Sing-a-long-a-blog-along

Sometimes I can be a little snobby about music. It's not my fault, it's society's, but it's still a thing nonetheless. There's a bad /r/indieheads tendency in me to reflexively snark about indie pop music, the kind of radio-ready stuff that is really pushing the definition of 'indie' to its limits. This part of myself sucks, but it's there. Some of us are more enlightened, though. My friend Alice, for instance, is much more consistent in enjoying music that is fun to her without worrying whether it's sufficiently cool or not. She even likes Ed Sheeran, which makes my contrarian dickhead self shiver. Still, I'd like to be that way. It sounds nice, and liberating, and a lot more fun than being an /r/indieheads (sorry to Reddit) killjoy. Today's song of the day is one that I hope Alice will appreciate - "Cheetah Tongue" by The Wombats. I'm not a huge Wombats guy. Their name is silly, and not in the cool way, and I don't kno

Does anybody remember the short-lived BBC Three Doctor Who spin-off, Class ? Was anybody choosing this particular time in history to think about Class ? I'm assuming the answer has to be yes. It's only normal to think often of Class. It's not that Class was good, really. It was fine, at best, kind of a semi-competent US fantasy network drama riff thing with some dodgy special effects and shit villains. There is actually not a great deal to remember about it, which is why that first paragraph was all a big lie. Least of all the theme tune. Today's song of the day is Class ' theme tune, "Up All Night" by Alex Clare. What? I never claimed to have a good brain that only remembers good art. In fact, I have a broken waste disposal machine up in there which became jammed in 2009, and now everything is stuck in there. As such, I am tormented by visions of Class ' theme tune every now and then. I don't know, it's sort of catchy. I'm hoping your

I'm a bad lyric-listener on the whole. My entire life, I have been mishearing words and coming up with weird malapropisms for the lyrics of famous songs. This is because my hearing sucks and I'm bad at focusing, but I'd like to pretend that it's evidence of some kind of skill. I only hear art of true value, or something, that transcends language. Or something. I don't know, it's kinda flimsy. I bring this up because of why my song of the day, "Movement" from LCD Soundsystem's debut album, appeals to me. It is a song where a huge amount of the lyrics are pretty much indiscernible, and I love that! It's like the entire world has been lowered to my level, where all the words are mulch and the tunes are fun. Did you know that James Murphy is singing "you're history and I'm tapped" in the chorus? No? Is it because it sounds like "yourhuwuwhuwandahtayp!"? Good. That's the way that it was meant to be. It means you c

It's day two of this blog's little Project Restart thing! I'm happily putting myself on par with the  Premier League here. I assume people care as much, right? And if not, please leave me to my delusions: they're really nice delusions, I swear. Today's song of the day is a bit of a fakeout. It's the Clash's classic (Clashic?) "London Calling", except I didn't really pick it because of the Clash. Sorry, the Clash. You're valid! You wrote a very good song that I appreciate a great deal. But you're not why you're here, sorry. Why "London Calling" is actually here is a performance of it by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band from 2009 in Hyde Park. Aside from the painful, painful nostalgia of seeing thousands of concertgoers crammed into too small a space, there is just so, so much to enjoy here. Bruce and Steven Van Zandt's weird cockney accents, and how much they are enjoying doing them, for instance. This isn&

Did you miss me? No. Don't answer that. Please do not even think of answering that. If I had known that you were going to answer that I would never have asked the question. It's been bugging me a bit that I went ahead last week and announced a very straightforward and achievable plan to wind down this song blog at day 100, leaving just nine posts left, and then went away for over a week. I mean, that was just frustrating of me. I thought I could get away with it, too. Unfortunately, I am both a freakish completist and overwhelmed by guilt all the time, so my great escape only lasted eight days. So here I am, back again, pretending that nothing happened and striding forwards like a good British citizen (it's what we do!). I will get to day 100, even if day 100 ends up being March 23rd, 2024 or something, if it literally kills me as I sit at my computer. I mean, I'd prefer it be in eight days' time, but whatever it takes. So what if this hundred-day-long project

