This is also a knees-up party record but of a whole different order. It’s a medley – nay, a megamix – of music-hall hits instrumentalised, mashed together and played sped-up on a piano. I imagine Grandma out of Giles cackling away a[…]

A word on teenagers and adults. It’s a truism to suggest that in the early 50s the “teenager” hadn’t been conceptualised; judging by these records, it’s also generally accurate. Nothing about them suggests they are aimed[…]

My God My God. One of the defences of the sales-based UK charts I regularly offer is that it impartially reflects anyone who is buying singles, not just the people record labels and radios would like to be buying them. This means the charts can be re[…]

Cornell’s problem is that he sounds far far too pleased with his allotted lines – rhymes like “this is / bliss is / kisses”, which aren’t that witty and which come attached to an unremarkable slow-dance tune. Even so a d[…]

One of the many reasons I turned this project from whim to reality was that I reckoned it would give me a ‘way in’ to liking older artists more. Listening to Frank Sinatra in the context of lots of other less famous people doing sort-of-s[…]

A friendly advice-to-lovers number that politely refuses to distinguish itself in almost any way – except that Kitty Kallen seems hooked on rolling her ‘r’s, and as soon as you notice this you spend the whole song listening out for […]

The other day I went out to buy some clothes. I am useless at buying clothes and have little confidence in my own tastes, so in Marks And Spencers hunting for a jumper I found myself drifting to the rack with the reassuring sign ‘ITALIAN’[…]

“Such A Night” stands out because it gets its content over via beat and flow rather than melody. The backing singers kick the song off on a do-be-do-be pattern with a drum kick at the end and this hardly varies through the whole track. Ra[…]

A gay reading of “Secret Love” is fairly hard for a current listener to avoid. But to suggest that any credibility that lends the song is undeserved would be wrong: it adds some extra depth to a record that was powerful already. The ingre[…]

They don’t make ’em like this any more, thank Christ. A 1954 British comedy record: either jokes were still rationed or they hadn’t been invented yet, so standing in we have musical pratfalls, on-purpose bad singing and noxious come[…]