Song of the Day: From Tim Buckley’s driver perspective to one from the customer, this time in the dry humour of the Swedish singer-songwriter who finds it a haven after missing the last tram home
Read moreJens Lekman – Black Cab
Jens Lekman
Chas & Dave – Ain't No Pleasing You
Pub perfection: Chas Hodges on piano, with Dave Peacock on bass
Song of the Day: Moving from Otis Redding to a rolling rockney number may seem unlikely, but it’s a fitting tribute on the passing of pianist and singer Chas Hodges with this song’s strong melody and seamlessly emotional key changes
Read moreLead Belly to Nirvana and more – Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
Lead Belly
Song of the Day: Also known as In The Pines, and Black Girl, today we move onto another traditional song variously interpreted, dark and brooding, haunting in its melody, and simmering with suspicion and jealousy
Read moreThe Special AKA – Free Nelson Mandela / Hugh Masekela – Bring Him Back Home
Nelson Mandela, 1918-2013
Song of the Day: At a time when true statesmen are very much needed, and to mark the centenary of the great South African's birth, two great 1980s songs that helped bring his incarceration, and apartheid, to worldwide attention
Read moreRocky Mountain Mike – Mr Tangerine Man / Don't Think Twice They're Alt Right
Go home, you fuckwit
Song of the Day: To mark the unwelcome visit of the current US president to the UK, two ironic versions of the famous Bob Dylan song that capture the falsehood, narcissism, hypocrisy and divisive racism of the Donald
Read moreMy Bloody Valentine – When You Sleep
My Bloody Valentine in their earlier days
Song of the Day: Another sleep-themed song, not so much evoked by lyrics, but by the extraordinarily loud but also woozy sound of the band headed by Kevin Shields and his innovative tremolo guitar technique
Read moreFourth of July Special: Bob Dylan – Bob Dylan's 115th Dream
From the cover of Bringing It All Back Home, Bob Dylan's fourth album (1965)
Song of the Day: Some songs for Independence Day are patriotic, others heavily critical, but this American dream number sees the then great young lyricist capture his country with surreal, vivid, humorous irony
Read moreFiona Apple – Sleep To Dream
Fiona Apple
Song of the Day: After Blondie's flirtatious daydreaming song, an entirely different take on the theme in the form of another New Yorker's sexy and deep voice dealing with a difficult ex-relationship returning to and haunt her
Read moreBlondie – Dreaming
Debbie Harry. Dreaming is free, at least …
Song of the Day: Following Roy Orbison's soaring voice expressing a fragile state of lovelorn dreaming, by contrast a sassier style by the New Yorkers, with Debbie Harry seductively revealing how flirted passion is always free
Read moreSanto & Johnny – Sleep Walk
Serenely played - Santo and Johnny Farina
Song of the Day: After the surreal, psychedelic layers of Soft Machine, let's move back to gorgeously dreamy 1959 instrumental hit by the Brooklyn brothers, and one of the dreamiest melodies ever written
Read moreHenry Burr / Leonard Cohen / OMD / Arcade Fire – Songs about Joan of Arc
Who is Joan of Arc?
Song of the Day: After recent songs about the famous who died at a prematurely young age, four very contrasting numbers about the legendary French military heroine who was burned at the stake age 19 in 1431
Read moreSuede – Heroine / Daddy's Speeding
Suede in 1994
Song of the Day: After yesterday's Auteurs track mixing the premature deaths of Lenny Bruce and Rudolph Valentino, two more from the 90s Britpop pioneers about two more stars who died young – Marilyn Monroe and James Dean
Read moreBlack Box Recorder – The English Motorway System
The Facts of Life album artwork
Song of the Day: After James Carr's Dark Street and Van Morrison's Bright Road, let's now travel down the darkly humorous musical highway of the English trio, first from their second album The Facts of Life
Read moreMattiel – Count Your Blessings / Whites Of Their Eyes
Mattiel
Song of the Day: Today's entry comes from the the singer-songwriter from Atlanta, Georgia, who is a designer by day and a performer by night, and here her rock-pop-soul songs reflect this, making multiple reference to colours
Read moreLouis XIV – Finding Out True Love Is Blind
Louis XiV, featuring frontman Jason Hill (second from left)
Song of the Day: After yesterday's Arctic Monkeys after sun-down, sleazy sex-industry number, we cross the Atlantic again to go down and dirty with with the band from San Diego from their 2005 album The Best Little Secrets Are Kept
Read moreArctic Monkeys – When The Sun Goes Down
Arctic Monkeys in 2006
Song of the Day: Following the Libertines and the Strokes, this Anglo-American sequence now brings us to the young Sheffield quartet's second single from their debut album of 2006: Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Read moreThe Strokes – Hard To Explain
The Strokes
Song of the Day: After yesterday's sun-related song by the Libertines, we move to the Strokes - but the connection is less a play on words, more of a musical one, and how influential the New York band on their contemporaries with this first single from 2001
Read moreI Monster – Daydream In Blue/ Gunter Kallman Choir/ Wallace Collection – Daydream
I Monster
Song of the Day: To go with the flowering of British weather, let's dream to some electronic psychedelia by the Sheffield-based pair of Dean Holder and Jarrod Gosling from their 2003 album Neveroddoreven and its sampled origins
Read moreEartha Kitt/Nina Simone/Jeff Buckley – Lilac Wine
Eartha Kitt in Las Vegas in the 1950s
Song of the Day: One flower-based song, three great voices doing their versions, all intense, intimate and intoxicating. Let's drink all of them in, interpreting this song written by James Shelton in 1950
Read moreThe Orb – Little Fluffy Clouds
The 1990 cassette single
Song of the Day: A nimbus-rich 1990 song much loved by anyone of a certain age who went out during a particular era - the dance and club scene of the late 80s and onwards, but who are the voices and samples within it?
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