Some shocking and upsetting news for you all. I know, you're all there waiting on tenterhooks every day for whatever comes out of my ass, and I can understand the anticipation. Just prepare to be really sad, and that. The end date of this blog has been a bit of a shifting goalpost. Originally, it was indefinite, but presumably short. Briefly, in a fit of overconfidence at about day 8, it was a ridiculous 500 days. For most of the time, it's been a more achievable-sounding 365 days, covering one full year. What's so hard about doing a year, right? People have circumnavigated the world in that time. I'm making some poor jokes about music. However, as you may have noticed, my usual, extremely high (don't laugh) standard has been slipping a little lately. I have been doing the cowardly thing of "letting the music speak for itself", whatever that is supposed to mean, all too often. I have started recycling the same jokes in slightly different forms like a n

Today, I'm feeling like the well of pretending-to-be-wit has kind of run dry. In the interests of not just playing out some space-filler that future me will passionately hate, I'm just going to run the song of the day without the usual commentary. It's "last piece" from Lykke Li's 2018 album so sad so sexy . Good song, innit. Normal service is back tomorrow, he hopes.

In yet another glaring omission from the first too-many days of this blog, I have realised that I haven't even given Parquet Courts the time of day. Specifically, I haven't given their album Wide Awake  the time of day. This is a sign of moral cowardice on my part, and I am genuinely embarrassed about it. I mean, have you listened to Wide Awake ? Is it not just really, really good? I expected to be more articulate there, but 'really good' felt right. Today, I'm trying to correct some wrongs - my song of the day is "Freebird II" from Wide Awake . I could pick any tune off the album, but I don't know, I like the brazen confidence of naming your song a sequel to "Free Bird". It's like announcing your unaffiliated indie flick is the true successor to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2  (the best film of all time). Is it a true "Free Bird" sequel? Unclear. I don't know if it resolves whether the guy from "Free Bird" can c

There are two types of songs. The songs where the end is the least interesting part, and the ones where the end is the most interesting. Don't question the assertion, I'm trying on confidence. You know, the kinds of songs that putter out a minute before the end and fill the remaining time with quiet instrumentals (cowards), or something like "Paradise City", which knows that no time can be wasted in music, and dramatically speeds up in the last two minutes. Today's song of the day is another double dip, proving my shallow music taste even further - Kanye West was last seen on day 18, and he's back today with "New Slaves" from his 2013 album Yeezus . "New Slaves" is a pretty great song for the most part. You've got some angry late-period self-mythologising, some biting critiques of capitalism and racism, a nice beat - it seems pretty satisfying anyway. And then you hit the outro, and boom. Weird, discordant Auto-Tune and a complete c

It's a good time to talk about the Vietnam War. Well, is it? I'm less confident now that I've written that sentence. Is it ever a "good" time to discuss one of the most appalling atrocities of imperialism in the last century? Is it crass to even suggest that. Shit, sorry. What I was going to say before that burst of self-doubt was that Spike Lee's new joint (that's what all the cool kids say), Da 5 Bloods, came out this weekend. It is a phenomenally large and hefty movie, bulky with the weight of 50 years of history and centuries of trauma, but leaving all that unimportant stuff aside, it's also got some sick Vietnam War protest tunes on the soundtrack (the point of the whole thing, I guess). Today's song of the day is just one of those, "Time Has Come Today" by the Chambers Brothers. You know, that one. The opening bars are as good a soundtrack to the cultural image of Vietnam as anything, but - hey, the full song itself is a little

Today, I'm going to let the music speak for itself. Yeah, yeah, I can hear the groans from here. "Letting the music speak for itself" is shorthand for me being a lazy-arse who can't come up with an original premise for his blog posts. To those imaginary critics who I just made up, boo. It's hard to spin gold 365 days of the year, okay? Premium content like my usual stuff doesn't come on a daily basis. Today's song of the day is Paul Weller's "Country" from his 1993 album Wild Wood.  It's a very nice song that my dad introduced to me earlier when he was asking about this blog. If you're reading this, dad, you got your wish. I am indeed writing about the song you played for me. I'll take anything these days, to be fair. This is day 86. Readers should be grateful that I still have good music.

