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The tide has brought in John Cooper Clarke …
Highs and lows to ebbs and flows, literal, littoral and metaphorical, specific locations, mudflats and estuaries, wildlife, mudlarking, shorelines and coasts, this week it’s all about the movement of water in and out, and what that is all about
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Blue tales? The magnificent Millie Jackson will always find out …
Saucy musical hall to broken-hearted blues to soaring heart-wrenching soul, guest magicman reveals all the ins and outs of secret liaisons, setting all affairs in order with three supreme playlists to capture the huge response by readers
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Don’t kid yourself. Secret necking …
Cheatin’ hearts to stray cats, liars and game players, this week it’s all about the drama, dalliances, the deceit, the sexy secrecy and risk, the partial or unfolding perspectives, repression, sacrifice, romance or the full tragic, explosive reveal
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Brief Encounter …
Songs that capture that moment of a surprise encounter, wherever it is, doorstep or elsewhere, and wherever it might lead – to romance, tragedy, comedy, death, or more, perhaps profoundly life-changing, or brief, and fleeting
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Elvis. Introduced a whole new language of hip …
Involuntary or practised, revealing or hidden, this week from waving to winking, leaning the lying, aggression and domination to love and tenderness, let’s look out for songs that express these gestures in titles or lyrics
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Flesh out the music? Things are getting extra mouthy …
Downright scary, but also popular, are they society’s ills eating itself, or its ills eating society? Spanning the globe, with tasty flavours and takes from the UK to the US, Latin countries, Japan and the Caribbean, guest playlister Marco den Ouden takes a brilliantly big bite
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Vaccine? The latest scramble for gig tickets is getting a little out of hand …
This may well be a subject with bite. Can you put some flesh on it, or strip back to the bone? Zombies, mummys or other horror-film types who are reanimated and have single-minded hunger should have a strong musical appetite
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It’s our Fifth Birthday. Take a slice …
Five years! To celebrate, this special topic is both literal and metaphorical, the mechanism that makes us click, capturing the magic of the coin-operated machine that expresses our bar-based love of music in song choices
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Robert Wyatt is back
Going back for good reasons or bad, heartbreak or sheer habit, by nature or nature, emotional or physical places. Guest guru nosuchzone also returns with perfectly playful and poetic selections that go through all the levels
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The march of progress …
There are different perspectives of looking at the two-steps-forward, one-step-back dance of history. Cul-de-sacs to cowardly reverses, let’s explore songs where going backwards in life can be good, bad, or a mixture
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Billy Mackenzie: a life on the edge
From a thin razor to wide borders on the fringes of the world, from mental thresholds to frenzied fault lines, all inspired by many nominations on last week’s topic guest playlister Maki takes the topic to the musical cutting edge
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Norway’s popular Pulpit Rock or Preikestolen
Actual or metaphorical, from windows to riverbanks, doorways to cliffs, to mental or physical extreme places, this week let’s go to a variety of precipices, stare into the abyss, but also find astonishing new perspectives in song
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Blow by blow: Greek god of the wind Aeolus
It's time to catch a breather. Singers or instrumentalists, acoustic sounds or artificial effects, inhaling or exhaling, this week it's all about the sounds, involuntary or otherwise, of air passing before, after or or sometimes during notes
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Portrait of Laurence Sterne by Joshua Reynolds, 1760. Sterne’s revolutionarily divergent meta-novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, became a huge influence on great 20th century novelists from James Joyce to Italo Calvino and Thomas Pynchon
In the spirit of Laurence Sterne’s wonderfully original novel, and inspired by a hive mind of nominations, guest guru Uncleben embarks on a marvellous meandering journey of deliberate divergence to explore a self-referential mirror-hall of lyrical meta
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Getting right into each other: ABBA
Songs about themselves. Does this sound loopy? You’re right. It’s all about the self-referential to any aspect of a songs’s own music, structure, instruments, format, lyrics and more. Droste effect? Mirroring? It’s all about the song
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And this bird must sing …
Hope, fear, dreams, resolutions, giving the finger to 2020, but a welcome thumbs up to 2021? However you feel about this new chapter in the calendar of our lives, it’s time to express it in the form of song suggestions
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Get down, Soul Train style, to the likes of TSOP and a whole lot more, and dance the 2020 blues away …
Let the music do the talking! This lyric-free set of lists, inspired by nominations from last week and picked by our dance maestro magicman, steps niftily across genres, leaves no muscle untouched, and will help dance those 2020 blues away
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From A to … Zaouli. The traditional dance of the Guro people of central Ivory Coast
No lyrics, all music and floor-filling movement. From formal to spontaneous styles, afrobeat to acid house, and anything in history all the way to zaouli, Zwiefacher, zydeco and zouk-Lambada, the musical dancefloor is all yours …
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Lacy days … a band of knots
Tied up, tied down, in difficulty, for practicality or pleasure, dreadlocks to complex knots, this week’s guest Marco den Ouden has untangled nominations to knit together two tremendous playlists to which any listener will feel attached
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Vitruvian Man by Leonardo Da Vinci
‘The heart’s a muscle. I pull it constantly’. Stretching not only the body, but also the mind and musical boundaries, these week’s playlists, expertly exercised by guest TatankaYotanka, help find parts we didn’t even know we had
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