I want to hear from ALL of you.You are an AWer because, differences aside, you love music. I mean, you must be to be here.
So, post a song that you are hopelessly devoted to, that rouses you from your stupor every time, that captures your essence, that makes you the person you are.
Search your vinyl. Ransack your cassettes, Scroll through your online libraries.
Find that song!
Brian Ferry’s Slave to Love isn’t the best song in the world. but it’s a veritable slinky ear worm that slides around my brain even when I’m not listening to it, and makes me sing all my thoughts to its rhythm and melody.
Don’t get hung up on perfection. Go for your instinctive choice and let’s make the best Afterword compilation album in the world ever! Or at least fill a few idle hours with glorious sounds that resonate with our beating hearts.
Bill Caddick’s ‘The Cloud Factory’. Of the hundreds of songs in my repertoire, it is my favourite to sing. Yeah, I suppose June Tabor knows how to perform it too.
Thank you, Cat. I love June Tabor.
Hearing (what is for me) a new song by her for the first time is an exercise in hope – will it fulfil my expectation of how great she can be. As ever with her, there is sentiment and there is steel in this one, the universal and the mundane, the trite and the profound. A rollercoaster of emotions, but the second and later listens, I will know when to roll with the curves she throws out.
Wow!
I saw Bill Caddick perform this in 2011 in Shrewsbury. He told us that it was inspired by the cooling towers of the nearby Ironbridge Power Station. Sadly both Bill and the pink cooling towers are no longer with us
I once sang it at Festival on the Edge in plain sight of the sunset glowing off those beautiful cooling towers.
I miss them too thecheshirecat thanks for posting the June Tabor version.
Laura Nyro – Stoned Soul Picnic. A wonderful song.
I am getting introduced to new songs on this thread. This one breathes out the early seventies in warm waves.
I normally dont care for tunes that sample songs that I already know well and love – but I really like the Go Team’s “Everyone’s a VIP to Someone” which samples Stoned Soul Picnic along with Neil Diamond’s “Everybodys Talkin” and seems to capture that heady vibe of early seventies summers.
a song that you are hopelessly devoted to, that rouses you from your stupor every time, that captures your essence, that makes you the person you are.
Salwarpe: I’ve go it down to two, but I can’t choose between them. Can I have two?
Yes!
Well, thank you. Both of these fit the description for me: without getting too grandiloquent about it, I find both of these songs spiritually uplifting – they’ve been hitting me where I live for nearly 50 years…
And You And I by Yes
Pilgrims by Van der Graaf Generator
Knowing little of VdGG, I wikied the band and was delighted to see their second album was called “The Least We Can Do Is Wave to Each Other”.
Fitter, my dear, I fear our tastes will rarely coincide, so we can look across the great arena of the AW and wave at each other and enjoy the pleasure we each get from different music.
You might be surprised: you may not favour 1970s progressive music – but I very much enjoy Roxy Music and, of course, solo Bryan…
It was remiss of me to misname him in the OP – there was only one Brian in Roxy Music.
It’s no exaggeration to say hearing this changed my life. I’d be the first to admit TMTCH never made a killer album but Waiting For Bonaparte came close. This should be our Eurovision song.
It was this song back in 1977, and it’s still this song today. It never fails to raise my spirits and excite me, a bittersweet symphony of perfect 70s LA rock from a band now seemingly done. It’s a track that moves me every single time I hear it, and this live version recorded in Boston is as good as it gets.
What I like about that is how dynamic, how ceaseless and how enthusiastic Mick Fleetwood’s drumming is throughout that energetic marathon of a song.
So hard to choose one from the dozens. Right now it’s..
I can’t decide if that is a great song or not. The vocals are incredible. I just can’t imagine anyone doing a cover and it being any good.
Whenever I have considered the final song I would save on Desert Island Discs I come back to this. It has to be the studio version, it would have to be the rubbish sounding picture disc I have had for 4 decades or more. It’s still astonishing after all that time, and when you play it all you can do is play it again because anything else would sound feeble and hollow in comparison. What a fabulous fucking racket!
Bloomin marvellous
Thirded – I still have my old Chiswick 12”: that makes the picture frames rattle!
This. Every time. My favourite track from possibly my favourite album of all time. It’s pure joy.
I might write a very long post about this song – the full 5:50 version.
I recall Blondie now as the soundtrack to my pre=teen years (when I wasn’t listening to Quo). A perfect song, unblemished even at 9 minutes+
or in the various remixes out there.
Though, I think Atomic is even more wonderful – the middle section is awesome.
It’s kind of in the title
Um…
@Dai
@salwarpe
“Video unavailability killed the radio star”?
