New playlist, songs and bits of songs

I made myself a big new playlist, having realised I'd been listening to quite a lot of the same stuff when out and about for the last year or two. I took some care over it, digging into lots of existing playlists and picking out songs that I'd liked at the time but had gone off my radar, just trying to avoid all my completely obvious favourites, while also wanting to make sure it was mainly stuff I really did like, across a good range of genres and eras. But, equally, there's no particular order or meaning to it after a while. When a song came to mind, I added it, so it's quite unwieldy.

But I'm pretty happy with it. I'll share a link to the whole thing at the bottom, but thought I'd write a sentence or two about certain songs, and certain bits in certain songs, which I particularly like.

And Your Bird Can Sing - The Beatles. The bit halfway through which goes "Tell me that you've heard every sound there is ..." Just, halfway through an album, a non-single, they decided to make that incredible noise together. They didn't have to. It's funny, I've been looking this (mainly Lennon) song up and he was a bit sniffy about it, saying it was basically a polished turd - just so funny that, with their double guitars and glorious harmonies, McCartney and Harrison turned a song of his which he thought merely ok into something magical and he couldn't help but be annoyed about it.

Still Life - Suede. The apotheosis of doomed Suede grandeur. Every album should contains a song that attempts to be this grand. I've taken to starting it quiet and then turning the volume up high just as it builds to the big chorus 2.30mins in. Bit of fun. Anderson now sings it in concert with just an acoustic accompaniment and without a mic, which, in its way, is just as grandiose and ambitious as the massive string section on the album.

Fantasy - Earth, Wind and Fire This is one of those songs that was around in my head for years before I first properly heard it and knew what it was. I still love it so much - the melody and the sound and the vocals. It sounds like something from a psychedelic musical, as much as a disco/funk track. Like a lot of songs I love, it leaves you waiting a long time for the full glory. Philip Bailey is an incredible singer.

Some Jingle Jangle Morning (When I'm Straight) - Mary Lou Lord I first heard this on a compilation of lo-fi 80s British indie, where it stood out in that a) it's from the 90s, and b) she's American. It's also a great song. There are two versions - one (I guess the one I first heard) which is very lo-fi from 1993, and then rerecorded with more alt-rock sheen in 1998. Her name, and maybe the title, make you think it will be a bit country, but not really. It's classic scuzzy/grungy melodic indie - catchy, pretty, but also very sad, about lost love and addiction. The chorus references Dylan and Guns n'Roses, and I literally only found out today that the song is a lament for the singer's former relationship with a little feller you might have heard of called Kurt Cobain. So I guess the 98 version has a different level of sadness to the 93 version. Anyway, it's a beauty of a song.

Heat Wave - Martha and the Vandellas I've given it some thought, maybe a lifetime's thought, and I just think the "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah" bit in Heat Wave is the most joyful thing in the history of pop music.

So Sorry - Feist I saw Feist supporting Ed Harcourt in the early 2000s in some properly tiny venue - basically the size of a large living room, with a barely raised stage, and I remember being sat, with my feet tucked in so as not to kick the artists, to the side of the stage, literally about a metre from Feist, who was tiny, and not at all well known. She became pretty well known a few years later as her song was used in an Apple advert, and gradually she has become one of my favourites. There's a bit at the start of the second verse here where the spare vocal is suddenly backed by a humming accompaniment and she varies the vocal melody slightly, which is really lovely, just a moment to melt into the music.

Lawyers, Guns and Money - Warren Zevon I usually resist the calls that tell you that cult favourites like John Prine, Townes van Zandt and Warren Zevon are the USA's actual greatest songwriters - I'd been quite indifferent to Zevon, but I love this. It's got quite a bombastic intro and has a superb opening couplet - "I went home with a waitress the way I always do / How was I to know she was with the Russians, too?" Needless to say, the people eg Bob Dylan who tell you these kind of guys are good at writing songs are right.

Chandelier - Sia It's an incredible piece of singing, Chandelier. It makes you think "Why aren't there more pop songs like this?" but the answer is fairly simple, of course - there are only so many pop stars who can sing (and write) like Sia, and once she's done this once and had a hit with it, she can't really do the same thing again (rather like I sometime ask why there aren't more Wilco songs like Impossible Germany). 

