to be giving in the homework.    We were reading a book called The Outsiders by a teenage American writer called S. E. Hinton. It was getting near the end of term and we wouldn’t have got it read in time, so on this particular day our English teacher wheeled in one of those old wooden boxed TVs they used to use at school in the 80s. He had found the movie made of the book on VHS tape and showed us the film during one double period.    Now this was much better I could understand every word and best of all it had a 1950/60s soundtrack, right up my street. Only when I re-watched it years later did I realise the big hits it had in there. This song being one of them and also a personal favourite. T

    Smoke Gets In Your Eyes – The Platters   How's this for an emotional song, love the feel of this one. A brilliant example of how voices blended together create such a sweet backing to the solo singer out front. The orchestra in the background is so beautiful, the sawing violins really sound like heart strings. Reading up about this, there have been many versions recorded of this song and by some big names. This version by US group The Platters from 1958 is the one I know from all the Rock n Roll compilation records I used to play as a kid in our spare bedroom. It made me laugh to read this song was used in the British TV drama, London's Burning , which was set in a London Fire Station. Favourite lyric : They said "someday you'll find all who love are blind" / When your heart's on fire, You must realize, smoke gets in your eyes    

  Black Horse & The Cherry Tree – KT Tunstall     My introduction to KT Tunstall was, as this video shows, her performance of this song on Later with Jools Holland . What I found fascinating was the fact she performed it solo by recording parts live into a loop pedal and basically backing herself. Very clever stuff, sort of ruinng the whole 'band' thing. It's a very cool song and she doesn't get the credit she deserves for being an innovator, seeing this performance made me go buy her album ' Eye to the Telescope '. Apparently this song is based on the famous Bo Diddley beat, maybe that's why it caught my ear so much at the time. I love a bit of Blues. I recently saw a repeat of a Shirley Bassey documentary which featured KT explaining how she wrote a song called ' Nice Men " for Shirley's 'The Performance' album. Seeing KT again reminded me of this great song. Favourite lyric : When the big black horse that looked this way

  Freedom – Robbie Williams So I used to work in a converted dog biscuit factory building in East London. It was a strange place to have a design agency, we were on the ground floor and with lots of residential flats above us. There were some interesting characters that lived there, one of which was the producer of the TV show Spitting Image . Also for some reason they also filmed scenes of the BBC TV show ' Loves Hurts ' with Adam Faith and Zoë Wanamakerin one of the flats. I can only guess there was also either a manager or music producer that lived there as one day out of the blue Robbie Williams appeared at the slope that lead up to the front door. It was very shortly after he had left Take That and to be rude he was at his largest, but it was definitely him and we all had to have a good nose out the window. I'm guessing at this stage he hadn't met Guy Chambers or got any of his own music ready to go. It's often run through my mind if I had been a bit bolder

  The Next Time – Cliff Richard   Cliff Richard has been around basically as long the popular music scene in the UK. Now very associated with his Christmas songs, back in the 50s he was our version of Elvis. His early rock ‘n’ roll songs were great, his debut ‘ Move It ’ was a great way to introduce the British take on this new musical movement. Cliff then a teenage heart throb had to change his style to be more family friendly as he gained more and more music rivals.  His move into movies was a bit hit and miss, with weak story lines and poor excuses to burst into song, they weren’t ever going to win any Oscars. But some of his best song’s fell out from those films. I love this song, it’s so simple, so understated. The theme of it is so obvious, plenty more fish in the sea, it’s what everyone says to you when you break up with someone. But he sings, what about if I’m not over you, not interested in the next one yet. This song was used in the movie Summer Holiday , I inh

