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Emperor penguins have quite a few stories to tell …
A place of brutal remote beauty, its icy vastness packed with extraordinary stories of exploration, endurance, bravery, tragedy, cruelty and irony, a cornerstone of scientific research, and of course of the hardiest survivors of the natural world – penguins and more. But what of song inspired by it?
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Heavy metal to heavy mammal. One Ozzy departs, another arrives: A namesake southern white rhino, here with mother, was born the day Ozzy Osbourne died on 22 July
It’s a musical menagerie: land, sea or air, mammals, birds, amphibians, marsupials, tragic tales of destruction to near extinction, but also heroic conservation, it’s time to highlight creatures under threat but featuring in song
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Charlotte Moorman performing Nam June Paik’s TV Cello, New York, 1971
From themes to incidental music, it’s time to tune in for songs inextricably linked, either because it began life written for a TV programme, or later became indelibly associated with something on the box
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Careful with that axolotl, humans …
Frogs, toads, newts, salamanders, caecilians, and not forgetting the amazing axolotl, in literal or metaphorical contexts, myth or fairytale, sounds or more, these amazing creatures seem to straddle that subjective line between cute, creepy and ugly. But how to they leap up in song?
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Evel Knievel attempts to jump 13 buses in London, 1975. What could possibly go wrong?
Love, death, survival, creativity – at times they all seem impossible or insurmountable. After a seemingly inconceivable recent world history, it’s time to play with the idea of impossible in song, and work out what really is from what isn’t. Is it all down to perception?
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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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Hum that tune …
Birds to insects, bats and angels to Icarus and aeroplanes, myth and reality, metaphor and literal, it’s time to let your musical imagination take flight and soar with the senses in songs that feature these supreme super-limbs in lyrics
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The tide has brought in John Cooper Clarke …
Highs and lows to ebbs and flows, literal, littoral and metaphorical, specific locations, mudflats and estuaries, wildlife, mudlarking, shorelines and coasts, this week it’s all about the movement of water in and out, and what that is all about
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Float your ideas, and nevermind the cost. From the Nirvana album …
For crying out loud. This week’s topic is all about those beautiful and cute bundles of joy that we all once were, miracles of wide-eyed wonder as well as guzzling, selfish, exhausting, sleep-sapping, puking bags of expensive energy extraction
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Pick collection …
Galleries to grand libraries, public or private, unusual or colourful objects, from the oddball to unhealthy obsession, this week we enter the extraordinary world of collecting, listing and cataloguing and everything that motivates it
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Concrete evidence …
Cats, rats or bats, peregrine falcons to parakeets, foxes and rabbits, bears or boars, and a whole host of other creatures, as well as plants and urban sunsets, this week let’s explore how nature exists in the city as shown in song
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Superb lyrebird - sounds like everything else, but nothing sounds like it.
The topic over the Christmas holiday season is a form of convivial, parlour game in which pairs of songs can be nominated that share musical or other echoes - but which came first and where are the comparisons? You decide …
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Recycled plastic beach sculpture in Rio
It’s multi-shaped, everywhere, and incredibly flexible and versatile, but it’s also an eco nightmare. But how is it represented in song? Fake, cheap, inferior, comical, colourful or weirdly fashionable? Time for a straw poll …
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Last four couples in a 1930s dance marathon
We’re not leaving, but showing endurance, fortitude and steadfastness. There’s a whole lot of staying power going on in this week’s topic, from physical to mental strength …
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Leap of the imagination? As told by … Black Beauty
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
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Holy smoke, Batman, it's onomatopoeia time …
Boing! Bash! Splash! Whoosh! This week it's time to get noisy with songs containing words that mimic the sounds they describe, but also those with conventional instruments that copy other sounds
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Image of Hurricane Patricia (2015) which, off the Pacific coast of Mexico, reached speeds of 345 km/h (215 mph)
Hurricanes, tornados, tidal waves, floods, blizzards, earthquakes to volcanoes, whether about actual events or in metaphor, it's time to batten down the hatches, put out the sandbags and face the music
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Awkward … your life in their hands. May, Trump and poor old Washington
Mass campaigns to crowd manipulation, political U-turns to personal deception, suggest songs about the art and artifice of changing facts for dubious or other purposes, but here to make truthful playlists
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Once in a lifetime? Felix Baumgartner takes one giant leap in 2012
There's nothing quite like the emotions or physical impact of first, formative experiences. From first sex to seeing New York to new sounds, revisit your innocence in song, and also any that try to say 'never again'
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