St Dominic's Preview - Van Morrison I think there is the biggest gap, with Van Morrison, of anyone, between the persona he presents to the world and the music he has created. Or rather, some of the music he has created. Perhaps that's a visual thing too. The fact he's always looked, not just talked, like a curmudgeonly uncle. So, sure, that fits with the basic, tight, blues and jazz he does, but some, a lot, of his greatest songs, like St Dominic's Preview, have so much vision, and joy, and wonder, so many words and thoughts and ideas, fly so far above the world, it really does feel impossible to reconcile.

I'll Take You There - The Staple Singers I mainly think of Mavis as a modern grandee, a gospel/soul/protest survivor beloved of everyone from Tweedy to Run the Jewels, Gorillaz and Waxahatchee, making all kinds of songs her own. And clearly also just one of the nicest, best people to have ever lived. But also, in the 70s, the Staple Singers had massive hits. I'll Take You There was a US Number 1, (as was Let's Do It Again). It borrowed the intro from Liquidator and used the Stax house band, but it's really all about Mavis Staples - one of the absolute best voices, hardly diminished even now.

Alfie - Dionne Warwick Funny song, Alfie. I do like it. Interestingly, most people involved in the creation of it didn't love it that much, or rather didn't love having to do it. The film needed a song - Bacharach and David didn't really know what to do with the title, until they watched a draft of the film. Cilla Black, who sang it for the UK, didn't really like the idea of singing the name Alfie so much either. Anyway, there are multiple covers - the Cher and Dionne Warwick versions are well-known, but the glaring omissions are the two people who should have sung it, Sandie Shaw and/or Dusty Springfield. I don't know why Dusty Springfield didn't sing it, but Sandie Shaw was offered it first and turned it down. Now, that is a damn shame. Still, it's an odd song but a great effort by Bacharach and David to make it work. It's the Dionne Warwick version I've always listened to, and she always sings great, but, still, it's not quite right ... anyway, the reason it's come back to my mind in the last year or so is because my cousin's dog is called Alfie (apparently one of the reasons Sandie Shaw didn't want to sing it was because she thought Alfie sounded like a dog's name!) and he's a lovely dog but has a bit of a bark when startled and when he does, I inevitably mutter "what's it all about, Alfie?"

Kids in America - Kim Wilde It's such a brilliant song, Kids in America, almost unfathomably good. It's got so many bits to it. I always loved the slightly unexpected male backing vocals (which i think is her brother Ricky who wrote the song with her dad Marty). One of the best singles of the 80s.

American Girls - Harry Styles A few things about Harry Styles - he can do a sub-3 hour marathon. That's no joke. He's got a seriously weird transatlantic accent now, but, funnily enough, he always had quite a weird accent, quite hard to place, a product of different English places. He kind of looks old now. Not in a bad way, but most 32 year old pop idols still try to look 22, but he looks happy to look 32, or even 37. This is a great single, about his fifth bona fide great single. 

Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard - Paul Simon I quite like this little clip of https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AaaPDD0padE Paul Simon talking about how it's difficult to write story-based songs to electronic dance music, but that his music has a strong rhythmic feeling which people can dance to if they want. It reminded me that the first dance at our wedding was to Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard. Now, this was a joke. I said to Julio, well, we're getting married at a school, let's have Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard, and she said ok, and we listened to it together, and she, who knows about dancing and rhythm, said, well, ok, that's a pretty complex rhythm, it's not going to be easy to dance to, but we'll give it a go, and she taught me a little dance we could do, but needless to say, it was entirely beyond me so I jumped up and down a bit and looked embarrassed, and of course no one got the joke. Anyway, I love Me and Julio ... it's a super-fun song with strong rhythmic content, but I'm better off listening to it than dancing to it.

Maybe the People Would Be The Times or Between Clark and Hilldale - Love Always one of my favourite song titles, and always one of my favourite songs from Forever Changes. Weird how this kind of mainstay of "classic albums" has kind of faded away. Love were kind of a massive deal in the 90s and 2000s, it felt like they influenced lots of the music I loved. But now? Not really. Modern music is influenced by Take on Me and Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls.