Earworms. Everyone's got them. That's not a medical PSA, but more of a statement of an unfortunate fact of life. Songs should, ideally, be listened to and remembered, but should also sit nicely within their brain compartments where they don't interfere with other important brain things. Sometimes, however, songs refuse to behave. These are the cursed earworms. Today's song of the day is Samm Henshaw's 2019 single "The World is Mine". As you might have guessed, it has pinballed its way around my brain like an old-timey screensaver all goddamn day. I don't know if it's a good song. I've gone beyond that point. All I know is that it has a fun beat and easy to remember lyrics, and it will not leave my head . I write this as an exorcism, or maybe to inflict it - if I have been encumbered with it, then maybe you should be too. I write this in the hope that I will only think about the song the regular amount tomorrow, and that the remaining 280 da

I always imagined that when Bruce Springsteen showed up on this blog, it'd be one of the anthemic ones. You know, a "Born to Run", a "Dancing in the Dark", maybe even "The Promised Land" if I was feeling fancy. Life is full of surprises, though, and nowhere has that been more apparent than on this blog (which has been full of surprises). Today's song of the day is "State Trooper" from Springsteen's 1982 album Nebraska , and it ain't the type of Springsteen I expected round these parts. It's haunting, edgy and ambiguous, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the struggles of being a working-class boy in New Jersey, famously the only subject of Springsteen's discography. Don't get me wrong. Weird and edgy looks good on Springsteen (because everything looks good on Springsteen). I like it when artists are surprising, even if they're probably just surprising me because of my own ignorance about their work. Wait,

I sometimes worry my taste is a bit algorithmic. I have written endlessly about sad men pondering stuff over lengthy electric guitar solos and long riffs, so it is not surprising that I've come to The War on Drugs eventually. They're a necessary text for this very specific corner of music. I wouldn't be the "pretending to have the music taste of somebody in their thirties" person I am without them. Today's song of the day is my favourite song of theirs, "An Ocean In Between the Waves" from their 2014 album Lost in the Dream . Lots of War on Drugs songs descend into what are basically really long jam sessions (that's good), but none do it like this. It really just gets down to brass tacks. Half of the song is just a long solo which gets progressively faster, and I think that's brilliant. It's actually even better than that. The War on Drugs truly know that the best accompaniment to a long guitar solo is a random exclamation every now

Moody alternative music is eternal, but there's just something about 1990s moody music. Maybe people just had more time to get really melancholic, unlike today, where working up a good head of melancholy is essentially impossible (melancholy is dead, long live latent panic). I don't know. I was alive for 9 months of that decade. Today's song of the day, Mazzy Star's "Look On Down From the Bridge" from their 1996 album Among My Swan , is proper, canonical 90s moody indie. Doesn't it just make you want to stand on a bridge overlooking a bustling motorway, languidly puffing on a cigarette and contemplating the crushing weight of your unsatisfying job in finance? It does me. It's a hell of a song that makes it onto both The Sopranos and Rick and Morty , a fact which I'm sure Mazzy Star's members constantly brag about. Very few artists have this prestigious honour. No, I'm not going to look it up.

I'm a big advocate for stupid band names. Let's Eat Grandma? Great. Collections Of Colonies Of Bees? Excellent. A memorably ridiculous band name is worth more than an album of good music, and you can quote me on that. I am thrilled, then, to introduce today's song of the day. It goes by the bland name "Don't Look Down', but the band's name is ... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead (the ellipsis is very important), and the album's name is X: The Godless Void and Other Stories. I have so many thoughts about all of this that it feels almost overwhelming. I just want to have been there during the first meeting where the band members were kicking about names, and then somebody piped up with ... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, emphasising the ellipsis. There'd be no competition. A vote would be pointless. How can you rival the towering energy of ... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead? It beats me.

It only took several years, the end of university and a global pandemic to get it going, but I've finally started The Sopranos . The golden age of television begins today, and that. I was excited for a lot of what these 86 (holy shit, that's going to be a while) episodes of television could bring, but I hadn't really thought about the theme song. TV skimps on theme songs more often than not at the moment. You're likelier to get a flashy title card than anything else, and that is a sad, sad shame. Even Breaking Bad  just had fifteen seconds of bong sounds, and that was meant to be the peak of television. Not so with The Sopranos . Today's song of the day is its theme tune, Alabama 3's "Woke Up This Morning", a synthy wee bop that is honestly far catchier and more upbeat than I expected from a dark crime show. It's nice bonuses like this that make sinking eighty-six (man, I need a life) hours of your life into a twenty-one year old show worth it,

