Your Custom Text Here
Bas Jan
Song of the Day: “I am not a company but I keep getting these emails.” Continuing the freelance life theme after yesterday’s Toro Y Moi track, two new and witty pop songs from the trio of Serafina Steer, and now Emma Smith, and Rachel Horwood
Read more
Save your work: Toro y Moi
Song of the Day: Focusing on the difficulties of creative self-employment, this is in an engagingly funky, eccentric off-the-wall new single by the South Carolina songwriter, record producer and graphic designer from his forthcoming 2019 album Outer Peace
Read more
It’s Album Time with Todd Terje
Song of the Day: A new, fresh Monday start with a joyously upbeat electro-disco instrumental from the Norwegian songwriter, producer and DJ (aka Terje Olsen) from his 2014 studio LP, It’s Album Time
Read more
High, tender voice? Lemmy lands a few surprises in this song
Song of the Day: Continuing a week of WW1 anniversary songs, in an unusually tender song from the heavy rock band, it’s a tragic first-person narration of the Battle of the Somme where 19,000 British soldiers were killed before noon
Read more
One version of the cover The Kinks’ album Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)
Song of the Day: Next in a week of songs dedicated to the First World War Armistice centenary, a deeply sad and vivid song by Ray Davies about the fleeting life of a young soldier killed in 1916 from the 1969 album, Arthur
Read more
PJ Harvey and autoharp
Song of the Day: Continuing on the First World War Armistice Day centenary, a trio of some of the finest songs about war from the British singer and composer from her acclaimed 2011 album Let England Shake
Read more
Lest we forget …
Song of the Day: Simply a song, a piece of music and a poem to mark 100 years since Armistice Day 11 November 1918, the end of the First World War, in which there were 40 million casualties
Read more
Robert Redford and Paul Newman making their last stand in the 1969 film
Song of the Day: Today’s date, 7 November, is significant in all sorts of ways - elections, revolutions, births, deaths, but it’s the day in 1908 when two of America’s most famous outlaws were reportedly killed on the run in Bolivia
Read more
Alice Cooper waves the election banner
Song of the Day: In the wake of the most vital mid-term US elections in a generation, the 1972 rock song that is often wheeled out on these occasions, but less known is that it is a reworking of an earlier song, Reflected
Read more
From the cover of King of America (1986)
Song of the Day: A slow sizzling, smouldering heartbreak love song for 5th November, but hinting at explosive emotions from Costello’s breakaway 1986 country album, King of America
Read more
Mark E Smith and ex-wife and guitarist Brix in 1988
Song of the Day: Moving along now to the taxi ranks of Manchester and the unmistakable sound of Mark E Smith’s barking voice, one of many Fall songs in which taxis appear, in a frenetic schedule between gig, studio and pub
Read more
Harry Chapin
Song of the Day: Next in the taxi line is this wistfully beautiful 1972 song from the American singer-songwriter’s debut album, Heads & Tales, about a driver who picks up a glamorous woman who turns out to be an old flame
Read more
Dread rocker Lenny Kravitz
Song of the Day: After Arctic Monkeys taxi rank scenes in Sheffield night-life, a double header focusing on the drivers with a dismissive attitude and different attempts to hail them on either side of the pond
Read more
Waiting for a cab? Arctic Monkeys in their early days, with frontman Alex Turner, second from right
Song of the Day: After Jens Lekman’s quiet, contemplative black cab ride, a riot of vivid images and late-night chaos clambering into a taxi in Sheffield with Alex Turner and co from their 2006 debut album
Read more
Jens Lekman
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 more
Tim Buckley
Song of the Day: From one nighthawk, Tom Waits, to another American singer-songwriter - father to Jeff, and here singing about his early career when he worked as a New York cab driver, picking up a crazed customer
Read more
A scene from the New York section of Night On Earth (1991)
Song of the Day: From Bernard Herrmann’s music from Taxi Driver, let’s catch a ride with another cab film, Jim Jarmusch’s 1991 five-vignettes plot, connected by a soundtrack by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan
Read more
Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver (1976)
Song of the Day: It is hardly a stab in the dark to pick out the great American composer’s film work as the next entry in film score music, but here is an artist surely among the greatest for matching image and sound
Read more
Sweet Smell of Success (1957), starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, with a equally sharp Bernstein score
Song of the Day: More outstanding film theme music, this time with three contrasting examples from the New Yorker with a huge, award-winning repertoire, reaching deep into the American and British psyche
Read more
Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway in Chinatown (1974)
Song of the Day: Moving on from Britain’s John Barry, two pieces of work from the highly versatile US composer and conductor here showing contrasting styles that equally express the dark and disturbing
Read more