Jenny Was a Friend of Mine - Killers Weird how, within a handful of listens of Hot Fuss and liking at least four of the songs, I decided I thought the Killers were essentially throwaway rubbish and haven't liked anything by them since. Bit unfair really. Why did I judge them by a harsher standard than other bands? (I guess cos of that infernal "i've got soul but i'm not a soldier" bit) Still, intro to this is the best thing they ever did, really.

My Brave Face - Paul McCartney Just, nothing could sound more like a Paul McCartney song co-written with Elvis Costello.

So, here's the whole, 300+ playlist, which is called "2026 is moving" - more hits than misses, I think https://music.apple.com/gb/playlist/2026-is-moving/pl.u-JPVaJCjqxpe

I may even do a part 2 of this type of blog, as there are a lot of interesting songs on the list I could write a couple of sentences about ...

The American bands

This week saw the release of the 12th Foo Fighters studio album, which is the 12th Foo Fighters studio album I won't listen to and whose presence I will slightly resent. 

I'm not going to specifically slag off the Foo Fighters as there are plenty of musical acts I myself like which are extremely mundane, but it just got me thinking about the American bands - the big American rock bands, as in, whichever US guitar bands might have headlined a biggish UK festival in the last, say, 30 years.

Let's say post-grunge, so I'm not talking about Nirvana. I'm also not talking about Bon Jovi, who really, perhaps with the exception of Guns n' Roses, exist in their own space - so mainstream that, in some sense, they're not mainstream anymore. I'll say about the Jove, I'm probably fonder of more of their songs than most of the bands I'm going to talk about, combined.

I suppose I'm not really talking about "metal" either, which is just its own thing, though will include some bands which are in and around being metal.

So, who do I mean? I mean

Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Blink-182, Linkin Park, The Killers, Rage Against the Machine, Limp Bizkit, Pearl Jam, Metallica, Smashing Pumpkins, Kings of Leon, Slipknot, Nine Inch Nails, Black Crowes, Counting Crows, and let's say, for good measure, The Offspring, My Chemical Romance Weezer, Good Charlotte, Dave Matthews Band, Paramore (a later vintage, so a bit different) and, I'm even going to say it, Queen of the Stone Age (though I made more of an effort to like them, and do, a bit) ...

but I mainly mean the ones at the top of the list, and actually I'm not going to slag them off at all. It's just funny how I really never got into these bands, and that I kind of lump them all together even though they sound pretty different. I mean, I guess they do. I've actually not sat through more than two full albums by the whole list combined.

But what's funny is that pretty much all of them have one song I've grudgingly gone "yeah, fine, that's a bit of fun" and it's usually the obvious song, the absolute monster smash, or near enough, but I've never had the slightest desire to investigate beyond that. Maybe it's just my lingering Britpoppery. I'm still a Blur/Jam little Englander.

But, of course, a lot of my favourite bands in the world are, or have been, the tier of American guitar band, of the same era,  a bit below this - Wilco, The Walkmen, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Shins, Decemberists, Rilo Kiley, Waxahatchee, The National, Iron and Wine, Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes, Mercury Rev, Animal Collective, LCD Soundsystem etc etc.

so I can't be so anti-America per se.

I guess there are two main bands who slip through the cracks - REM (and actually it took me a pretty long time to finally admit I liked REM) and The Strokes, who are, as I've long maintained, a small band who got bigger than they should have, and are great on record, but not good to a large crowd live.

Oh, and the Pixies, who I once saw headlining Benicassim and were immense, but, again, think they're a bit different. And The White Stripes (so, you know, a few sort-of exceptions).

Anyway, someone who explains actual music well, and someone who explains actual cultural differences well, could and would explain this. I feel like I do have the explanations fairly clear, in an unspoken way, in my head, about why those are not actually very very good bands, sorry, but am quite sure, if I attempt it, I will sound like an arsehole, even to myself. So I'll leave it.

Arts

Herein I compare myself to Vincent van Gogh. Or rather I compare everyone to Vincent van Gogh. I think about Vincent van Gogh and I think about creating things and its reward.