A Design For Life – Manic Street Preachers
This …
Only Ones – Another Girl Another Planet
Faces – Stay With Me and Slade – How Does It Feel come very close
I reckon that Another Girl Another Planet is the all-time right answer, but Wilco’s Jesus, Etc. is a very close runner up for me.
This is just so goddam goofy as to infect my ear for days. Love it!
It’s a cracker! Bit of an under-rated album.
Shakedown Street is a song that that has really grown on me over the years.
My favourite version is probably the 16 May 1981 one from Barton Hall, Cornell University in Ithaca, New York (i.e. the same venue as the most famous Dead show of all time on 8 May 1977).
I’m going to have to be another one that picks two…..
Probably my ‘go to’ song that I put on late at night when I want “just one more song’ is Steven Wilson’s “Routine”. Just a gorgeous song, a superb vocal performance from Ninet Tayeb and a sublime guitar solo from Guthrie Govan (and it’s got a great video) – what more could you ask for ?
The reason for two songs, is that whilst I am very much an album person and probably a have tastes along with the classic AW demographic, I absolutely adore the pure pop of The Communards “Don’t Leave Me This Way”. I never tire of listening to it – upbeat, great horns, great piano break….. the greatest ever pop song ?
This is, and always will be, the sound of the future.
I adore this song & when I hear it anywhere now I always think of this Bill Drummond video about the death of punk. I Feel Love is the way
I love this song & *this* stripped down version in particular (the dedication at the top is to Ian Mac of the Faces who’d just passed).
After far too much deliberation I’ve decided to choose this one. If anyone is putting a playlist together for this, the version from Live at Ronnie Scott’s is far superior to the original album version.
Nice one Sal! Once again you’ve come up with a brilliant idea for a thread.
Which has cast me into an agony of indecision. But I’m going for Adriana Calcanhotto from Brazil
I’m tempted to post Pomplemousse yet again, but I’ll settle for this. Love the power.
It’s been a few years now and I still completely love this one.
(Mountain Sound – Of Monsters and Men)
First of two.
Hayes Carll is brilliant. If you don’t know him, he’s probably in the long list of Texas accented singer songwriters with twangy guitars. His first albums were funny, irreverent, insightful, and great listens. His later ones, after he found lurve with La Moorer are more mature, but somehow less fun.
Absolutely love Hayes Carll and wouldn’t know where to start – maybe Beaumont or She left me for Jesus.
SLMFJ, available on Word Monthly CD. Beaumont was his song on Jools.
I’d also go Magic Kid.
Second of two. I found them after after I found Ballboy, which might not be the best recommendation. This is THE song by them. It’s also our song – me and my son. I still have fond memories of him, in his North Carolina/West Virginia accent, trying to do the Scottish here.
Oh yes. I’d forgotten our shared love of We Were Promised Jetpacks. Wasn’t someone on the blog a parent of a band member?
Spiritual eh! This one. I suspect Im not the only one here.
Indeed you are not.
Absolutely not. Although if forced to choose just one track from Apple Venus, it would be Green Man.
Oops made a cat’s arse of that. Pick something for me. Something annoying like me.
Post it again PS. My mother adored that song too and she wasnt even Welsh (although you could see Wales almost from my home town).
If you insist. Unexpectedly it isn’t anything from Ray Charles although it could well have been but no it’s got to be this. I remember this from a very young age. My Mam used to sing this and many other Welsh songs as she went about her day. She was blessed with a beautiful voice and had won many prizes for her singing as a young girl growing up in the Rhondda.
One more time…
If I’m allowed a second choice, then I’ll go with the one the OP immediately suggested to me.
“I’ll go with the one the OP immediately suggested to me”
Shouldn’t it have been yer first choice, then?
I thought “too obvious”, but I was wrong of course. Nothing wrong with obvious.
As must be clear from my own choices further upthread, I am no stranger to “the bleedin’ obvious”!
Well I’ve obviously got out of the wrong side of the bed because the song that I can’t get out of my head just now is this one:
Every time I hear this song it floors me. It’s incredible
It could be Into The Mystic. But instead it’s It’s Only Mystery off the Subway soundtrack. Written by Eric Serra, the young bass player in this clip. Sung by the silken-voiced Arthur Simms, now an artist:
https://arthursimms.com/home.html
The album version is much better than the clip, but I have to post the clip, now that I’ve written that Eric Serra (also composer of the brilliant soundtrack to The Big Blue) is “the young bass player in this clip“. There’s no going back in life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VsPabewn_g
Love that film – style over substance, but beautiful style – I lived in Brussels at the time of its release, and the metro there is similar to that in Paris – big, grubby, anonymous, similar mid 20th century design and of course, full of skaters, body-building welders and jazz funk musicians. This version, without the band visible, is better.
