Day 52 (May 10): Solomon Burke - Flesh and Blood (Friends Week!)

It's been a long road (of seven days). Empires have risen and fallen. Something happened to the UK lockdown, though it's unclear precisely what. Through it all, Friends Week has survived. It involved some minor cheats, and a very large helping of latent social anxiety at asking people to do stuff, but hey, we made it. It's been a sort-of success, and in this town, that's a big success!

The final friend (sorry, she probably didn't sign up for that title) to pick a song this week is Imy. She is a friend from the real world, which means I had to do the thing of accosting her about a blog she had never heard of and beg her for a song, like a polite musical mugger. Fortunately, she complied, and gave me her musical wallet, or something.

The song she picked is Solomon Burke's "Flesh and Blood", from his 2002 album Don't Give Up on Me. Honestly, on hearing the choice, my mind instantly went to indie softboy territory, so it was a complete surprise that this is actually a meandering six-minute bluesy tune from a guy who doubles up as a preacher. It's a good surprise! I like having my expectations subverted, which is why I enjoyed the final season of Game of Thrones so much.

This is frankly a far better and cooler tune than the indie softboy version I conjured in my head would have been. Just look at that album cover! What a cool dude, whose pointing finger freaks me out a tiny bit. It is also a pretty good advertisement for forcing myself to listen to other people's tastes in music for a week. See, we got to the point of Friends Week eventually. It only took the whole week.

Tomorrow, we're back to the tyranny of me picking songs. I enjoyed this break from the burden of choice, but I'm looking forward to picking seven identical indie songs in a row again.