I walked around the Van Gogh Museum last week, and thought to myself "God damn, he did a lot of paintings, Vincent van Gogh". If there's anywhere you're going to think that, it's the large museum dedicated to the work of Vincent van Gogh. He really did though. I've seen a lot of his paintings elsewhere and yet here were floors and floors of the things.

That guy loved painting.

Didn't he? 

I think, until this week, I'd slightly misunderstood the legend of van Gogh only selling one painting in his lifetime. Firstly, in thinking it true. It's not really true. There's only one painting he sold in his lifetime that all the details are known about (The Red Vineyard). But he definitely did sell other paintings. And he definitely swapped paintings with other artists, which is the same thing, really, especially if those artists are Gauguin and whoever else.

But I think I'd misunderstood whether van Gogh had any inkling, during his lifetime, that he was good and that people thought he was good. I think I thought the remarkable thing was that he fiercely devoted his life to painting without any but the smallest notion that he had any great gift for it and that other people thought so. But that's not true. He clearly was made aware that many people thought he was good, from family members to teachers and fellow artists including Monet.

But, even so, for not selling many paintings, that guy did a lot of paintings.

Some of them are really good. You should check them out.

However conscious he was of his own genius, van Gogh fulfils the myth for any unsuccessful creator that they too might be a misunderstood maestro whose work will be venerated beyond the grave.

This famous, rather lovely, scene from Doctor Who https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubTJI_UphPk garlands that myth.

Could happen to any of us, right? We could travel through time, meet Bill Nighy, and discover that we're the most beloved artist in the history of the world, or there and thereabouts? Find out that even the little things that probably only took us a few hours are stared at with wonder and awe and would probably cost a buyer several million quid?

Glad it all turned out good for VVG and that la tristesse didn't durere, hope that happens to me ...

It's good to create things. But, in all seriousness, kids, it's also good not to be tortured by creating things.

The creative thing I mainly do is write poems. I started doing it when I was, I think, 17, and although I may at times have laboured in the vineyard of delusion, I haven't for a long time (he said, deludedly).

Writing the kind of poems I write to the average standard I write them feels quite close to the Olympian ideal of art for art's sake. That's where Van Gogh comes in, or rather doesn't. As I was walking around the Van Gogh Museum, I did think "he just did all this because he felt compelled to and he loved to, that's amazing" but, in most artistic endeavours, where there is a potential reward which includes public acclaim, respect of one's peers, approval, and riches, and you know, in some sense, based on your own feelings and things that other people have told you, that those things are truly within your grasp ... if only ... that must be tortuous. Van Gogh had that problem. Nick Drake had that problem. Lots of people, whether accurately, or through delusion, have that problem. There is, nearly always, something to do it for other than its very self.

I don't have that problem, or, at least, I think, I have it, as regards my poems, to a pleasingly small extent. There is almost no possibility of any tangible effect on the world from my poems. This isn't some false modesty. I wouldn't write them if I thought they were, in and of them themselves, always terrible and without any merit.

So, there are several reasons I can be so relaxed and pessimistic. Firstly ... poems, right? Who reads poems? Or rather, who makes money from poems? A very small number of people, and often they are writing poems I have no aspiration or capability of writing. Next, who is my voice for? Almost nobody. People a bit like me. There really are not many people a bit like me, I have discovered. And especially not reading poetry. Next, how would I go about gaining the smallest amount of acclaim for my poems if they deserved it? By doing things that are completely beyond me. Putting myself out there, selling myself etc. Next, I do other work, which, as luck would have it, is creative work that is experienced by a lot of people. That specific itch is scratched (as I'll get to, that work does not scratch all itches.

Why do I write poems then? Because I want to write a good poem. Or maybe five, or maybe ten. I want to know it's good. But also, I just want to create things. And at times, sure, it has been to get something out of me, to bear my soul. And, early on, sure, I thought it might lead somewhere, that there was a purpose to it.

But now, it really is, mainly, because I want to write a good poem.

There remains something profound and beautiful in the fact that when the mood takes me to create a poem and the blank page is in front of me, there is the possibility that it will become the most perfect, beloved work of art ever created. That possibility survives even the first few words. I mean, you could even say it survives until the writer has completed the editing process, but we know that's pushing it. But still, that blank page is an incredible space.