  Birdhouse In Your Soul – They Might Be Giants   So I was still at school, we were told we had to go on work experience for three weeks. We had to fill out a questionnaire to figure out what we would be suited to do, I filled mine out hoping it would spit out something creative. Instead it suggested I go and stir paint for three weeks. Now I've been known to stare at the odd drying wall before, but didn't fancy this much. Luckily for me my Mum found me a friendly local design studio that was willing to take me and show me how they worked. Some of the stuff they got me to do was a bit mind numbing, like endless photocopying and re-arranging their letraset sheets. But the thing that filled my heart with joy was it turned out they were aloud to listen to the radio all day, not just as background noise but full on dance along stuff. This song just happened to be around at the time and being such a good unusual poppy hit they played it a lot. Like all good ear worm songs it has sta

 Go Your Own Way – Fleetwood Mac My friend's mum was really into this weird old band called Fleetwood Mac . Seemed whenever I went round his house or she gave us a lift somewhere they were playing on the stereo. I never took that much notice as a kid, only things I knew about them where, Mick Fleetwood and Sam Fox did the worst job ever of presenting the Brit Awards. Also if you played one of their tracks long enough it had the Formula 1 theme tune at the end. Then I grew up and started 'listening' to the music I heard, then I liked Fleetwood Mac. From early instrumentals like ' Albatross ' to their extensive catalog of thought provoking, emotional songs they are one amazing band. They have been like a Premier League football team for having some of the best players pass through their racks. But just like Doctor Who they just keep on re-generating. They must also rank up there with the strangest dynamic in a band how different members were partners at different t

    You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet – Bachman Turner Overdrive     Anyone of a certain age will remember this one as Smashie and Nicey 's theme song, otherwise know as comedians Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse. They played a couple of DJ characters that parodied the ole school Radio 1 disk jockeys of the 70s and 80s. They used to do sketches based in a radio studio then fire up the music by introducing this with a ‘Let’s Rock'. It was featured on their to show each week and that lead them to releasing an album of rock classics with this as the introduction track. I had it on cassette and there were some storming tunes on there, covering the decades of rock music. Whenever I hear this song it always makes me smile. Also the bands name was always a Trival Pursuit question, it's not your average type of band name, but it made the mystic around this song even better. Named after some of the band members, overdrive being a good word to describe what this song sounds li

My Boy Lollipop – Millie Small This one is all about the Harmonica for me, this song has such a great swing it's infectious. With the Saxophone driving the song and the sweet sounding lyrics it's a perfect example of how a song can change your mood. You only have to picture 'My boy lollipop' to know he's a real character and it makes you smile, it does make your heart go giddy up.    Apparently this song started out as 'My Girl Lollypop' as a Doo-wop release, but it got changed round for a girl to sing it. This is created as one of the first Ska songs in the UK. Millie Small was from Jamaica and had a huge No.2 hit with this both sides of the Atlantic. There was a long standing mirth that Rod Stewart played the Harmonica on this, something Rod denies. But it's a nice thought. I have this song on loads on 1960s compilations and its been span at quite a few parties. Favourite Lyric : My boy lollipop / You make my heart go giddy up

  I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry – Hank Williams I Saw The Light the biography movie of Hank Williams is on UK TV tonight. I’ve seen some bad reviews of it over the years but there’s no getting away from the fact it tells an interesting story. Hank Williams was like the prototype pop star he was looking for fame more for getting out of a hard life, needing to make opportunities and money. Once he had got those things he did his upmost to self destruct as he couldn’t help but enjoy all the excesses and torments it brings. Then like all the greats it seems they have to have a mysterious death just to add to their legend, it was a sad ending for such a talent. So young as well. For his songs to as powerful as they were he had to live out each one, you can feel the pain and torment in his words and the crack in his voice. His messages were always so simple and uncomplicated and told the listener just the truth of the matter. So relatable that they set the benchmark for all t

