The opening of “Tears Of A Clown” is fussy, polite, slightly forced in its capering eagerness to please – a great way of introducing a song about putting a false face on to fool the world you’re happy. This theme was a regular[…]

The first live Number One since “My Old Man’s A Dustman”, and a similar symbol of a singer’s transformation from firebrand to beloved entertainer. Though – just like Lonnie – the entertainer was always part of Elvi[…]

“In The Summertime” comes close to being a genuine guilty pleasure. Not because of the track’s charmingly rickety arrangement, or its lopsided shuffle beat, but because those elements make this pen-portrait of an idle young blade&#8[…]

“Yellow River” has a story if you’re looking – man coming home after a war – but content is supremely irrelevant next to the song’s urgent march-time bounce. What I like most about it, beyond its more-than-servicea[…]

 
It wasn’t the first football record by a long way, but “Back Home” ticks all the genre’s traditional boxes. Rousing tune graspable by fans between 8 and 80 – yes. Heavy involvement by actual players – yes. Dou[…]

Apparently much loved by the British public in whatever form it makes the charts, but this is a case where the original is best. Later versions play the song as a knees-up, but Greenbaum goes deeper and finds the spiritual connection between revival […]

 
It was pointed out to me in the pub last week that this record is actually the best of Ireland’s Eurovision winners, a claim with horrible implications that may sadly be correct. It also shows off two of the Song Contest’s typical idi[…]

The most celebrated track on the biggest-selling album of the 1970s in Britain, “Bridge Over Troubled Water” has become a marbled standard and it’s hard to step back from that and listen to the thing. Maybe it’s useful to leav[…]

 
Nelson Riddle’s arrangement for “Wand’rin Star” harks back a good twenty or thirty years, to the days of the singing cowboys and particularly acts like Sons Of The Pioneers, whose massed male backing voices this song remind[…]

American bubblegum pop was often like garage rock’s bouncy little brother: lacking the moodiness and sex appeal, but you could see the shared DNA. British bubblegum was born out of the same talent glut of session musicians and songwriters and s[…]