At first I thought it ran out of steam early – 90 seconds in, she’d made her point, why did she have to reprise it in high-kicking swing-vamp style? I was completely wrong of course – the last 45 seconds of “Who’s Sorry […]

Lusty rockabilly stomper with super-basic big-dick lyrics – though not so basic that the tune doesn’t keep breaking off, so the beat can restate the pelvic point. Solid, dumb, foot-tapping stuff – deadly effective in ’58 (why […]

Hard to imagine a kindlier record than this – Perry’s cosy armchair voice, the clip-clop rhythm, the profoundly tender lyrics, and that instant, innocent melody. The first time I heard it, a few years ago now, I loathed it at once: it see[…]

Hiding in here somewhere is a gentle love ballad that Holliday decides to ignore. Instead the song goes uptempo and the singer is joined by a rogues’ gallery of backing singers who trill, hum, b-dum and doodle-doo whenever he so much as draws b[…]

Presley’s first No.1 was all about the voice and the rhythm just did the job it had to. “Jailhouse Rock”, his second, is nothing without its beat. The lyrics are funny, of course, and Elvis as skilful as before (his specific trick h[…]

Scrape the crust of legend off this record and you might be surprised, like I was, at how goofy it is. What did I know about this song? I knew that Jerry Lee was a hellraiser and married his cousin. And I knew the chorus, mostly from a 70s Edam adver[…]

Elder statesman of Caribbean music he may be but Belafonte is still best known in Britain for this and the “Banana Boat Song”. I’ll give a pass to most music at Christmas but this arrangement is too slow and syrupy to really enjoy, […]

The jangling intro and solos on “That’ll Be The Day” still sound gorgeous – assured and effortlessly pretty – but the rest of it hasn’t aged well. Liking Buddy Holly surely depends on liking that nervy gulping thin[…]

This one was a big favourite of my Dad’s, so my memory of it is half affectionate and half curdled: I remember trips north to see relatives with him singing lustily along and surly me in the back seat wanting to put my Smiths tapes on.
So it&#8[…]

Look! It’s Elvis!
The boogie-woogie piano forming this song’s undercarriage sounds so generic to me* that I get the best results from listening to it like a riddim, a bolt-on beat for Presley to freestyle over. Helpfully, that way of hear[…]