Sledgehammer – Peter Gabriel This song was more famous for its animated video than it was for being a banging tune. Peter Gabriel is a bit of a hard one to talk about, his days with Genesis were legendary for his silly stage outfits and their music then was a bit out there. His solo stuff had also been a mixed bag with music reflecting the different of stages of his life. I like his more mainstream stuff like this song, Games Without Frontiers and Solsberry Hill . I remember seeing the video for Sledgehammer as a teenager and being blown away by it's complex technique. Knowing a little bit about animation I realised this must have taken forever to film, every part individually animated by being moved a fraction at a time and then photographed. The dancing frozen chickens are very good for being headless. It’s become such a part of this song it’s hard to separate them, but the meaning of the song is all about going in heavy handed, being a sledgehammer and sorting out som

Blinded By Your Grace Pt.2 – Stormzy Ft. MNEK I sat down to watch another BBC4 music documentary, this time it was Mica Paris reconnecting herself to her Gospel upbringing. She picked out six Gospel songs that between them explained the history and meaning of where Gospel music comes from and how it’s gone full circle yet again and become contemporary. This is mostly down to the Grimm scene and artists like Stormzy, along with increased notoriety thanks to Harry and Megan's wedding featuring a Gospel group. It was a very interesting watch, funny how to see how American and English choirs interpreted the standard Amazing Grace so differently. Then it explained Gospel's connection to the American slaves and how it helped develop into Blues music. But the most surprising thing for me was the whole Grimm thing, showing my musical ignorance . Mica references Stormzy 's performance at Glastonbury in 2019 , a set I watched at home, purely out of interest as not being

Careless Whisper – George Michael Oh Dear. This one takes me all the way back to the fourth years leavers disco from my Junior School. I was 10 when this came out, there was so much about 1980's music I just didn't get, but a girl from my class was a huge Wham fan and idolised George , and for some strange reason me. So when the 'slow' dances came on at the end of the evening, which was probably 5PM, we were only kids, I was marched to the dance floor to take a twirl around to this. I was embarrassed enough all ready before I looked towards the double exit doors only to see my mum and her dad smiling away at their little darlings. Cringe. But for all that, it's a great memory and a great song. The sax intro sets the tone and it's very sophisticated for the time, the lyrics are incredible. I think George knew there would be a lot of 10 year old boys with guilty feet, brilliant way to portray his feelings. Wham's other songs around this time were mostly bubble

Cry Me A River – Michael Bublé What an amazing song this is, so many versions out there, I wasn't sure which to pick. But this over the top production by Michael Bublé is my winner, he belts the hell out of this classic. The orchestral backing makes it sound as dramatic as music gets, scary and sexy all at once. I think Mr Bublé is a great crooner, he's one of those artists that has been sucked into that 'associated with Christmas' trap, even though his Yuletide offering is one of the best he should be better respected for he's revival of the swing genre. The fact this video is from the British version of the X Factor proves you can make anything contemporary if it's done in the right way. The sentiment in this song is amazing who ever is singing it, as your hearing this song I bet you have a head full of who your 'you' is. The whole concept of being that upset you could produce enough tears to create a stream is great way to express the emotional toil.

As Good As I Once Was – Toby Keith Love the subject matter of this one, it's an age thing. The lyrics are very clever and as usual in a Country song tell us a good story. Any bloke that goes drinking in bars has been in that situation where a mate has dropped them in it, time to think fast and get out of there. Plus we all have total delusions of being able to attract the prettiest girl in the place. There are so many Country drinking songs, Toby Keith has a few himself, " I love this bar " being another fine example. So I suggest getting a drink from the cooler and join in the fun. Favourite lyric : I ain't as good as I once was / I got a few years on me now

I Don't Want A Lover – Texas As guitar lead songs go this one is a bit of classic, love the slide guitar in this and the beat is awesome. I’m part of The Songwriting Academy and one of the mentors is Ally McErlaine who plays guitar in the band Texas . He was doing some guitar tutoring and mentioned this song, it came flooding back how much I loved this song. It was a stand out track from it's time with what used to be described as a guitar rift, not sure such a thing still exists in current music but this whole track hangs on those few repeated notes. The lyrics are about a complicated relationship with the singer explaining she only wants to be friends. Sharleen Spiteri lyrics and voice are brilliant, Texas are a very underrated band. Favourite lyric : But you can't have it all / 'Cause I'm the one who's strong