I still don't think I've written a good poem - one which I would confidently place in front of any group of people and say "See, this is a good poem". That's pretty interesting to me, because I'm fairly good at my job, and my actual job does actually have more similarities to writing poems than most jobs have, so it is a good opportunity for self-examination when I consider why I'm good - in a truly effective, recognised way - at the one and not the other.

Both things involve words, patterns of words, order and reorder, set structures, misdirection, opacity turning to clarity (or not), keeping to rules and learning where it works to break rules. Some people, including me, occasionally, find some OC questions beautiful. When I've written one that's gone well, I have had the satisfaction of knowing that 2.5 million people will see it and think it good, some of them will specifically think "wow, those clever people who write the questions for this clever and entertaining show". And I'm good at that, and prolific. I've got 100s and 100s of those.

This is good for me, but I'd much rather write one good poem. Still, I've come to enjoy that writing poems is a seemingly unwinnable battle against my limitations. As a quiz writer, I don't have that many limitations. I definitely have some. I have weak subjects, I don't type as fast as some people, I'm not as natural at creating high quality puzzles as some people, but I know a lot of stuff across a fairly wide range of subjects, my mind moves fluently between topics, I know how to structure a question, without being mega-funny I understand pretty well how low-level comic structure works, I know better than most, through years of experience, what different demographics do and don't know, and I can work pretty hard when I need to.

Some of those skills are quite useful in writing poems, but some of them aren't. I read poems by other people and, look, sometimes there are successful and well-liked poems which I don't think are that great, both from the past and present, but when I read a good one, particularly a good modern one, I do say "shoot, there it is, that's what I don't have". Feelings I don't feel, images I don't see, care I can't quite take, words I'd never put together, daring I can't show, experiences I haven't had, space I can't leave. Those things. How wonderful and frustrating sometimes to read truly magical poems, just as unreachable as singing like Marvin Gaye or bowling like Shane Warne. And yet, and yet, when something as blunt and basic as If by Rudyard Kipling was voted the nation's favourite poem, as it was a few years ago ...

Something that is fascinating about poems is that sometimes you can, to all intents and purposes, do a good job and end up with a big fat blob of nothing. There have been plenty where I've decided what to write about, which I think is a fairly interesting topic or happening, I've decided to use a rhyme and metrical structure, I've stuck to that nicely, I've chosen my words carefully, I've told a story, set a scene, I've worked hard, I've enjoyed writing it, and, at the end (or at let's say looking back on it a time later) realised it is nothing that any person would ever want to read.

So, saying all that, I work within my limitations, sometimes try to stretch beyond them. I don't write poems in a vacuum. I used to, and they were worse. My poems have improved since I have, to a small extent, engaged with the idea of a reader. I post them on a poetry site called Allpoetry, which is useful but frustrating. Most people on it are American. Your poems get given an instant score by an algorithm (I know!), which also tells you about "weak words" and "strong words" and "too many capitals" and stuff like that. You can ignore all that, which I do, but a higher score means a poem is more likely to be posted on the site's front page, which means more people will read it and comment on it. All of this is to be taken with a pinch of salt, but, still, I'm glad the site's there.

I've never attempted to get a poem published, or submitted a poem to a competition, but I did, a few years ago, participate in a zoom workshop, which was kind of excruciating, particularly in reinforcing how overbearing i can appear even when I'm trying my hardest not to be. The people were nice but I defintely thought "I'm not like these people, none of them know how many test centuries Brian Lara scored" and I don't think I was a great presence in the group, so won't be doing anything like that again, I don't think. 

I did learn, or confirm, some interesting things though, which is that people did not like the quizziness/puzzliness of some poems, they did not like that there were certain things I'd written based on factual, or legendary, things which to me were assumed people would know about a bit, and that was offputting to people. People don't really like having to work out poems and feeling stupid if they don't, which is fair enough, and a bit like quizzes, but different from quizzes. And my inability not to do that without being extremely stolid is a good explanation for why I'm good at writing quizzes and less so at poems

Going back to Vincent van Gogh - as Bill Nighy accurately says in the Doctor Who clip, van Gogh is the "most popular great painter of all time", and anyone who knows the smallest bit about art recognises his style and knows a decent number of his paintings. He is, I guess, the Shakespeare, or at least the Dickens, of painting. He's as quotable as they come.

