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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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Art of suspense … the inimitable Tim Curry from The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Descriptive, metaphorical, sexy, suspenseful, comical, funny, sensible, functional, or filthy, it’s time to rummage though your musical unmentionables, big up the smalls, fill out those bras, slip on those slips, and disc jockey up your shorts …
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You never know who will turn up … Paul Robeson meets a fan or two in Moscow in 1958
You never know who you might encounter on these playlists - lovers, angels, snake oil salesmen, spaceships, ghosts, brigands, the supernatural, the suicidal and the ecstatic - all artfully picked by guest Suzi from a week of nominations
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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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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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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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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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John, aka 9hairs9knots in a classic pose …
Pull up a chair, pour a drink and soak in this extensive farewell, filled with anecdotes, quotes and songs to John, aka 9hairs9knots, mischievous, articulate, knowledgeable, funny, warm, sensitive regular here at the Song Bar for years. Rest in peace.
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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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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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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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