Ah man, I was really getting ready to celebrate reaching day 80 on this. Day eighty! What a concept. Serves me right for failing to track the days. I'm stuck on boring-as-shit ol' day seventy-nine. Nobody has ever found a use for the number 79. Irrelevant number. Today's song of the day is frankly better than the shithead 79 deserves. It's "Vital Signs" from Gang of Youths' 2015 album The Positions.  For reference, Gang of Youths are an Australian rock band based in London, and I would die for them. They were my first proper gig and they have been seared onto whatever counts as a soul in my body ever since. Did I mention that I'd die for them? Like the best of Gang of Youths' music, "Vital Signs" is (a really long, (b incredibly bleak in tone yet somehow just a tiny bit optimistic and (c just keeps twisting and escalating upwards until you're sure the song has reached a final level and then it doesn't. It's not even in the

I am aware that sometimes this blog might give off a very slightly anxious energy. I think that's been the case lately in particular - of course because of Surrounding Events that have cast a shadow over frivolous things like this, but also because I've been reaching a little bit anyway to come up with new variations on the same snarky jokes. It's day 78, fatigue is a thing. Today, then, I am trying to stay a little calmer, however long that lasts. The song of the day is Chromatics' cover of Bruce Springsteen's "I'm On Fire", which takes a song that's pretty chilled out for Bruce anyway and quietens things down a couple of notches further. It's like almost twice as long as the original Springsteen version, which is nice. Sometimes slow covers feel a little artificial, forcing a song into a different shape to prove an inessential point, but "I'm On Fire" stretches nicely into Chromatics' languid take. It's not my favour

I've never really known how to do cool music. I've certainly tried to be a very individual indie kid in all that I have done, but in the awareness that it never comes across as impressive. So when I listen to Actually Cool music, it's a weird feeling. Today's song of the day is a cool song, for the record. It's "Emotional Rescue", the title track from the 1980 Rolling Stones album. Don't you feel how cool it is? I do, and it's intimidating, even coming from forty years down the line. Listening to this presents a conundrum. Does this make me cool, or am I a pretender to coolness? Can I absorb coolness by osmosis, or am I doomed to be uncool forever? Am I merely a false cool boy? All these thoughts echo through my mind, like tears in rain. I'm doing fine, thanks.

Today's song of the day is 56 years old. Fifty six! Can you imagine 56 years ago? I honestly cannot. I've lived for 21, and they've been impossibly eventful. The idea that you can go 56 years back seems genuinely unrealistic. I caught Bob Dylan's "Only a Pawn in Their Game", from his 1964 album The Times They Are A-Changin'  (you know, that song) in the brilliant James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro , which circles around the dispiriting reality that American, and Western society more largely, has been trapped in amber in so many ways in addressing its own deep-seated racism for decades and centuries. This song isn't even from the middle of that struggle, but the way in which it describes the cold-blooded murder of Black activist Medgar Evars and the institutional failure to bring justice for the crime is disturbingly familiar. It really has not changed in any way. Throw this song into 2020, and it works exactly the same (not that you

Michael Kiwanuka's voice is the best voice. I'm sorry, I will not be taking further questions. Just take one peep at any of his songs, and I hope you will see what I mean. There is a quality to it that is far beyond what my dumb words could capture. I'd been meaning to write about today's song of the day, "Love and Hate", the title track from his 2016 album for ages, but it was only hearing it in the second episode of Netflix's When They See Us (I know how late I am!) that finally nudged me to actually put it on the blog. It is frankly embarrassing that it took me 75 days to cover it, but better late than never. There's something both serene and frenetic about the song, and that's as far as my analysis is probably able to go. I like enjoying things without knowing exactly why they're good sometimes, and I think this is a pretty good example of that. I mean, I can obviously point to that voice as one of the reasons. Have you heard that voi

June. June?! When did it become June? That's proper summer! That's halfway through the year! How many times can I feign surprise at the passage at time before I understand it? (Jury's out on that last one). Here we are. Another joyous month. Look, I'm sorry for the downbeat sarcasm. 2020 has been the Chunky sketch from I Think You Should Leave , where the game show host excitably flips over multiple tiles, revealing every single time that the contestant has avoided the prize and earned a punishment. It's hard to expect new wonders from the sixth month of the year. Still, if only to remain sane, it's always worth remembering that some things in the world aren't horrible. Like my song of the day (peep that segue)! It's "Don't Change" from INXS' 1982 album Shabooh Shoobah (ah, 80s album titles). It is hard not to feel a tiny jet of precious serotonin shoot into the brain (I don't know how brain chemistry works) at this song. It is