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This week is not a quiz, but these are among many kinds of blanks that might be filled …
A page or a canvas, a mind to facial expression, there are all sorts of blanks in life, but paradoxically they can be drawn into something very creative. This week it’s time to fill in the voids and spaces with songs on that subject
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Heard it through … The Slits
A genre-jumping, globe-spanning musical adventure brings glorious reinterpretative entertainment as guest of the week Nilpferd presents playlists inspired by last week’s topic
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The Number 9’s getting up a head of steam this week …
Let us count the ways … distance, temperature, dates, states of being mind and muse, trains, rockets and other transports of delight all come in this wonderful cloud nine presentation by guest Nicko inspired by last week’s Song Bar Ninth Birthday topic
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‘Fearful symmetry’? More to reflect on …
It’s pleasing to ear and eye, verbally, musically and rhythmically, so let’s seek songs with forms of lyrical antimetabole, the repetition of one or more words in successive clauses, but a transposed order
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You simply don’t mess with Tura Satana, portraying Varla in 1965’s Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
Ambiguous, mysterious, sexy, full of charm but also harm, they're the objects of obsession, as it's often unclear what the balance of good-bad may be. Fictional or real, famous or personal, let's find songs inspired by them ...
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Got a gut feeling for what will come up in the latest lists?
Hungry to fill your musical belly with music? Need to digest, and relieve pain? After readers spilled their music guts in response to last week’s topic, guest song doctor Marco Den Ouden explores and prescribes a full menu of tasteful and entertaining ingredients
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Not lesser known, but definitely a revealing and true original …
This week it’s time to dig deep for those original songs overshadowed by hit or well-known covers. We can also include remixes and other reworkings, as well as lesser known songs so heavily sampled they make a prominent core more famous version
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Rainbow aurora …
The magic, the mystery and a dash of science, it’s all rolled into one beautiful spectrum of songs chosen by guest playlister Hoshino Sakura from last week’s vast and exquisite sky full of nominations. Most enlightening!
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Austrian Krampus … where paganism does a Christmas album …
Ritualism, celebration, sacrifice, worship of nature, sex and food? Ancient and 20th-century traditions come a procession of all kinds of colourful characters in this week’s theme that heralds horror or pleasure in equal measure
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Robert Smith has already been kept up with songs that whisper
Rockabye? Close your eyes, but open your ears. This week let's expand the idea of the lullaby beyond children to any song that uses the term or encourages, whether loudly or softly, a state of drifting into the unconscious
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The divine Miss Grace Jones
Let’s accessorise ourselves with songs about hats, gloves, scarves, sunglasses and the like, from a key lyrical moment to song as whole, with items that variously signify fashion, function, status, class, profession, character or era
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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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Café culture
Romance and glamour, café culture, perfume, protest, or grit and gangs? Paris means all things to all people, but if one thing unites these things, it is inspiration. This week the Bar Du Chanson, we try to capture its essence in song
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Heartstrings are harder to repair that guitars …
From gaffer and duct tape, housing to mending a broken heart, let’s repair towards fantastic playlists created by the handy skills of our guest treefrogdemon, who was inspired by a full toolkit of suggestions from last week’s topic
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Global repair
From cars to people, mind and body, clocks or guitars, the world at large or little local difficulties, let’s start 2019 by fixing up and looking sharp with skills and toolkits on this topic
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Perhaps these steps will lead you to the right key …
Steep, sweeping, stone, wood or metal? This week we're exploring how music give us a certain kind of lift – through lyrics that describe all ways to up or down, on foot or via mechanical means, actual or metaphorical
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Hang out at the Bar. You'll enjoy it.
Folk to rock, pop to hip hop and more, from grisly executions to leisure time with friends, to ending phone calls, let's hang out at the Song Bar and explore songs using these many idioms
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The art of the opening
Profound statements to emotional exclamations, sexual provocation to oddball situation, suggest your favourite and outstanding starter lyrics as we examine a host of musical and literary examples at the bar
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1) Keith Richards by Ronnie Wood
This week the Bar becomes a special gallery filled with music stars' work! Peruse the paintings and name their famous creators, and suggest songs inspired by art and artists from any period or genre
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Johnny Depp and Patti Smith - mutual admiration
Marilyn Monroe to Jodie Foster to Johnny Depp, Sidney Poitier to Sigourney Weaver, this week's playlists made by guest Mnemosene2 from last week's topic create a constellation of stars. Let's roll the credits …
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