Song of the Day: Moving on from Johnny Cash's Hurt, we return to an upbeat, colourful song about mental health problems, penned by the eccentric Roy Wood, who later of course, became a hirsute star of Electric Light Orchestra and Wizzard
Read moreJohnny Cash – Hurt
Song of the Day: Our last song focused on dealing with teenage depression. Today, in one of his greatest career moments, Johnny Cash's cover addresses this in the autumn of his years, but also so much more
Read moreCat Power (with Iggy Pop) – Nothin' But Time
Song of the Day: Following Go-Kart Mozart's wonderfully chirpy songs about doleful poverty and adult depression, we turn to a aka Chan Marshall's song addressed at a teenager feeling down from online bullying
Read moreGo-Kart Mozart - When You're Depressed / Relative Poverty
Song of the Day returns with two gloriously upbeat numbers with downbeat titles by Lawrence, formerly of Felt and Denim, from his brand new 17-track album Mozart's Mini Mart
Read moreFunny Valentine? Chet Baker – Let's Get Lost
Song of the Day: The world wide web will be awash with Valentine's songs today, so here's one too - a jazz standard but with a darker edge, embellished with extraordinarily beautiful trumpet and voice of Chet Baker
Read moreVan Der Graaf Generator – House With No Door
Song of the Day: With yesterday's David Byrne tracks being two of several by him with a house theme, today we visit another songwriter who uses them as metaphor extensively – Van Der Graaf Generator frontman Peter Hammill
Read moreDavid Byrne – Everybody's Coming to My House / Talking Heads – Once In A Lifetime
Song of the Day: That's not my beautiful house! Or is it? Today we may find ourselves comparing two sublime songs, two houses, one brand new and a classic from the Talking Heads Remain in Light album of 1980
Read moreEzra Furman – Love You So Bad
A beautifully upbeat, mischievous, wistful, passionate number from the new album, Transangelic Exodus by the Chicago indie rock singer-songwriter, in which "the past is the past, but the present's nothing without it"
Read moreWomen's suffrage special: Lesley Gore – You Don't Own Me / Ethel Smyth - March of the Women
Song of the Day: Two very contrasting songs to celebrate the centenary of the first legal step into women's suffrage in Britain - the Representation of People Act 1918 - followed by the eventually ratification across the US in 1920.
Read moreField Music – Count It Up
Song of the Day: How to create a value system for modern life? Just as this is hard to quantify, it is equally difficult to categorise the musical style of the Sunderland band, whose latest, sixth album, Open Here, addresses a variety of contemporary issues
Read moreAbba – The Winner Takes It All
Song of the Day: Completing a triptych of songs about pyrrhic victory in relationships, an ultimate breakup number by the Swedish pop quartet – heavily layered in irony because Agnetha Fältskog sang the lead in a work written by ex-husband Björn Ulvaeus
Read moreJ Dilla – Two Can Win / The Sylvers – Only One Can Win
Song of the Day: After yesterday's Ty Segall/Hot Chocolate cover comparison, more material playing on the topic of who or may not be the winner in a relationship from the brilliant hip hop and jazz producer and the 70s funk and soul family group
Read moreTy Segall / Hot Chocolate – Every 1's A Winner
Song of the Day: It's time for an upbeat number for Friday, and so let's enjoy a great new cover version by the American garage rocker that stands up the original, but also resulting in a situation where everyone is indeed a winner
Read moreSuper blue blood moon special: a selection of Tom Waits 'moon' songs
Song of the Day: On this day of this rare astronomical eclipse event, and after a series of other lunar-related songs, we come to an artist who has, across the course of his career, described this celestial body in around 100 different ways
Read moreGenesis – Dancing With the Moonlit Knight
Song of the Day: Moonlight, eccentricity and experimental obscurity have very much been the direction of SOTD recently, and so it's time to unashamedly progressively rock on to Peter Gabriel's old band at their finest – when he still led it
Read moreCan – Come Sta, La Luna / Chain Reaction
Song of the Day: Continuing the lunar theme, and extending to the outer limits of experimentalism after Moondog and Captain Beefheart, the sequence also ties in with the German band also highly influential on the late Mark E Smith
Read moreMoondog – Lament I, Bird's Lament / Moondog Monologue
Song of the Day: After Captain Beefheart, could there be any musical figure more influential, eccentric, strange and innovative? Louis Thomas Hardin, aka the Viking figure who for years silently stalked New York's 6th Avenue, is a strong contender
Read moreCaptain Beefheart & His Magic Band – Moonlight On Vermont / Tropical Hot Dog Night
Song of the Day: With the recent passing of The Fall's Mark E Smith, and all the songs, tributes and stories that have followed, it now seems only appropriate to follow up with music Smith loved by one of his major influences
Read moreThe Fall – Blindness (and farewell Mark E Smith)
Song of the Day: With the sudden news of the passing of Mark E Smith, how can we choose a song to exemplify this force of nature, this difficult genius, this guttural great, this prince of post-punk lyricists inspired by HP Lovecraft, William Blake, Wyndham Lewis, Gene Vincent and krautrock
Read moreHugh Masekela - Grazing In The Grass / Khauleza / Soweto Blues
Song of the Day: A triple tribute to the sadly departed but hugely influential South African trumpeter, composer, singer, cornet and flugelhorn player, and leading anti-apartheid campaigner
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