But, being honest, in what form does poetry survive, even to arty, smarty people, to all but true enthusiasts? Even some of the greatest poets are widely known not even for one whole poem but for a couple of quotable lines from a poem. Poetry is still popular in some sense, but like everything, even more than other things, it's often reduced to soundbites.

So, in a weird way, that's where my delusion can harmlessly remain. Because, sometimes, late at night, or early in the morning, a line that I've written comes into my head and won't leave, maybe something I wrote a couple of years before, where I can't remember much else of the poem, but just a snatch of what is, at least in that moment to that one person, even if that's the person that wrote it, memorable. I don't know if that's enough reward, but it's some.

Maria

I've gone back and forth on what the ultimate song from West Side Story is. For a long time, particularly due to the Tom Waits version, I chose Somewhere, but now I choose Maria.

I'll tell you something about Maria. It's probably the best song called Maria, and that's saying something. No, it definitely is. Something else about Maria ... we went to see West Side Story at the Marlowe in Canterbury 10 or so years ago. Touring production, no one at all famous. At the start, I looked at the stage and remember trying to figure out which actor would be Tony. It turned out to be a young chap who was quite ordinary looking, and, forgive me, I remember feeling a bit surprised, just 'cause of the way these things work.

Anyway, Maria is quite early in the piece, and he sang Maria, and everyone understood why he was Tony. I have never better understood the phrase "took the roof off the place". I remember thinking that both his stunning, spine-chilling vocal and then the huge applause that followed were literally raising the roof of the Marlowe by a few inches. 

We both left the theatre at the end saying "Holy shit, how about when that guy sang Maria". I don't think I'd understood at that point what power the song has. It's a real singer's song. Much as I love Tom Waits and certainly think he's a real singer, I don't think he could do justice to Maria.

So it's funny, when you think of two film versions of West Side Story, both of which I do think are great, that it wasn't a priority in the casting to get someone who could sing the shit out of Maria. Both versions are relatively unmemorable - Richard Beymer in 1961 was dubbed by Jimmy Bryant - no disrespect to either but neither the performance or the vocal performance are particularly outstanding.

The case of Ansel Elgort in the 2021 version is a bit different. Briefly the bright young clean cut kid in Hollywood, starring in The Fault in Our Stars, Baby Driver, and this, his career was brought to a juddering halt when some accusations were made about him a few months before WSS came out. It did for him, and it also clearly had a big impact on the publicity for the film, which was a big box office failure. It's a shame, because it's pretty great. Most of the cast are tremendous - Elgort is pretty good, and a fine, though unexceptional singer.

They should have got the guy from the Marlowe. I actually just looked him up, and he's a very handsome fellow, so I don't know what I was thinking at the time. 

Days We Left Behind

I love this new Paul McCartney song, Days We Left Behind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n1IhyF6R0U&list=RD2n1IhyF6R0U&start_radio=1

It's my favourite song of his for a long time, and it may even end up being my favourite song of his post-Beatles.

Even though a lot of that music deals in whimsical nostalgia, just like this one, somehow this song has moved me deeply, and feels precise, uncynical and revelatory.

It's funny to think that, in all the time I've been following the charts (let's say 40 years), Macca hasn't had a bona fide solo Top 10 hit single. Although the Bluesky dads got briefly excited about this one when it dropped last Friday, it hasn't cracked the Top 100, so that long streak of relative failure looks safe.

For 20+ years, he was the greatest hit machine in history. I've just watched Man on the Run, the documentary abot Wings, which I'd been warned was a bit flash and annoying to watch, but actually I found very informative and sweet, and it's worth remembering that, through the 70s, though there were lulls, Wings were pretty massive. They had six US Number 1s, Mull of Kintyre was the bestselling UK single ever for a time - he still had the magic touch. In the early 80s, you've got Ebony and Ivory, The Girl is Mine, Say Say Say, Pipes of Peace, and then the Frog Chorus, which was basically the last big hit, so maybe that's why. Maybe he lost his single-buying audience with one fell amphibian swoop.

