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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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The Specials. A most atypical and brilliant band …
Band member types to black racial stereotyping, standard gender attributes to cultural cliches, this week our guest writer Loud Atlas explores all the standard norms and from a huge choices picks playlists are outstandingly atypical
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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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Airing the sound: MOMA’s Music Gallery
It’s a private view where all are invited. Led by our expert guest curator EnglishOutlaw, chosen from a range of musical hanging fruit, welcome to the grand tour reopening of an entirely unique grand expo - a canticular spectacular
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Some of the Horniman Museum’s many musical instruments
It’s time to show off your best and most collectible nominations about venues of art and artefacts, whether that is the building, the people, or the interacting with the items within, from grand palaces to tiny garages
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Heavenly pennies to begged 10p, stolen florins to counterfeit double-dealing, this week we coin in the songs courtesy of a shower of suggestions from last week’s topic, out of which guest George Boyland picks a shiny set of collectibles
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Heavy metal: American guitar pick coins
Penny for your thoughts? Spare a dime? Money may often be on anyone’s mind, but this week we’re spinning a theme in particular all about coins, incidentally or centrally in a song lyrics. Will your suggestions come up heads or tails?
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Very fruitful: Little Richard
It’s time to come out with our own Song Bar gay parade – songs exploring, expressing the experience from confusions and problems, all the way to coming out and celebrating gender, difference across the sex spectrum
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Don’t adjust the dial. Stay tuned. All the buttons and songs are on this week’s Song Bar radio
Click! Radio to romance, computers to transport, even death and destruction, those switches are primed for all occasions, so stay tuned for super songs picked by guest Marco den Ouden from nominations that push all the right buttons
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Slide away …
Literal or metaphorical, mechanical, electrical or psychological, it’s time to switch your attention to these sorts of manual controls referred in song lyrics, and see what turns on and pushes those buttons …
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Oumou Sangaré
People, circumstances, oneself or even death, there’s a huge sense of calm, relief and relaxation around this week’s beautifully benign and wisely accepted playlists, chosen by guest tincanman from a massive influx of nominations
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Rising and setting …
Distant hillsides to sea sunsets, skylines and vapour. trails to massive events, this week’s playlists are a thing of timeless beauty, picked by guest ajostu from an ocean of nominations, stretching far and wide across the musical globe
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The open road … all the way the vanishing point …
It’s the inspiration for so many album covers, not to mention songs, and also an idea of infinity we never quite reach. From literal or metaphorical and lyrical, this week we reach for that imagined line where land, or sea, meets sky
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Roses of many colours decorate this week’s lists …
Whether wild or cultivated, on western plains to eastern mountains, country gardens or inner city, guest flower picker AmyLee creates a bloomin’ marvellous bouquet of music to display a fabulous selection of aural and lyrical colours
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Red and white Rosa Osiria
Romance, death, pain or beauty, petals or thorns? In titles or lyrics of song, literal or metaphor, as symbols or even as names, including also instrumentals, it’s time to gather musical blooms inspired by this particular flower
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Retro chanteuse: the fabulous Yola
The opposite of cover versions, some new songs sound like they’ve come straight from a time machine from decades before. This week’s guest music timelord, Dr philipphilip99, presents playlists recreating pasts with a perfect retro fit
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The Happiest Days Of Your Life: Margaret Rutherford, Joyce Grenfell and Alastair Sim (1950)
Quiet please! Are you listening? It’s the last day of school, and at assembly headteacher Uncleben gives out advice to pupils departing the building for the final time. It’s a wealth of worldly wisdom, rich in detail, and perfectly delivered from a huge influx of song suggestions
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Handing out key advice …
Reported or direct, the practical or philosophical, the benevolent or biased, critical or contradictory, from parent to child, expert to novice, or general, this week it’s all about useful instruction, ignored or taken and ideally as detailed and unusual as possible
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Jumping for joy? Goats. See the brown one? Reminds me of when I was a kid …
It comes in so many forms that this week’s topic has to mention fun, or its synonyms specifically, from getting your kicks to seeking your pleasure or leisure, frolic or merrymaking, carousing or joy. Let the games begin!
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The great guitarist Peggy Jones, aka Lady Bo - vastly underrated and in the shadow of her beau, Bo Diddley
Picked from a vast array of suggestions, 24 excellent artists from the past and present, hidden or strangely unsuccessful, emerge into our spotlight and become happily less undervalued, thanks to two superbly inspired playlists by guest Nilpferd
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