Suzanne Vega: Gypsy and a cherished Glastonbury memory
Many of us have a song that evokes a particular time, place or person: that anthem from your youth, or a slushy tune shared with a first…
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Thanks for stumbling upon my retirement project and labour of love, Here Comes The Song. Here you'll find the latest blogs from music fanatics about their favourite songs and the artists who wrote them. It really is about the music that moves us...
Gillian Welch: The hush and the hurt of I Made A Lovers Prayer
There is more to the harmonica than meets the lips, to the extent that a careless student of the instrument might blow some serious money on
Thom Yorke: Last Flowers
When the panic swept through England, the scale was measured in loo roll. The supermarket rush for toilet paper evoked the run on Northern…
Jason Isbell: Traveling Alone
Jason Isbell tells an amusing tale about meeting Bruce Springsteen a few years back and being bowled over when The Boss began to sing the…
Sixties discoveries: From The Fourmyula to The Millennium
Nostalgia: a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past. But is it possible to be nostalgic for a time you never knew
Paul Simon: American Tune
Churches and cathedrals will remain silent this Easter so there will be little chance to hear O Sacred Head, Now Wounded, a choral work by…
Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson: Alexandra Leaving
If poetry is the ‘music of ideas’ – an intriguing definition of the barely definable, put forward by the writer Peter Whitfield – can music…
Badfinger, sad singer: Day After Day
Has there ever been a sadder, more violent death in pop than that of Pete Ham? Grisly ends are not exactly unique in rock. Think Marvin Gaye
Richard Dawson: Two Halves and a singular voice
Time for a sheepish confession, or a proud boast, depending on your view. Of the thousands of 7” singles I have bought, blagged, swapped…
The Police: Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Desert Island Discs? Pah. How about a single musical morsel for sustenance, one solitary assemblage of crotchets and quavers with which to…
Black Grape: Dadi Waz A Badi and the Trumpian parallel
When Hollywood makes its Donald Trump biopic, which with horrifying inevitability it will, the soundtrack will be by Black Grape. And the…
Lindisfarne: Winter Song, Alan Hull's timeless cri de coeur
Don’t get me wrong. As Jewish as I am, I’m all for Noddy Holder roaring ‘It’s ChrisssssssssMAS!’ or John Lennon hoping war is over or Roy…
Eric Clapton: Layla (and Other Assorted Love Songs)
Launched into the stratosphere with arguably (in my humble opinion, indisputably) the greatest opening riff in the history of rock, Layla…
Joni Mitchell: Dark majesty of Shades Of Scarlett Conquering
If the 1960s were the decade of the classic single, the Seventies were the decade of what was quaintly called the album. And for the first…
Paddy McAloon: Keeping alive the spirit of Prefab Sprout
To some, The Artist Better Known As Prefab Sprout occupies an unthreatened throne. A thousand rave reviews, one Top 10 single. A daring deb…
Dion & The Belmonts: My Girl The Month of May
Frankie Avalon, Johnny Tillotson, Brian Hyland, Fabian, Bobby Rydell: by the mid-1960s many teen idols of the pre-Beatles era were already…
Anatomy of a classic cover: My Girl The Month Of May by The Alan Bown
My Girl the Month of May, Dion’s hymn to her, may have been the flipside of a flop but it inspired two distinctive covers by artists who…
Gretchen Peters: Arguing With Ghosts
It is always pleasing when a songwriter you greatly admire echoes a long-held belief. My contention is that the best songs are the sad ones…
Unlucky Starrs: What might have been for a band called Interview
There cannot be a music lover anywhere in the world who does not have direct knowledge of a band who might have made it – could have made…
Memories of a real crooner and the surreal McCoys
In December 2015 I slithered back home over snowy Canadian roads from an unnerving trip to my dentist. Unnerving not because of anything he…
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