playlist for my dad

My dad Phil used to post on this blog regularly.

Here's a playlist of some of his favourite records, including most of the ones he posted on here:

Treorchy Male Voice Choir (Côr Meibion Treorci) - Myfanwy

Joe writes: Heard this on Desert Island Discs today - pretty amazing.




So I added it to The Mother of all Playlists.

Story Songs, a Spotify playlist, including 7 Years by Lukas Graham

Joe writes: Everyone loves a song with a lyric that tells a story, so it's surprising how few songwriters write these kinds of songs. One good example is the current no. 1, 7 Years by Lukas Graham, which opens this playlist:


I have another observation about 7 Years. I reckon that until recently, a Danish soul/rap/pop hybrid might have been no. 1 everywhere in mainland Europe but still not broken in the UK. What's changed? Spotify, and their power to influence the charts and so UK radio. It's a huge change and mostly very positive.

Mike Skinner from The Streets did a great BBC 6Music show of his favourite story songs. It doesn't seem to be online anymore but he does talk about story songs here.

The Mother Of All Playlists and what's happened to this blog

Joe writes: I haven't been updating this blog much but I have been spending as much time as ever seeking out great music new and old - it's just that nowadays when I find a great track I tend to just add it to a Spotify playlist.

I'm sure I will post YouTube or Soundcloud links here from time to time, but mostly I will post Spotify playlists here, which are updated regularly.

This is the Mother Of All Playlists, featuring 4000+ songs and growing, including most of my favourites and plenty of new discoveries from all genres.

I'm really enjoying Spotify's Discover Weekly playlist

Joe writes: If you're not familiar, every Monday Spotify compile a playlist tailored to each subscriber, I guess consisting of tracks listened to by other people who've listened to tracks you've listened to. It rarely includes anything I just wouldn't be interested in, and I've found some gems through it including this Laurie Anderson tune Let X=X which still sounds futuristic after all these years (it's from 1982).


And here's the playlist:

Tom Waits Ballads - a Spotify playlist

Joe: If I were Adele I wouldn't be too worried about comparisons between Hello and Martha by Tom Waits, but this does give me an excuse to post my Spotify playlist of the best Tom Waits ballads. There isn't a Tom Waits album I really love - I'm not a big fan of the stompy noisy stuff - but I love the first twelve tracks of this playlist. No-one else does a ballad like Tom.

Jason Downs feat. Milk - White Boy With A Feather

Joe writes: I've started making a Spotify playlist called The Tip Sheet CD, and in doing so, I've realised there are a lot of good tracks from the last decade or two that aren't on iTunes or Spotify. Some of them are obscure, but this reached no. 19 in the UK chart, with Jason and Milk appearing on Top of the Pops. It is rather a strange hybrid track, both musically and lyrically - I'm not sure there has been anything like it before or since.

Eternal Flame, Graceland and songs without choruses

Joe writes: I learnt recently that Eternal Flame, the classic Bangles hit, was inspired by a visit to Elvis Presley's former home Graceland, which has a supposedly eternal but actually intermittent flame. More info here from Billy Steinberg who wrote the song with Tom Kelly and Susanna Hoffs. Interesting to learn that the demo of the song was acoustic guitar-based in a bid to make it more "Bangles-y".

Here's a very evocative Top of the Pops performance:



Billy says Eternal Flame doesn't have a chorus. It's an interesting one - when you're listening to "Close your eyes, give me your hand darling", you're clearly listening to the verse, but by the end of the verse and especially by the end of the song, the verse has effectively become a chorus, as Billy says. Anyway, I've added it to my "Songs without choruses" playlist on Spotify. Other suggestions welcome:

Sad Christmas songs

The Best of The Crimea and The Crocketts

Joe writes: The Crocketts built a dedicated live following but there was something slightly comedic about them (not least their name, as their singer was called Davey), which I felt held them back. But they did have one wonderful song, Mrs Playing Dead. Its opening lines are almost perfect: "It's not every afternoon that you walk into a bar" (I always thought it should be "a room") "and I look at a woman and I know I'm gonna love her all of my life".

Next came The Crimea, who featured two members of The Crocketts - singer and songwriter Davey Macmanus and drummer Owen Hopkin. They were a serious band with a serious name which was partly a reaction to the comedic element I mentioned earlier. I stumbled across them by chance at In The City (a now-defunct music industry conference which gave many bands early opportunities). Their gig was shambolic but I thought songs like Baby Boom and Bombay Sapphire Coma were literate yet anthemic, with the most wonderful extended melodies, and lyrics that pinpointed the male psyche like no-one else. They became the first signing to my publishing company and the first band I worked closely with.

There was a time when every relevant Radio 1 specialist DJ was a fan of theirs, including John Peel and Zane Lowe. Then they signed to Warner Bros US and disappeared to the US to remake their album (which, in retrospect, was unnecessary). By the time they returned home, their moment at Radio 1 had passed, never to return.

After leaving Warner Bros, they made headlines around the world by giving their second album away for free online, but they didn't manage to capitalise on that moment in the spotlight, nor on a TV ad for the most commercial track on that album, Loop The Loop.

Like The Crocketts, they built a loyal fanbase without truly breaking, and I'm still hurting about that, but at least they left behind some wonderful, unique music:

There's one Crimea song you should hear that isn't on Spotify et al - Six Shoulders Six Stone, wherein Davey's girlfriend dies from anorexia. It's hard for me to be objective about The Crimea so I will you leave you to decide whether this is brilliant or uncomfortable or both. It's definitely brave:

The Best of Laura Marling

Joe writes: I know lots of people love Laura Marling's debut album but I didn't get it at the time and, as you'll guess from this playlist, I still don't. But from the second album onwards, she became one of my favourite artists. For me she just gets better and better. She's one of very few contemporary artists who I feel could have stood shoulder to shoulder with the folk rock greats of the early seventies.

The Best of Scotland

It's not all bad Scotland (some of it is though):

my favourite R Kelly tracks - Spotify playlist

Joe writes: R Kelly was probably the best songwriter to emerge in the nineties, and a brilliant singer too, but no-one needs to hear an entire R Kelly album so here's a Spotify playlist of his best tracks:



My favourite R Kelly track that isn't on Spotify or iTunes is Bad Man. I wonder if it's missing because of its honest lyrical message? Anyway, it's on YouTube:

my favourite Laura Marling tracks - a Spotify playlist

Sad Songs - Spotify playlist

Joe writes: My favourite genre is sad songs, and this playlist includes most of my favourites including Sad Song by Lou Reed: