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Welcome to paradise
Song of the Day: Perhaps the ultimate number for an absurdly cold, cloudy British Easter Sunday, also this year falling on April Fool's Day, therefore so ironically and self-destructively bleak it's almost uplifting
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Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding on the inside cover of Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2).
Song of the Day: To brighten up a grey Easter weekend, two upbeat, romantic and typically eccentric numbers written by Andy Partridge from t 2000 album Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2)
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Canned Heat
Song of the Day: Leaping back out of Springsteen's Pink Cadillac, we continue our road journey with two 1968 hits by the Los Angeles blues band – a cover of a cover a cover – and also go back down the dusty track to see where it all came from
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Racing Yello? Dieter Meier and Boris Blank
Song of the Day: After the perfect pace and beautiful simplicity of Kraftwerk's Autobahn, here's a contrast race forward from handcraft in Germany to flashy millionaire Switzerland, snorting that white line of road into an 80s concoction of speed-and-coke-crazy synth sampling
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Kraftwerk in more recent performance of that timeless classic
Song of the Day: Our previous two selections have been big synth pop hits, but here is where that all really came from – down an unclogged motorway all the way to Düsseldorf, and the timelessly influential work of Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider
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The Human League, featuring Phil Oakey, third from left.
Song of the Day: More love song action, and groundbreaking synth pop, following yesterday's Eurythmics, with Phil Oakley and the Sheffield crew pumping out a classic from the 1981 album Dare
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The odd couple. Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart.
Song of the Day: The 'love is' mini-theme today moves onto to a different genre – early 80s electronica pop, served up by the enigmatic Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart
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Stephin Merritt and friend
Song of the Day: 'Love is ...' here perhaps less a song, more a poetic, wry, extended metaphor, but still a lugubrious bit of loveliness from The Magnetic Fields' 1999 triple album 69 Love Songs
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Roxy Music, 1975 vintage.
Song of the Day: Continuing, in between an celebrity death, our mini-theme of 'love is' songs, a hot-to-trot stomper from Bryan Ferry and co from the band's fifth album Sirens in 1975
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Stephen Hawking 1942-2018. Cosmologist, theoretical physicist, humourist
Song of the Day: How best to pay tribute to one of the most intelligent men in history, one mentioned in the same breath as Einstein? With a silly cosmic song of course, taken from the Meaning of Life
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Anyone got a backscratcher for The Supremes?
Song of the Day: Continuing the 'Love is Like" theme from yesterday, something to refresh the musical palate with a thumping classic from Diana Ross and co, penned by the timeless Holland-Dozier-Holland
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Ken Dodd's first of 19 chart hits was this tender tenor number in 1960
Song of the Day: What a perfect day, alongside hailing the tickling stick and five-hour shows, to say that the sadly departed comedian was also a huge 1960s pop star – and his first hit reveals a surprisingly beautiful tenor voice
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Peter Allen. Enjoying it both ways.
Song of the Day: After yesterday's funky Janelle Monáe number about bisexuality, let's turn back the clock to 1980, and a different disco funk pop hit from an Australian who used a cheeky geographical metaphor
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Janelle Monáe
Song of the Day: It's Saturday, time to get a little bit sexy, and bang up to date with a brand new number that might remind you of someone? Yes Prince did indeed help US singer and rapper Monáe with this before he left us.
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Helen Reddy
Song of the Day: Following from yesterday's Japanese celebration song Girls' Day - Hina Maturi - a truly empowering number by the US-Australian singer to go alongside #March4Women running up to International Women's Day
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Napoleon XIV, aka Jerry Samuels
Song of the Day: We conclude a mini-series of upbeat songs about mental health with perhaps the most bizarre of all, a 1966 novelty hit song by the producer and singer songwriter Jerry Samuels
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The Move, featuring the moustachioed Roy Wood, in 1968.
Song of the Day: Moving on from Johnny Cash's Hurt, we return to an upbeat, colourful song about mental health problems, penned by the eccentric Roy Wood, who later of course, became a hirsute star of Electric Light Orchestra and Wizzard
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Cat Power aka Chan Marshall
Song of the Day: Following Go-Kart Mozart's wonderfully chirpy songs about doleful poverty and adult depression, we turn to a aka Chan Marshall's song addressed at a teenager feeling down from online bullying
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Go-Kart Mozart's Lawrence, a genius at upbeat-downbeat indie pop
Song of the Day returns with two gloriously upbeat numbers with downbeat titles by Lawrence, formerly of Felt and Denim, from his brand new 17-track album Mozart's Mini Mart
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David Byrne
Song of the Day: That's not my beautiful house! Or is it? Today we may find ourselves comparing two sublime songs, two houses, one brand new and a classic from the Talking Heads Remain in Light album of 1980
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