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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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Deep breaths: Sweet Honey in the Rock
Inhale! Exhale! Sexy to smoky, exercise to sighs, plus bigger breaths from nature, this week’s playlists, compiled by breath-of-fresh-air guest Hoshino Sakura from a hurricane of nominations, will make you gasp with pleasure
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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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Stretch out in the spirit of the 80s
This could be a fine body of work. Everything from stiffness to full fluidity of exercise – bending, flexing, twisting, stretching, it’s time limber up and pick up on songs that capture corporeal movement in any context
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Benvenuti in La Taverna Cantata!
This week, it’s the full Italian job! And there’s far more to it than exploding cars – a whole queue of hooting horns, gesticulation and finest food and wine in musical form, all picked by excellente playlister philipphilip99 from a fleet of nominations
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Lady Gaga: Just put your paws up – 'cause you were born this way, baby …
Finding the ordinary in the extraordinary to the straight in the straitjacket, this week’s playlists are anything but average, as guest playlister IsabelleForshaw entertainingly reveals that normality is all a matter of perspective
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We’re normal … The Bonzos
Regular? Standard? Stereotype? Average? Typical? Natural? What does normal mean, and how might it be explored in song lyrics? From people to behaviour, families to jobs to towns, and any other context, it’s all a matter of perspective
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Right place at the right time come into focus …
Moments of realisation? From scientific to practical, physical, emotional, philosophical or spiritual, expressed in one lyrical line, one musical rush, or building slowly, and then suddenly and unexpectedly coming into focus in song
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Special siblings: Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell
Jazz to hip hop, classical, pop, folk and a whole spectrum of other music from around the world, this week guest playlister Nilpferd picks out some of the finest pairings in music where two individuals are greater together than apart
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Fragile, insecure synchronicity. Simon & Garfunkel.
What makes for a great duo and how does is that dynamic expressed? Perfect balance of sound? Unspoken understanding and harmony? Symbiosis of roles? Contrast in character? Fragility, insecurity and tension? It’s time for two’s company …
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The Go-Betweens
There’s no denying it - this is a subject that is attached to every part of our lives, private and public, and from many nominations, guest playlister AmyLee picks amazing all-encompassing selections to uncover the musical truth
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Monkey business: once wise, now denies …
Politics, climate change, racism, health or personal relationships, all this and more can can come under the umbrella of denial, and in song lyrics it’s a potent area for nuance, irony, emotion, and things that bite back
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