Ain't No Pleasing You – Chas & Dave Chas and Dave were awesome, couple of Cockney blokes banging out mostly happy tunes about real life and real people. They got involved in lots of clever projects like the Courage Best beer adverts with their song Gertcha coming out of that, and silly songs like Snooker Loopy with the big snooker players of the day, the Matchroom mob from Romford, Essex where I’m originally from. Then they had proper songs like this one, a real honest account of a couple's relationship. The clever lyrics in this song tell you exactly what's going on, the subject matter set to the string orchestra makes the whole thing believable and sets the right tone. Just goes to show what talented musicians these two were, I know they were both session musicians back in the 60's and play on some big hits for other groups. Cheers for making us smile Chas and Dave but also some cracking tunes. Favorite lyric: You seem to think that everything / I ever did

Swamp Thing – The Grid Not many dance tracks feature a banjo. Out of the blue this track appeared giving everyone an excuse to dosey doe around a nightclub dance floor. I think there’s something so catchy about this tune, I expect the conversation amongst the band went along the lines of what can we do to be different from all the other hundreds of dance tracks of the time. Well their theory worked, as this was everywhere for a while, loving country music and dancing this worked perfectly for me. I had a mad dance move at the time, arms and legs going at million miles an hour and I could show it off when ever a DJ dropped this song into an evening. On the back of this track I bought The Grid 's album Evolver , there are some really interesting tracks on there, it’s not all versions of the same track as some dance albums seem to be. Mostly instrumental but a few lyrics chucked in on samples. I still listen to it now and still makes me smile. I bought the song itself of a

Wild World – Cat Stevens Another one of those random songs I first heard on a compilation cassette, this time passed to me by a neighbour after they had collected enough points at petrol station to be given a free album. It was a very odd selection with this song in the middle of it. I had no idea who Cat Stevens was, not heard of him at this point or his story of how he gave up fame and changed his name to follow his new found religion. I just thought it was a very poetic song, really simple backing and heartfelt. The singer is telling the person in the song that now their leaving him it's breaking his heart but he feels they need to be warned that the world can be a harsh place. The words don't let us know if this person is his partner or maybe his daughter, but either way you get his sentiment. The lyrics probably aren't that PC these days but you have to judge a song on it's time in history. Cat Stevens wrote some big hits along the way, ' Father and Son '

Holding Back The Years – Simply Red "Rodney, you plonker," may be a strange way to start a blog post about a great song. But if you know the reference your probably ahead of me. In my favourite ever British sitcom ' Only Fools and Horses ' this song is used in the episode that younger brother Rodney gets married. It's a fantastic scene at the very end of an eventful wedding day, Rodney finds Del Boy his older brother alone stood by the buffet table to say his goodbyes. Del is stood there on his own with this song playing out in the background, if an emotion in song could ever sum up the feelings of a moment I think this would be hard to beat. At this point in the programs history we'd been through many ups and downs with the Trotter brothers and realise the impact this one moment was going to have on changing Del's life. Any one with a brother or sister they are close to probably know that feeling, there is such a sense of joy for them mixed with feelings

Mustang Sally – The Commitments Don't know how many times I've watched this film now, it never fails to make me laugh out loud, tap my feet and sing along. It's just fun, the whole story of manager Jimmy Rabbitte creating a Soul band out of a butch of scruffy teenagers and a fruity trumpet player is so cool. He pretends to be interviewed by the legend Terry Wogan throughout the film, it's just what we all did growing up, thinking the world would be that easy to concur. With Dublin as their playgroup and all the characters that turn up it's a great snapshot of what life was like then. The music in the film is wall to wall class, I listen to the soundtrack a lot, many a Saturday night or family party has had it's Mustang moment. Andrew Strong's vocal is immense, why he never became a superstar I will never know. The original Wilson Pickett version grooves away as you'd expect but hasn't got that rawness about it. The rest of the cast take on differen

