Welcome to 2025. It’s time to blow a few lyrical and musical thought bubbles and get the grey matter moving. How is thought expressed in song? Is it an inner speech? Is it through the fingers? All this and more with much to think about, here ….
Read morePlaylists: songs and music featuring sounds of bells
Who is it? Bjork, of course, jingling a silvery Alexander McQueen number
They’re sometimes the sound of Christmas, but these resonant instruments can crop up in all sorts of situations and music. Reverberating from last week’s topic, guest VikingChild creates Xmas and non-Xmas selections and are extremely a-pealing. Let them ring out!
Read moreWhat a carillon: songs and music featuring sounds of bells
The bells! The bells! Handheld bells ...
They resonate through time, marking beginnings and endings, life and death, and have a host of meanings and contexts. Alone or in harmony, large or small, as instrument or sound effect, what tintinnabulum tickles your fancy in music?
Read moreCase notes: songs about detectives and private investigators
What’s inside the bar this week?
There’s a smoky haze in the Bar this week as dozens of suspicious individuals sit down for a quiet drink, but what are they up to? Are they real or fictional. It’s time to do the sleuth work and find some musical inspiration
Read morePlaylists: songs about items bought in a hardware store
The full works …
Need to nail down that job you’ve been putting of? Short of tools and other materials? Inspired by songs nominated from last week’s topic, guest TatankaYotanka has a superb musical shopping list and gets it all stylishly done
Read moreTotally wired: songs about any items bought in a hardware store
Hose or hoes, or …?
This week the Song Bar turns into a pop-up store to handle all your musical fixes. Tools, materials, plumbing or wiring, we’ve got it all, and the theme is literal or metaphorical, so please browse and choose …
Read morePlaylists: songs defined or redefined by television
Are you watching? The musical and visual chemistry of Breaking Bad
Sometimes the visual and audible become inextricable. From nostalgia to drama, guest of the week Loud Atlas channels nominations from last week’s TV topic into playlists that are must-sees and required listening
Read moreStation to station: songs and music defined or redefined by television
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
Read moreSheer release: songs that energise
It's highly subjective, but we're throwing out there what songs, or pieces, give you that big physical or mental boost. So, what music puts a pep in your step? What pushes out the puissance, releases the pizzazz, flows the juice, brings vim, vitality, vigour, zest, zing or the zip?
Read moreWhich piece fits? Puzzling and mysterious songs
Japanese gramophone puzzle
A two-fold topic: first we’re seeking songs that initially produce a mix of incomprehension, wonder, bafflement, bewilderment, mystification, and game-changer amazement, or those about puzzles themselves, jigsaws and other mental and physical solution-solving challenges
Read moreAgainst all odds: songs about underdogs
Muhammad Ali, then Cassius Clay, was complete underdog when he faced Sonny Liston in the shock defeat of 1964
You’ll find them in real life or fiction, history and myth, sport, music, school, prison, books or film, but the arc of the underdog always inspires emotions and makes for a great story. How is it conveyed in song?
Read morePlaylists: songs about chairs and other sitting furniture
On your deck …
Comfort, solitude, danger, voyeurism, power, inspiration, work or versatility? They can mean many things, and inspired by last week's topic, guest DiscoMonster plays marvellous musical chairs that sit across all tastes and styles
Read moreLet's rock: songs about chairs and other sitting furniture
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?
Read morePlaylists: songs about the frozen north
Mush! The team all pulled together, leading to these splendid songs …
Stunning sights and sounds that will melt your heart, but hopefully not too much of the ice. From Siberia to Alaska, the Inuit to the Laps and beyond, Marco den Ouden takes us on a fabulous journey across the frozen north inspired by last week's topic
Read morePlaylists: songs about bad boys and bad girls
Tricky Ricky …
Lookin' for trouble? Then you've found the right place. Lotharios, vamps, tramps and troublemakers are truly in force as guest of the week tincanman brings us a brilliantly badass selection inspired by last week's topic
Read moreKick-ass topic! Songs about bad boys and bad girls
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 ...
Read morePress paws, then play: songs about bears
Bear with us ...
We’re heading down into the woods today and beyond, hopefully in for a few surprises, and beyond naked necessity, with songs where bears feature prominently in title, lyric or theme, perhaps too in musical delivery capturing their qualities, and no doubt also in metaphor for all kinds of human contexts
Read moreKiss and makeup: songs about cosmetics
Just a little heavy on the foundation, fellas?
Lipstick to mascara, eyeshadow to foundation, music stars have always been putting on a performance persona mask. Cosmetics do strange things to us. In a narrative, they could leave traces of romantic encounters, make for a great vivid detail in lyrics, as well as an extended metaphor. So a rather different way this week, it's time to face the music …
Read morePlaylists: songs about the colour brown
Howlin’ Wolf in his prime …
Tinted with the wrong associations and overshadowed by other colours, brown is heavily underrated. But it has a natural beauty and vast range, as shown by these perfect shade of playlists picked by guest Loud Atlas from last week's topic
Read moreThe whirring mind: songs featuring humming
An Anna’s hummingbird at work
A hum-dinger, or at least a hum-singer of a topic, one in which we're seeking songs that feature that sound, perhaps mostly by the vocalist when not singing lyrics, but perhaps other effect and forms of vibrating hum, from rock and pop, famous classical operatic passages, jazz, R&B, reggae and much more
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