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Paper trail or older entrance …
Cultural events to sport, travel, parties or imagined prizes in lotteries, whether as literal or as metaphor in lyrics, it's all about those bits of real or virtual paper allowing access. Where will yours get you?
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Beautifully sad symmetry by Celeste
Mirrored lyrical patterns create an aural symmetry l that appeals to listeners, especially in pop music’s chorus. Inspired by last week’s nominations, guest playlister Maki weighs up the lyric sheets to create a perfect balance
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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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Descending deeper into the swirling vortex of our over-stimulated minds: Girls In Synthesis
Scratching your head? What makes the inner language and patterns of thought? Is there an art to thinking, of not thinking too much, or even dethinking? Guest writer Uncleben brings clarity and wonderfully crafted playlists inspired by last week’s topic
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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 ….
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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!
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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?
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Frank Zappa: a big fan of throwing grammar to the wind
Eyebrow-raising errors or mischievous messing with facts? Inadvertent or otherwise, songs are strewn with wonky signposts of syntactical or other wrongness, and guest Maki rightly finds fun in it, inspired by last week’s topic
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They call him Mr Tibbs: Sidney Poitier shows Rod Steiger how real detective work is done - In The Heat of The Night (1967)
There’s a body, but what’s the motive, and whodunnit? Gathering a cast of famous detectives and a pile of tracks about them to spin in the Bar, Chief Inspector Marco den Ouden solves the case with musical cues and keys, inspired by last week’s topic
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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
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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
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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 …
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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
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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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Go!: The Go! Team
It’s positive, infectious, subjective yet strangely magical in effect. Spread across the genres and inspired by last week’s topic, ParaMhor brings his superb selection of music that will brighten your day and put a spring in your step
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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?
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Captain Beefheart … of course
Prepare for a journey into the unknown and deeply strange. Whether in lyrics or musical sound or structure, guest playlister severin leads us through canticular caverns of wonder, inspired by last week’s topic
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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
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Pizzicato Five
Sublime beauty to kick-ass cool, serene traditional to urban punk and pop, Japan’s got the lot. Inspired by last week’s topic and nominations, guest ajostu picks some personal favourites to capture the breadth of this country’s musical treasure trove
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Sleeve of Japrocksampler: How the Post-war Japanese Blew Their Minds on Rock 'n' Roll – by Julian Cope (2007)
It’s a huge market for the industry, inspired by outsider music, and this extraordinary land also delivers much of its own, but what songs captures the essence of Japanese people and culture? Here’s a tiny dish of metaphorical sushi to get your tastebuds tingling ….
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