The Only One I Know – The Charlatans Just watched a brilliant documentary on TV, ' Rockfield : The Studio on the Farm ' on BBC4, it shows the history of the legendary residential studio set up in the middle of the Welsh countryside. Two brothers, gradually turned their farm into a succession of recording studios and in the process managed to record some of the most iconic songs and groups of British music. Black Sabbath , Queen , Simple Minds , Stone Roses , Maniac 's and Coldplay to name a few. Special mention of Oasis also recording there, Liam on the program and is his usual charming self, apparently it's where the ' Wonderwall ' is. But just as I hadn't thought about ' The Charlatans ' for quite until I saw them featuring in the program, I picked out this song, 'The Only One I Know' out of the bunch, not only did they record at the farm, but one of the band actually died in a car smash whilst being there. Totally tragic but some would s

Warwick Avenue – Duffy This week it was the twelfth anniversary of me moving to where I live now, previous to this I had always lived in my childhood home so it was a big deal at the time. Around then Duffy had released her ‘ Rockferry ’ album and I bought the CD and really liked it’s jazzy and soothing sounds. She had a few singles out at that point but the one she had around the time of the big move was this song ‘Warwick Avenue’. It just so happened the road I was moving to had a very similar name so it felt like fate had played a part in all of this. To the point we were waiting outside the estate agents to get the keys of our new place and I had the radio on in the car and guess which song came on next. The song is about meeting someone at the tube station to tell them goodbye and confront them how much they have hurt you, mixed in with a longing that it didn’t have to be this way. The whole concept of it being the last time they would see each other matched how I was feeling abo

Weather With You – Crowded House Crowded House were a big part of the soundtrack to my Australian adventures, as usual I made up some mix tapes to take with me to the other side of the world. This song was one of the main tunes, it still sounds so summery and joyous. It's a simple tune with lots of feeling and great references to their family home. Their other better known song ' Don't Dream It's Over ' was also on my tape, it's a fantastic song, but it's sad to think that the adventure did have to come to an end and I miss those times of being younger, braver and care free. Loved Australia and New Zealand, I have fantastic memories of those trips. As always certain songs I associate with certain places. Many years later I saw them play live at the Hammersmith Apollo , what made it more memorable for me was I should have been with my brother but he couldn't come due to work commitments. So it was one of a few gigs I've been to on me own. Just rememb

Shake It Off – Taylor Swift Before I say anything else, have a look at how many views this song has on YouTube. This is where more modern music is on a different planet to most of my taste in songs. You can't argue with the figures. I've spoken of Taylor Swift being discovered at The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville in a previous post, she started out a Country Starlet. Some of the lyrics she wrote as a teenager are simple brilliant, summing up perfectly the troubled and complicated life of someone that age. I've also been on a number of webinar courses with her original manager Rick Barker , who has explained how Taylor was one of the first artists to use social media to gain a fan base. She totally interacted with her fans, making them part of her journey to becoming a huge star. Again you would have to had been an age where you grew up with social media as part of your life to be able to get a grip of all the angles of it. Then Taylor went 'Pop' and opened up her mus

Candle on the Water – Pete's Dragon I'm a huge Disney fan, love their films, love their theme parks. I think they create magic. Big part of my love for all things Disney is the music they use and created for their films. There's a great movie called ' Saving Mr. Banks ' all about how they made ' Mary Poppins '. What I really love about that film is they take you behind the scenes of how their in house songwriters crafted the songs, pure imagination. That would probably be my dream job. There are so many iconic songs from all their huge movies, ' When You Wish Upon A Star ' brings a tear to my eye whenever I hear it, for a number of reasons now including great memories of watching the fireworks bursting over Cinderella's castle at The Magic Kingdom. But wind back 40 years and then there's this song. I'm at infant school, it's the end of term, we are all ushered into the assembly hall for a special treat. They wheel in one of those big