He's featured on loads of Charity Number 1s since, and there was the collaboration with Kanye West (weird to remember that ...) but there have been some nice songs since then, but nothing that has captured the public. Not that unusual for a 40-odd musician, i suppose, but this is Paul McCartney, and Bowie, Springsteen, Rod Stewart, Queen, Elton John in abundance, they've all had hits since then. Even Dylan - his albums are big news and sell well, whereas there's a regular McCartney album cycle - he'll go on Jools Holland, do some nice press, everyone will be happy to see him again, but no big sales or impact. Of course, he remains a huge live act - that in a way adds to the oddness of it. His musicianship, his voice, his popularity, has held up better than anyone, yet he can't get a wider audience interested in his new music.

Which is a shame with this song, as it's wonderful. 

The lyrics in the bridge

"We met at Forthlin Road

And wrote a secret code

To never be spoken

I stand by what I said

The promise that I made

Will never be broken"

I cannot stop thinking about. Okay, in some ways, it's just some nice little rhyming phrases, but what if we take it at face value? What if him and Lennon really did write a secret code, never to be spoken, which unlocked the secret of pop music? What if they did make promises to each other which McCartney has never revealed and which he holds to this day? It's overwhelming, in a way, yet equally, just a small thing ...

Babylon

David Gray's 'Babylon' came up on my youtube algorithm last week. 

If youtube had existed in 2000, 'Babylon' would probably have come up on my youtube algorithm then, as something youtube thought was a bit like the kind of things I like, and I'd have curtly dismissed it as maybe in the same rough territory as the kind of things I like, but very much not the kind of thing I like.

But, in 2026, I watched/listened to it, and thought "aah, good song, after all".

I distinctly remember the first time I saw Babylon performed by David Gray, which was on Jools Holland in April 2000 - me, John and Alex watching on a Friday night in our student place on Baker Lane, cruelly distracted by Gray's wobbling head, and deciding this guy was not for us. 

I'd heard of him before, I think I'd read about him being a big star in Ireland (indeed I think I thought he was Irish) but that was the first time I heard/saw him. After that he was everywhere, or rather his music was everywhere. That was a star-making performance - Babylon became a hit, and the album White Ladder, which had first been released in 1998, became the ultimate sleeper hit.

It is still the biggest selling album of all time in Ireland, and is still, I think, in the Top 10 best selling albums in Britain this century. It also sold over 2 million copies in the US - indeed Gray had sustained success over several albums in America - a lot more than, say, Robbie Williams.

For those early years of the 2000s, the likes of White Ladder, Dido's No Angel, Moby's Play, not to mention Travis and Coldplay, were ubiquitous and described by the music weeklys, which I was still reading, as bland, coffee-table music. You would hear the albums at sedate dinner parties, and, generally, though I was never cool, I fancied my taste in music to be cooler than that.

As far as I can tell, Gray remains a pretty lowkey, anonymous figure. I watched a couple of interviews with him after rewatching Babylon and he's pretty endearing, and pretty good at talking about his music in a clear, interesting way.

A few years ago, as an act of supposed self-torture, I listened to White Ladder and James Blunt's Back to Bedlam alongside each other, and found that while Blunt's monster hit was, in its entiretey even worse than the sum of its most famous parts and worse than I could possibly have conceived, White Ladder was a a good album. It held together well, the songs were good, well-sung, well-written, well-arranged, moving, entirely acceptable. Wow, the things you find out ...

The idea of "cool" when it comes to this sort of music is inconsequential now. None of this as survived the modern idea of cool. The idea that once I thought David Gray as way less cool than, I don't know, Tom McRae or Matthew Jay, seems ludicrous. Still, it is surprisingly useful how a couple of modern buzz words can help distinguish between the various whiny WGWG which still provide some of my favourite music - those two words are, wait for it .... cringe and toxic.

Perhaps David Gray's music holds up pretty well because it avoids being excessively cringe or excessively toxic. Blunt - 100% pure cringe. Sheeran, often fairly cringe. Dylan - pretty toxic. Ryan Adams - 100% pure toxic. Coldplay - really, at times, pretty cringe and toxic. Wow, I think I've solved the singer-songwriter conundrum at long last.

