HERE COMES THE SONG

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…

If poetry is the ‘music of ideas’ – an intriguing definition of the barely definable, put forward by the writer Peter Whitfield – can music…

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

Time for a sheepish confession, or a proud boast, depending on your view. Of the thousands of 7” singles I have bought, blagged, swapped…

Desert Island Discs? Pah. How about a single musical morsel for sustenance, one solitary assemblage of crotchets and quavers with which to…

When Hollywood makes its Donald Trump biopic, which with horrifying inevitability it will, the soundtrack will be by Black Grape. And the…

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…

Launched into the stratosphere with arguably (in my humble opinion, indisputably) the greatest opening riff in the history of rock, Layla…

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…

To some, The Artist Better Known As Prefab Sprout occupies an unthreatened throne. A thousand rave reviews, one Top 10 single. A daring deb…

Frankie Avalon, Johnny Tillotson, Brian Hyland, Fabian, Bobby Rydell: by the mid-1960s many teen idols of the pre-Beatles era were already…

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…

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…

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…

In December 2015 I slithered back home over snowy Canadian roads from an unnerving trip to my dentist. Unnerving not because of anything he…

Comes a time when all you thought was nothing after all. A day will bring you down to your knees. Time conveys our rivers of blood through…

We can consume our music around the clock and everywhere we go – we no longer have to find a jukebox when we’re on the move. We can hear it…

So there I was, choogling to the iPod on the 9.44 from Lewes to Eastbourne, when the ebullient strains of XTC’s We’re All Light chirped up…

It is doubtful Donald Trump has a playlist, and even if he has the name James McMurtry is unlikely to feature. The Texan troubadour recorded

Observing Donald Trump over the past few years, I’ve found myself asking more than once, to quote the title of Marvin Gaye’s socio-political