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But this one really can’t be put off, can it?
They are forced upon from an early age, and a key driver of human behaviour, a trick we play upon ourselves or others to get things done, but in song they have range of contexts and inspire all kinds of emotions
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Pygmy marmosets, like us, have all the digits
They’re one of evolution’s dextrous miracles, constantly in conscious or subconscious use, are a vital musical tool, but how do they come up in song lyrics, whether in literal, metaphorical or idiomatic senses? Here’s a few pointers …
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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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Lounge lizard
We live much of our waking lives in them – working and socialising, swivelling to dining to reclining, sofas and couches, ornate thrones to humble stools, beanbags, pouffes, to the office, barber’s, dentist’s and beyond, but how do they sit up in song?
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The GOAT? Or just a goat?
We’re not exaggerating, from most beautiful to the fastest, craziest hottest or worst, this week it’s songs centrally featuring that adjective or adverb that expresses that the thing or person described has possessing more of that particular quality than anything or anyone else of that type
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Freud’s famous paper was published exactly a century ago
It’s time to wrestle with the conflicts and complexities of the conscious and sub-conscious mind captured in song lyrics. From that famous paper published by Freud a century ago, there’s also inspiration here in film, literature, comedy, musicians and more …
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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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Belly up? Billie Eilish contemplates some big ones in her video for Bad Guy
It’s our second ‘brain’ a part of the body that rules us more than we think. Whether in literal or metaphorical lyrics, it’s time to pull in or push out, in the form of song suggestions. Inspired by gut feelings, intestines, belly buttons and cultural and scientific inspiration here …
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Look back in Angus …
Knob gags and pranks to child savants, this week it’s about not growing up, the pros and cons that entails, from annoying, destructive self-centredness to touching naivety, lack of experience but also hunger to discover, playful creativity. Plenty of examples to inspire, but how is this expressed in song?
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Signs of their times
Contracts, bonds, anything to employment to marriage to loans, record deals and other business, putting our signatures to things governs personal and public lives. But how do any formal agreements get referenced in song?
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One man’s personal paradise … what is yours?
What is yours? From Arcadia to Utopia, how can we create or find it? Where is it, and what does it look like? This week, after previously doing the impossible, we find the unfindable in the form of song, inspired my many books, art and films …
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Nosferatu, 1922
Whether inspired by fictional horror in books or film, or indeed horrors of the real world, physical or psychological, stylishly goth or gruesomely gory, this Halloween-inspired topic is all about songs that send a shiver up the spine
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Stereo-typing
Which type are you? Portraying or satirising, explaining or exploding, this week we explore these social generalisations about race, gender, age, nationality, class or profession as expressed in song lyrics or even musical style
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How to putt it? Fiddling while Rome burns …?
Whether genuine or feigned, in love, politics or the natural world, it’s as all-pervasive as gravity, and with a pulling power just as immense. So tugging against it, what bigger form of attention-seeking is there than writing and performing a song? But how do songs deal with indifference?
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Getting right into each other: ABBA
Songs about themselves. Does this sound loopy? You’re right. It’s all about the self-referential to any aspect of a songs’s own music, structure, instruments, format, lyrics and more. Droste effect? Mirroring? It’s all about the song
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Let it all hang out …
It’s partly perception, partly physical reality, an ongoing health and cultural issue affecting mind and body. So let’s go large on the lyrical portrayal of fat in people, with a dishful of tragedy, humour, self-consciousness, cruelty, pathos, and glory
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Carrying the ages, via The Simpsons. Insert any music you like …
This week we seek strange combinations from starkly different times – old songs covered on new instruments, new songs played on old instruments, traditional musicians playing with younger, or old styles mashed up with the new
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Herd this? Non sequiturs are instrumental in this week’s musical zoo
Often poetic, strange, vivid, but definitely illogical, this week we explore lyrics that don’t really follow what preceded it, but somehow their meaninglessness masquerading as meaning, can also end up being something highly musical
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Plenty of alarms and surprises in store this week …
Sound effects or samples in songs that cover alerts and alarms and of all types are what could sound out this week’s creativity cacophony, from car and fire alarms to clocks and klaxons, and no doubt plenty of horns, bells or whistles
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Shadow play. Where? On the square
This week we enter the world of the topsy-turvy and the back-to-front, all reflected in song lyrics, literally or metaphorically, here with a perspective on other work, from reversed or mirror images to the distorted or refracted
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