I Wanna Be Free – The Monkees Scratching the surface of a memory. So my family were talking about vinyl records, my niece had mentioned she would like a record player or turntable as everyone calls them now. The older members included in the conversation were reminiscing about how playing your favourite records wasn't without it's dangers. I shared a stack system with my brother as a teenager, it included a functional record player on top. A very compact design to the extent that any 12" LP stuck out three sides of the top cover. The only issue being after much use the catch on the cover became a bit temperamental and had a knack of crashing down just as you were loading your favourite record. This would put a lovely scratch across the groove, often ruining the listening experience. I had been bought The Monkess Greatest Hits on a very cool looking record one Christmas, I had played it a lot, I was a big Monkees fan from watching their TV show that used to be repeated dur

Won't Get Fooled Again – The Who There were big changes going on at one of my old jobs. Lots of people didn't want to move offices when the company decided we were moving from East to West London. It was a real shame as we had a really good team working there, very friendly, great social life and on top of that we were producing some amazing work. Two of my main friends there were musicians, one played self taught lead guitar and the other was a very accomplished bass player who just happened to love The Who . John Entwistle was a big influence on lots of bass players, matching Keith Moon 's drumming madness for lots of their huge hits. Personally I was a fan of their earlier stuff, Pinball Wizard and My Generation and the like. But I had their greatest hits and enjoyed most of them, I've always admired Roger Daltrey 's vocals and windmilling Pete Townsend 's guitar riffs. Now to the point of the story, the two guys from work were firm friends and I was the n

Who Wants to Live Forever – Queen + Adam Lambert So I sat down to watch a Netflix documentary ' The Show Must Go On ' about one of my favourite bands Queen and how they got their new front man Adam Lambert . Being a big admirer of Freddie Mercury I'm one of those who would have said he was irreplaceable, but to be fair to Mr. Lambert the footage in the documentary proved me wrong. He held his own on a lot of the iconic songs, and he also was very honest about trying not to be a Freddie impersonator. Brian May and Roger Taylor don't really need to big up their success, their three disk greatest hits albums, a long running West End musical ' We Will Rock You ' and the recent biography film ' Bohemian Rhapsody ' could that for them, so for them to endorse and praise this young singer you get the impression he's the real deal. On this song especially I thought Adam even outdid Freddie, which is not something I thought I'd ever say. The documentar

Your Man – Josh Turner Came across Josh Turner via the ' Keep It Country ' TV channel, his deep voice making the TV speaker really work hard. His tone is amazing and he can deliver any song to break your heart. He's had quite a few big hits now and I particularly like this song of his. It really shows off his talent and the atmosphere he creates makes you believe every word he's singing. It's one of those very simple lyric songs, with a straight forward message and it's way the whole thing is put together that makes it special. The guitar is very soothing, I think the use of the big pauses and sparse backing emphasises the main parts of the song so well. The guy is genuinely happy just to be in love and be known as 'your man'. A good ole fashioned country song. Favourite lyric : I can't believe how much it turns me on / Just to be your man  

She Sells Sanctuary – The Cult So I was in my late teens, managed to basically ignore all the current 1980s music and was looking to expand my musical horizons past the record collection of my parents that I had been listening to through my teenage years. Along comes Indie music. I was out shopping in Woolworths in Hornchurch, one Saturday afternoon in 1993. Woolworth’s was one of them shops you could buy basically anything and they had just expanded into selling records and cassettes in this small store. I picked up this cassette, basically because the cover was yellow and looked really cool. It was a complication album called " Suddenly Loaded ", it had all the best Indie songs from that era spread over it's two sides. Trouble being I hardly knew any of the songs or artists, apart from one Radiohead song. Now knowing me it was probably on special offer, I took it home and stuck it in my stack system. Side A was inspiring and then I had to take out the cassette and flip