Talk Talk – April 5th.
I was late coming to The Colour Of Spring. A cheap copy from Fopp didn’t really grab me, until fairly recently, when this track leapt out..
This track is not widely known, but I’ve probably listened to it everyday since I first heard it in March 2016*. It’s one that I can finish & then put straight back on over & over.
I don’t know why it has me so hooked, but it caresses that part of my brain that makes me fall in love with music. The production, the lyrics, the melody – it all works perfectly for me. Best listened to through some great headphones to appreciate fully.
The Blaze – Virile
* about 2565 times seems right. I might go a week or so without listening, but then can happily have it on repeat for an hour or so whilst i’m working.
LOVE The Blaze. Have listened to this one too many times to count since it came out in 2020. It’s beautiful.
The new album is out today & I am very excited. It will get a proper spin tonight but the first track lullaby is wonderful.
Willin’ does it for me. I was at a Little Feat show in London 20-something years ago and – as they did every night – they dedicated this song to its writer, Lowell George. I’m not one to sing at gigs but I found myself singing along and choking up with emotion. Willin’ is a song that reminds me of close friends and times we had in the 70s and 80s. I drove across France in 1981 with a portable cassette player and two tapes, one of which was Electrif Lycanthrope.
Willin’s a good choice but always preferred Long Distance Love, myself.
Agreed.
I was going to choose one of those two. Probably Willin’ edges it for me. But both are basically perfect. The WFC one.
It’s this one. It’s always this one.
Magic – this, and Dolphins…either Tim B or Fred N.
This playlist is shaping up nicely…
No XTC unfortunately.
It’s a sad day, It’s my funeral. The church is packed, women are quietly sobbing, men close their eyes, steadfastly refusing to break down completely.
The service begins. Most people haven’t heard the opening music. Nice sweet tune, they think. Then wallop! Soon there’s dancing in the aisles, laughter abounds. Good old Lodestone.
Nice choice, Lodey. And probably better than having “Plaistow Patricia” blasting out at one’s funeral….
I’d happily ‘mourn your decline with some Thunderbird Wine & a black handkerchief’ but hopefully not for many, many years.
Great choice.
Well, initially I’d have put Sandy’s ‘Who Knows Where The Time Goes’ here as the one. For me, it ticks all the boxes you mention. Close behind would be Elton’s ‘Tiny Dancer’, which always makes me sing out like the band on the bus in Almost Famous. But in the spirit of maybe choosing something a little less obviously and universally loved, I’ll plump for this gem, which gets me everytime I hear it.
That album man. Round Here. Blue Buildings. Mr jones. Omaha. Just perfect
Some Ashford and Simpson genius at work. Three years after writing/producing a soul perfection chart hit for Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell you dismantle the song and rebuild it into a symphonic gospel masterpiece for Diana Ross with the Funk Brothers and Detroit Symphony Orchestra in tow.
Even now – all these years later – it still gets to me and reduced to me to a gibbering wreck when we saw her perform it live less than a mile from our home last summer. Almost but not quite as good as when we saw Ashford and Simpson do a “Marvin and Tammi” version live some years ago.
It’s a song that ebbs and flows before the ecstatic rush from 4.30 – here in an alternative version with James Jamerson’s bass playing higher in the mix.
XTC Generals and Majors puts me in a good mood whenever I hear it.
Completely agree. The best song from their best album.
This song starts low and grumpy and then moves into a slightly less grumpy and moderately jaunty. Much like myself most days.
The National I haven’t ‘got’ yet. I like contralto and baritone voices, but they seem to go beyond Leonard Cohen, Morphine and Swans to the deepest, most guttural places. In the same way that 33rpm is slower as well as lower than 45rpm, I guess they have a sound that takes longer to get to know. I can hear their appeal though.
This chaotic but brilliant track by The Flames, a South African group from the 1960s, never fails to lift my spirits. The drummer here was Ricky Fatar and the singer Blondie Chapman, both of whom later joined the Beach Boys.
The great thing about music is that it never stops throwing up new contenders. I have adored this song since it came out in 2017
But if I take the brief and think of a song that has sustained me over the best part of 50 years, and which I never tire of, then it would have to be this one. Predictable, moi?
Very uplifting and not a word uttered. .
Then there’s this.
Or maybe this
There’s a few mentioned above that could easily have been my choice (Nick Lowe/Wilco/Grace Jones) but this came to mind as well as many others so I’ll add this to the list. The actual song starts at 1.37 but there’s some background before it starts…..
https://vimeo.com/1978876?embedded=true&source=video_title&owner=368538 better quality version.
It would probably have to be cheery old Cathal.
Microdisney: Singers Hampstead Home.
