How do you demonstrate the craft of crooning? It brings a broader range than you imagine. After the many nominations springing from last week’s topic, defining as all about style and using the microphone, guest playlister ParaMhor brings some perfect performance picks …
Read morePlaylists: single-minded songs
It might mean concentration, determination, persistence, relentlessness, and even obsessive behaviour, but while that perhaps thinking of one thing, or one person, but this is a topic has gathered a broad range of music and ideas. Guest Sidecar Shiv reveals more in fabulous playlists picked from last week’s topic
Read morePlaylists: songs about pioneers
Traversing not just wildernesses, this week’s topic celebrates those who found forms of new territory, land, sea, or space, to those who broke new ground in their specialist field. For these, guest of the week Marco den Ouden creates landmark playlists inspired by last week’s topic
Read morePlaylists: songs about raptors
Eagle, kestrels, vultures and more, after last week’s topic took flight and inspired nominations, keen-eyed musical ornithologist Nicko spreads his wings, swoops in and makes a skilful and erudite grab with these evocative playlists
Read morePlaylists: songs about roses
Whether wild or cultivated, on western plains to eastern mountains, country gardens or inner city, guest flower picker AmyLee creates a bloomin’ marvellous bouquet of music to display a fabulous selection of aural and lyrical colours
Read morePlaylists: meta-songs or songs that reference themselves
In the spirit of Laurence Sterne’s wonderfully original novel, and inspired by a hive mind of nominations, guest guru Uncleben embarks on a marvellous meandering journey of deliberate divergence to explore a self-referential mirror-hall of lyrical meta
Read morePlaylists: songs featuring steel guitar
Smoothly glidin’, slidin’, pickin’, these playlists with players from the US to India, Hawaii to Sweden picked by guest Marco den Ouden, are a treasure chest of beautiful sounds and genres spanning blues, rock, country and way more across the big neck
Read moreTake a chanson me: songs about singing
It’s time to sing out suggestions on this lyrical, meta-topic – from the perspective of singer or listener, by humans, animals or birds, whether for love, warning, fear, joy or despair, or singing simply to exist, make others aware
Read morePlaylists: songs about being stubborn and ignoring advice
An impressive collection of tough cookies feature in this week’s lineup of artists ready to take no nonsense from anybody, covering the full spectrum obstinacy, from soul to punk and beyond, picked by discerning ear of guest Maki
Read morePlaylists: songs about trust
Sometimes you can believe, yet it doesn’t work out. But sometimes it does. This week it has, at least through hundreds of brilliant song nominations, and playlists equal that by guest Severin, spanning genres, mood and eras
Read morePlaylists: songs about different jobs
Drivers to traders, craftsmen to carers, traffic wardens to roadies, this week’s superb playlists by guest writer ShivSidecar capture a huge spectrum of styles, emotions, toil and characters, and after so many nominations, it’s a job very well done indeed
Read moreVote labour: choose songs about different jobs
Habitual to unusual, the professional or the manual, the skilled or the basic, gig economy to obscure and hidden, this week we look at a variety of job titles and what they all entail, all evoked through song
Read morePlaylists: songs about substitutes
Replacements for players, soldiers, husbands, lovers, even robot sex – it’s all going on this these superb playlists chosen by our guest lister Marco den Ouden, who also replaces some of his words with those by nominators
Read morePlaylists: songs about cannabis / marijuana
Bongs to the Byrds, ditch weed to Nick Drake, spliff to Steppenwolf and tea’n’tree to Peter Tosh, everybody must get stoned with a woozily wonderful playlists by guest writer megadom from last week’s theme
Read morePlaylists: songs about immortality and longevity
Want to achieve immortality? After a fountain of youth of song nominations last week, guest playlist writer treefrogdemon takes amusing musical solutions via reincarnation to science, Neil Young, Bob Dylan to David Bowie
Read moreI told it my way: songs with unusual narrators
New perspective? Songs with storytellers that are different and on the fringes – repressed women, eccentrics, the mentally challenged, criminals, children, otherworldly spirits from gods to ghosts, animals, aliens, plant life, or even objects
Read morePlaylists: songs about windows
Aphex Twin's wet windscreen to Sonny Boy Williamson escaping out the bedroom window, it's all going on here. Guest playlister nosuchzone is pure glass – giving us stunning sights and sounds from last week's topic
Read morePlaylists: songs about waiting
Prince to Nina Simone, Billy Bragg to Black Uhuru, this week's guest playlister Rachel Courtney writes a powerful topical piece about waiting for a better world, inspired by hundreds of readers' nominations
Read morePlaylists: songs about painters, painting and drawing
Brushes and paints at the ready? From Magritte to Old Masters, our guest writer Severin, inspired by nominations from last week's topic, turns the bar into an art class distinctly in the hue of Joyce Grenfell
Read moreAt the cemetery gates: elegies and other songs of remembrance
Away from all the political turmoil, it’s time for musical rest, something poetic. Honouring soldiers or victims of war to family, friends or lost fellow bandmates, suggest music that remembers the departed on a personal, profound and beautiful note
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