Category Archives: Pop thinking

Stuff prompted by songs

Hell and damnation on Radio 6

For the fainthearted . . .

The music played on BBC Radio 6 Music is nothing if not eclectic. Responding to a request this evening, Steve Lamacq played Nina Simone’s New World Coming.

The opening lines might be those from any popular song of the 1960s or 1970s. those of a certain age might compare Simone’s lyrics with those of songs like Roger Whittaker’s New World in the Morning:

There’s a new world comin’
And it’s just around the bend
There’s a new world comin’
This one’s comin’ to an end
There’s a new voice

…

Unchained feelings

For the fainthearted . . .

Perhaps dissecting the lyrics of songs is unwise. Perhaps there is a danger of reading into a song meanings that were not intended. Perhaps there is a danger of overthinking words that were secondary to the music. Perhaps lines that were sung for fun can take on a seriousness they did not possess when the song was recorded.

The late Joe Cocker’s Unchain my heart is perhaps a song I have over analysed. The lyrics begin:

Unchain my heart, baby let me go
Unchain my heart, ’cause you don’t love

…

A Beatles Anniversary

For the fainthearted . . .

Forty-five years ago today, on 5th March 1976, The Beatles released twenty-three singles simultaneously.

To someone who was fifteen years old at the time and was away at school and had 50 pence a week pocket money, it seemed an odd thing to do.  Even if the entire pocket money were spent on buying records, it would have taken months to buy all of them. It was important, though, to buy some of them. Being born too late to remember much of The Beatles’ history, it was important not to …

New York groove?

For the fainthearted . . .

The intro to the song found a resonance deep in the memory, a sound from the distant past, not immediately recognisable, but undeniably something that had been encountered before.

Initially, it seemed similar to Hamilton Bohannon’s Disco Stomp, a cheery tune from  the summer of 1975, but that did not seem a likely song for inclusion in the BBC Radio 6 playlist. Then the became identifiable, it was Hello’s New York Groove, it and the 1974 hit Tell Him are the only songs I remember from the band.

The strange …

Maggie May Days

For the fainthearted . . .

Posting six hundred odd photographs here on Saturday, pictures of old friends caught the eye, among them a picture of Tony and Dave.

Tony died in 2003. Dave never ages. The memory of them that lingers is being sat with them in a Torquay café in September 1975. Rod Stewart’s Maggie May filled the air.

It was late September and we were definitely back at school and the song caused a fourteen year old sitting with his five pence cup of coffee to ponder what it might be like simply …

The day of the live gig will return!

For the fainthearted . . .

On top of the bookshelf in my study, there is a pair of tickets for an Elvis Costello concert. The tickets are for Wednesday, 18th March 2020 and are unused.

The onset of the pandemic caused the cancellation of the concert. Well, not the cancellation, but the postponement of the gig until a date to be confirmed. Ticket holders were offered the choice of applying for a refund, or holding onto their tickets until the concert was rescheduled. There seemed something optimistic in holding onto the tickets to wait for …