This would be mine.
Great tune. I hope you don’t mind me adding this version…..
That Lord Echo sounds like an interesting character, Not every day we have a Kiwi DJ on the AW. Entertaining video clip.
Let’s have another tune from him.
I’d like to hear him live. He was due to support Fat Freddy a while back but it didn’t happen. Hopefully he’ll get back someday.
As a small child, I loved the girl groups of the early sixties and, of course, The Beatles. My mum’s favourite is I Heard It Through The Grapevine. My dad’s was The Only Living Boy In New York. My early teens were dominated by the Glam of T.Rex, Bowie and Roxy Music. However, it’s grandma’s choice that gets me every time. It’s a song that clutches at my throat, pricks my eyes and raises the hairs on my neck. It is so powerful, it survives every version, however crass. The best known recording is by a trumpeter not a singer.
It retains its emotional impact even when suffocated with tons of sugar.
I once sang this at karaoke night on a French campsite with Madame la Comtesse. That was the best version ever.
I bet it was!
Did she hold you close?
Yes, or so it seemed through my rose-coloured glasses anyway…
If we can two, can I have this as my second?
The Trashcan Sinatras’ Weightlifting – balm for the soul. The harmonies in the chorus are sublime, to me at least.
Nice…
As going with Willin’ has gone, this comes to mind. I loved it from the moment I heard it and still do. Just a perfect single which vividly brings back the late summer of 1976 when my life changed for the better (see posts passim).
A completely top choice.
Back in 1993 me and my best mate were driving back into San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge after a week doing a tour of California/Nevada back to a Uni friend who was living there.
He was driving and this came on the radio.
I had my feet on the dashboard and air guitared my heart out we entered the city.
I was 27…happy days!
The discotheque I used to go to when I lived on Corfu always used to conclude the evening with the Grace Jones version.
Slinky, sensual, passionate, bittersweet: it was a perfect way to finish a party.
Piaf’s songs can be very invigorating! Here’ s one sung by the baddie in Madagascar 3.
Having read the OP. this song came straight into my head soI’ll go with this
The Waterboys Church Not Made With Hands
A truly joyous life invigorating song!
Obviously impossible to choose one, but this was my first thought.
Laura Gibson – Louis
For the last while, it’s been this.
Horslips – Trouble with a Capital T
This is close enough
Today’s balm for the soul.
Its 1993. I’m 27 again. If I had known Picasso I would have bought myself a grey guitar and play.
For a moment back then, I wanted to be Bob Dylan.
I’ve been connected to this group ever since. Its irrational, its love, its Counting Crows. I’ve had 3 wives and several girlfriends since then. The Crows never leave me.
Great song. I played that first CC album the other day – still sounds great. I particularly like “Round here”. Back then I had a new girlfriend in 93…married in 97 and still here…I remember one of our first holidays away was a week in Normandy with some friends and we played that album to death. That one and Sheryl Crow, “Tuesday night music club”. Golden days.
Yonks ago, I started a collection of The Song(s) under the general title ‘Coma Rock’.
The premise, as you might surmise, literally being, should I somehow be cast into a deep impenetrable coma, then playing these songs directly into my ears may be the best chance to summon me back from the depths… A theory mercifully untested.
As to The One Song to Rule Them All…
Pink Fairies – Do it (Live Glastonbury 1971)
“Do it, ya mothers”
This one. The 12 inch version. Strings, opera singers and a jet engine – fabulous!
I’ve mentioned it here before. When I first lived in London in 1987, with three other young Irish people finding our way in a new city, my roommate was night receptionist in Sarm West studio where this was recorded. He was in the habit of coming home with 20 minute megamixes he made of the latest tracks that producers Horn. Lipson or Mendelsohn were working on. He was in the habit of waking me and the girls up in the middle of the night by jumping on our beds until we agreed to join him for a dance in the sitting room. He’d have a different mix every night. It was exhausting but really enjoyable. He was a very hard working young man and working in this playground and learning from some wonderful producers led to his becoming a successful recording engineer – winning actual Grammies in due course. This track takes me back to those happy days more than any other.
A week after I started this thread, and I now have a whole collection of songs to listen to.
The (relatively) fast-paced nature of the florum/bog and my life means I haven’t been able to respond appropriately to more than the first few that appeared. However, it’s been a treat for me to read your autobiographical notes, as well as listen to them (at a more leisurely pace).
Thank you to everyone who posted!
What a treat this thread has been! Thanks Sal! You know how to ask the right questions.
In memory of Simon Emmerson, here’s a gorgeous track from his old band: Working Week. From their superb debut album, Working Nights.
The great Juliet Roberts singing there.
Still around and still in great voice.