The reality is, as much as people moan about it, this kind of music is still incredibly popular. Perhaps the only thing more boring than a boring white guy singing and playing guitar is a boring white guy moaning about a boring white guy singing and playing guitar (though I suspect I am now proving that the only thing more boring than a boring white guy moaning about a boring white guy singing and playing guitar is a boring white guy moaning about a boring white guy moaning about a boring white guy singing and playing guitar). Now none of it is cool. But most of it is impervious to fashion. So, of this most bulletproof of brands, the post-Buckley guitar guy, I boldly state that one of the originators, David Gray, was really not so bad after all, and that is most famous song is a pretty nice song. So there.

Glad [2] Help

 I tell you what I've been listening to this week and which is an altogether pleasant surprise - 'Help [2]'.

30-odd years since the original 'Help!' album, it certainly surpasses its illustrious predecessor. 

Having said that, it's not actually the second installment - there was also 'NME in Association with War Child Presents 1 Love' (which I bought), 'Hope' from 2003, 'Help!: A Day in the Life' from 2005 (which I bought) and 'War Child Presents Heroes' from 2009, which I think I listened to. 

This is, I think, the most coherent and satisfying of all the albums. The 1995 'Help' album was scrappy, quite fun, but, clearly, apart from Radiohead's 'Lucky', mainly filled with offcuts, rerecords and covers. Some of the covers were great, but, in as much as, at the time, I loved the big bands and wanted to hear new songs by them, I was mainly a bit disappointed by what they offered, particularly by Blur's Eine Kleine Lift Music.

This new album has a handful of people left over from that 1995 album - Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon both appear (separately), as does Beth Gibbons (and there's an Oasis live bonus track on the physical edition). Pulp are here (though, false memory, they're not actually on the 1995 album though I could have sworn they were). That album had Sinead O'Connor and this one has a really great Sinead O'Connor cover by Fontaines DC.

There's no one quite as legendary as Paul McCartney this time, but there is a really impressive line-up of artists from the 80s (Depeche Mode), 90s (aforementioned and Beck), 00s (Arctic Monkeys, Foals, Bat for Lashes), 10s and 20s. The headliners, bookending the album, are the Arctic Monkeys, with their first new song in years, and Olivia Rodrigo (with help by Graham Coxon) covering the Magnetic Fields as the final track.

The original Help album was done in a day, whereas they gave themselves a week for this one. To be honest, there is no sense of a time constraint or limitation on space. It is just a really good compilation.

The UK and Irish bands these days, I tend to like not love them - so, on this compilation, there are several artists which probably score between 6.5 and 8.5 for me, so, while I don't have the expectation they're going to blow my mind, I generally quite like what they sound like. So, where the original Help had, you might say, quite meh contributions relative to what I hoped Blur, Oasis, Stone Roses etc might offer, this album has a whole lot of songs by bands where my response is more "that's a good song by that band that generally does good songs". ... if you see what I mean ...

I suppose the nature of the way music is released helps. In 1995, bands would have been much more pressed to keep their best songs for their own albums and singles, and putting something half-decent on a compilation might have felt like giving something too precious away. 

Now, a song's a song, it can become popular from anywhere via streaming etc. The Arctic Monkeys track has become a pretty big single for them. There's no harm in bands giving up really good songs to this.

Another thing is it's really coherent. The producer James Ford has been in charge of it, and, somehow or other, it sounds like a really well put together track-listing. There are a lot of explicitly anti-war songs and a lot of songs that sound really good back-to-back.

So far, my favourites on the album are Parasite by English Teacher with Graham Coxon, Carried My Girl by Bat for Lashes, Don't Fight the Young by Young Fathers, Black Boys on Mopeds (the Sinead O'Connor cover) by Fontaines  DC, and, surprisingly for me as I'm not a big fan, Nothing I Could Hide by Arlo Parks. 

But, really, there are no duds. It's a really strong, frequently quite moving, listen, which reminds me there's still lots of great indie (in a broad sense) music out there.