HERE COMES THE SONG

It must be thrilling, if a little intimidating, to have a day named after you. Shakey Graves Day in Austin, Texas, honours one of the city’s favourite sons, and his latest single, When The Love Is New, could become one of its favourite songs. Our Song of the Week at herecomesthesong.com is a bluesy, rootsy earworm of a track whose release followed a weekend of sold-out, back-to-back hometown shows. Shakey Graves Day is never confined to 24 hours.

A song caught my ear on the car radio recently. The voice was familiar. The song floaty, ethereal. Barely two minutes long, Lord of the Reedy River was a balm on a day of constant cold rain and wind. It took me back to the late Sixties. The tranquil ballad was the first song on a long-forgotten album, Post Card by Mary Hopkin. The Welsh teenager was one of the first artists signed to the Beatles’ Apple label and Post Card was produced by Paul McCartney.

My favourite concert of 2025 featured the same artist as last year, Brandi Carlile. She and her band wowed London’s Drury Lane theatre in 2024. When she repeated the feat this year, I didn’t even have to leave the house. Her five-song performance at NPR’s Tiny Desk in Washington is proving a YouTube phenomenon, and her first offering, A War With Time, from latest album Returning To Myself, is our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com.

Phil Shaw presents his favourite 10 songs of 2025, from Nadia Reid and Bon Iver to Van Morrison and CMAT

In With God On Our Side Dylan took a broader swipe at the mentality of those who seek to justify their brutal and criminal acts of warfare by invoking divine guidance. It is a remarkable composition, its nine verses taking us on a journey through a couple of centuries of US history.

The late Rob Steen’s many generous contributions to this website might never have happened if we had not agreed on the allure of an Eighties hit single, Mary’s Prayer, by a Scottish band who deserved greater recognition, Danny Wilson.

The wonder of Jenn Wasner’s voice can trick the listener into underplaying the emotional turmoil behind the lyrics. The Life You Save, her third album under the alias Flock Of Dimes, is her proudest solo work. Our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com is the hypnotic Keep Me In The Dark, which she regards as perhaps her finest ever composition.

Topping a bill that also included, among others, The Faces, America, Mott The Hoople and Lindisfarne, The Who soon had the ground rocking. Moon closed the innings by battering his drums with a cricket bat during Magic Bus, and the band ended a glorious set with their trademark mass demolition of instruments.

The recent death of Danny Thompson, known best for his distinctive double-bass playing in the revered band Pentangle, struck a chord with many. Thompson founded the group but he played on records of a raft of artists, from Nick Drake and Kate Bush to Everything But The Girl, riding the wave of the Fifties’ skiffle revolution with a tea-chest bass he rebuilt himself before becoming a big player in the Soho folk and rock scene of the Sixties when he joined Alexis Korner’s Blues

Brave Awakening showcases both Terry Reid’s songwriting ability and his rich and soulful vocal range

The opportunity to honour two heroes with one song was too inviting to miss for jazz-blues artist Jon Batiste. The late Ray Charles first recorded Lonely Avenue in 1956 and it is covered by Batiste on his new album, Big Money, in the company of a living legend, Randy Newman. The wonderfully soulful duet is our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com.

In the age of the information superhighway there is an expectation that the sum total of human knowledge is accessible with one click and Google is seemingly omniscient. It is highly unusual, not to say curious, that the circumstances surrounding the untimely death of an internationally renowned musician should remain shrouded in mystery for years. But this is the case regarding the demise of Ben Andrews in April 2011 at the age of 51.

Britney’s original version contains a comic interlude which Thompson cleverly replaces with a 16th-century instrumental passage (‘to show how things come round again’), and it works well. But the performance is essentially a mickey-take

Red House was written by Hendrix and follows a standard 12-bar blues format. The word Blues is a colloquialism for sadness and yet great blues songs can be incredibly uplifting. This is because the protagonist almost always triumphs over whatever adversity they are facing. So it is with Red House.

Although Lennon and Harrison contributed harmonies to McCartney’s lead vocal, no Beatle actually plays an instrument on the finished track but it is distinctive for an entirely different reason. Lennon and McCartney seldom disagreed over the authorship of a Beatles song. Eleanor Rigby is a rare example

Huddie Ledbetter, aka Lead Belly, was a hard, rough man prone to violence who spent a portion of his life in prison. He was also one of the most influential figures in the history of American music.

The standout track for me is Love You So. It is hard not to conclude that this was at least in part Rodgers’ heartfelt goodbye to his troubled bandmate

Though The Nice’s later work is dominated by Keith Emerson, the work with Davy O’List is more balanced and in my view more interesting

McMurtry can make you smile with his wry humour but it is his snarl that commands your attention

Procol Harum are its best-known gift to the world. Yet as a new exhibition titled The Scene By the Sea at the Beecroft Art Gallery demonstrates, there’s far more to Southend (182,000 inhabitants), Canvey Island (38,000) and their corner of Essex than skipping the light fandango and cartwheels across the floor.