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Ageing gracefully in nature’s autumn cycle: Japanese maple
Getting older happens at all stages in life. Is it down to perception? And is age just a number? Hopefully yes, a musically number at least, as we invite your song suggestions on this theme …
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The face of ecstasy: detail from Gian Lorenzo Bernini 1652 sculpture, The Ecstasy of St. Teresa in Rome, and an acid house party in 1993
Whether its chemical and recreational to sexual, spiritual or even religious, music can take you back to an extraordinary high. This week’s theme a musical mood and feeling topic, but can also be a lyrical one …
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Here it comes …
Dramatic, extreme, they always come as a pair, if with delayed arrival, and may be a backdrop, or an expression of stormy relationships, a high charge of emotions, or of inspiration, change, turmoil or chaos, but it can also bring a state of cosy comfort
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A commemorative model of Apollo-Soyuz on 17th July 1975
To commemorate the Apollo-Soyuz space link up, exactly 50 years ago today, on 17th July 1975, let’s celebrate strange, unusual bonds of friendship in song lyrics and shake hands with the unexpected …
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Eight? How many pieces do you have?
Precious, rare, valuable, timeless? Monetary or something more intangible? How do you define treasure? This week we celebrate eight years of of Song Bar from a phase from a Robert Louis Stevenson novel and seeking songs on this theme
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Leaps of imagination …
Witty, mischievous absurdity, hairy hopelessness, irrelevant incidents, or audible anticlimax and a pointless punchline? It’s time to examine the art of tall storytelling in song. Enjoy some examples in comedy and literature here, but how will your suggestions end up?
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Some activities are rarer than others … Thomas Rowlandson’s satirical work of 1811
Looking up or down, from sights of rare astrological bodies to unusual encounters with unusual or unique people or events, from birth to death, it’s time to capture the rare in song form, from personal or universal perspectives
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The monarch butterfly: a profound life cycle, and ‘a rainbow of chaos’
It’s a big question. But how might it be answered in song lyrics? Not merely through broad definition or metaphor, but also through philosophy, practical advice or experience. See many inspirational ideas here, but it’s also time to let your answers take flight …
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Better late then never?
It’s something attempted to be trained into us from school to to the work place, and appears to be both necessary, but perhaps also unnatural. This week it’s time to pin down the essence of punctuality in song, with all the tensions and consequences of being early or late
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Look no further. The greatest. Muhammad Ali
This week, from lyrical non-ironic self-proclamation to nuanced false narrators, a brimming edition of self-aggrandisement with a dash of arrogance, of big-headed and bombastic braggadocio, of cockiness, conceited crowing and crazed confidence, with a dollop of self-delusion …
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Pianist Paul Barton is joined by a Thai trumpeter …
The big tusk ahead: actual or metaphorical, fictional, real, or idiomatic, in nature or captivity, it’s time to gather the herd, stroll or stampede through your musical collections and celebrate these magnificent huge creatures of trunk in song
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JJ Johnson
From classical to Dixieland to New Orleans early jazz, swing, big band, bebop to modern jazz, pop, funk, rock and more, it’s time to bone up, slide in and have a blast with your suggestions on this great, often unheralded instrument
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Ice work if you can get it …
Things are really hotting up, so it’s time to lower the temperature a bit. Whether that involves cooling off on your insides or outside, physical, visceral, mental or metaphorical, let’s cool off with some songs on the subject
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Monkey business: once wise, now denies …
Politics, climate change, racism, health or personal relationships, all this and more can can come under the umbrella of denial, and in song lyrics it’s a potent area for nuance, irony, emotion, and things that bite back
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Something to reflect on …
Lens me your ears! This week we take more than a passing glance at eyes in song lyrics, whether as metaphor, as objects of beauty, as windows to the soul, and especially in the mystery of how what they see differs from how they are seen
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Joseph Stalin: hero turned villain. Statue torn down in 1956 in Budapest during Hungary's October Revolution
Whether it’s figures of public renown in music, film, politics or history, or private – mentors, relatives and even lovers, this week we look into songs about how the once admired and revered can seriously disappoint and fall from grace
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Can’t put down. The self-deprecating Keanu Reeves walks the street absorbed in The Government Inspector
Humorous or serious? Self-defence mechanism, attention-seeking, of self-aggrandisement? This week’s lyric topic is richly nuanced, ironic, and covers a range of emotions, often fuelled by love and ambition, tempered by self-belittling
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Koko and friend
Soothing words, a light touch; holding baby, stroking an animal; lifting a fragile glass a measured, restrained response to tense moments, rage or violence; the soft caress of a light breeze across the eyelids, let’s gently let it out in song
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Captain Beefheart. Not exactly a shrinking wallflower in the obstinacy stakes
Stupid or inspired? Annoying obstinacy, obduracy, inflexibility and bullheadedness, or admirable persistence, pertinacity, tenacity and indomitability? It can go both ways, but how might it shape up in song lyrics?
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Some people have no time to sit …
New Year resolutions, revelations or revolutions? Whether it’s from or for love, money, survival, fear, self-respect or more, let’s open 2020 with songs that may motivate, but ideally also tell us where that comes from
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