Pipeline – The Ventures So how a song can spark a memory even after the event. When I was 18 my parents took our family to Florida, USA, the mention of the sunshine state from my last post reminded me of this song. This was a huge deal for us, before this we had mostly been to holiday camps in the UK, so to be in Mickey Mouses back yard was incredible. We even hired one of those new video cameras to record this adventure, they were huge in those days, you were basically carrying round a suitcase on your shoulder. We did all the brilliant tourist things, but one of the best moments on that holiday video was, when I was editing it, I added this song as a backing track to us just messing about in the motel pool. Somehow it summed up the excitement of the whole trip, definitely unmistakably American and it even gives you that feeling only being out in intense heat can and that lovely cool swimming pool water.  As always with great songs, when I hear it I’m back in that pool and young again

Little Ole Wine Drinker Me – Dean Martin "I'm praying for a rain in California . So the grapes can grow and they can make more wine ” I wonder what the writers were thinking of that day. What a perfect song subject for Dean Martin , probably the most famous drunk act ever. His clever wit and stage act shouldn’t disguise his amazing singing voice. Out of the Las Vegas Rat Pack he’s my favorite, even above the legends Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr . I think all three of these guys and a lot of the other crooners from that era are super cool, this was at a time the songwriting craft was pure poetry usually addressing big subjects of life, ' My Way ' and ' Born Free ' for just two examples. Then you had semi serious songs like this one, a heartbreak song hidden under a very quirky melody and what I guess would later be described as a drinking song. Dean Martin takes on this tongue twister of a lyric with ease and sings it in his classic relaxed style. I first h

Lost In Music – Sister Sledge So there I was just old enough to finally get into nightclubs, then my group of friends decide they want to go to the only nightclub in town that had an older age limit. Putting on my only suit, borrowing my brothers driving license, I paid my £7, which was half of my Saturday job's daily pay and in we went past the huge bouncers. It was an older crowd so therefore they played older music, quite a long disco section, some of which bored me to tears to be honest. That DJ had a regular set list he used to play, most of the songs were their extended 'dance' versions so you could have another pint by the time the next song came on . But songs like this one were burrowed into my brain, mostly thanks to Nile Rogers ' Chic ' production, that guitar riff is infectious, plus the driving beat doesn't give up throughout. This a great vocal, I love girl groups like this where they blend their voices to make a big sound.  Sister Sledge were a

Shiny Happy People – R.E.M. I thought I'd get a bit happier after a couple of sadder posts. This song hit me in 1991, it was a big main steam hit from R.E.M .s album Out of Time. It was the first song of theirs I heard and it started a long standing interest, I bought lots of their albums on cassette tape and played them on the train to work on my Walkman. They had lots of music out previous to this but it didn't appear on my radar. This song is kinda outside their normal stuff, having a guest vocalist, Kate Pierson of the B-52 's for starters and a seriously happy vibe. It'll get you dancing and feel good. The video added lots of energy to the track, they look like their having fun, we used to listen to lots of music around that time by watching the videos. R.E.M. were quite a quirky band, Michael Stripe always looked to me like he was playing the character of the lead singer than actually being comfortable out front. As often happens with bands biggest main stream hit

Daddy's Little Girl – The Shires In honour of it being Father’s Day, here's a great song about a Daddy. British Country Duo, The Shires , made up of Ben Earle and Crissie Rhodes came to my attention when I used to go to a monthly Country night in a pub locally in Essex. It was based on the 'In the round' concept, borrowed from The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, where four singer songwriters sit round playing their songs one at a time. They give the backstory to each song and the reason for its being, Amy who ran the night also used to finish each evening with a selection of her own songs, one of which was about the other members of the then British Country scene. The two most successful ones being this duo, The Shires, she mentioned them often and this pricked my interest enough to search out their music. They formed when Ben put an ad out on Facebook looking for a like minded female singer and Crissie got in touch. They have been making great music together ever since. Th