Friday Playlist

Our travels, holidays, etc have me off my new music game. I’ve been adding tons of music to my library for review, but have struggled to get through it. Fortunately we have something on our calendar that gave me the excuse to include several songs that would not normally make the list. Hopefully I’ll get back in the swing of things in a couple weeks.

“Summertime” – The Sundays
This was meant to be the video for the week before, well you’ll see why shortly. Genuinely one of the best songs ever written about summer. I found this article from about 18 months ago about the disappearance of this great band.

“Black Sage” – Mystery Jets
An absolutely triumphant piece of heavy pop.

“Election Day” – Lily Seabird
Named for the day on which Seabird wrote it, this track is about the ramifications of making important personal decisions, not picking a candidate to support.

“Here Comes” – knitting
This has more of that currently popular retro mid–90s sound than their first song I shared with you a while back.

“Moving After You” – Hurry featuring Gerard Love
This one is loaded with early Nineties, jangle pop vibes, reminiscent of the Gin Blossoms, Toad the Wet Sprocket, and maybe a touch of The Posies? But I missed the clearest influence: Teenage Fanclub. I missed it because I’m not super familiar with TF’s work. Apparently Hurry lead Matt Scottoline has been heavily influenced by TF his entire career. He wrote this song with TF lead singer Gerard Love in mind and turned it into a duet when Love agreed to sing with him.

“Who’s Gonna Love You Now” – The Tubs
Not The TUBES, but The TUBS. If Bob Mould was from London and he was influenced by The Jam, his music might have sounded like this.

“Emotionally Unavailable” – The London Suede
Suede (London Suede here) just released an expanded edition of last year’s excellent Antidepressants album. This is the single that came with it, another terrific track from the third? fourth? act of their career.

“Bhindi Bhagee” – Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros
I already used the super obvious Joe Strummer to announce our upcoming trip. This celebration of the melting pot modern London has become seems like a fine song to share before our departure.

“Give Ireland Back To The Irish” – Wings
I have a lot of problems with this song. Despite them, it seems like a good week to include it.

“Total Eclipse of the Heart” – Bonnie Tyler
Tyler died this week at the age of 75. There are many who would label her a One Hit Wonder based on this monster hit. WRONG! Some folks might remember “Holding Out For A Hero,” which appeared on the Footloose soundtrack and went to #34 in 1984. Real music heads know her first American hit was 1978’s “It’s A Heartache,” which peaked at #3 for two weeks. That’s three Top 40 hits, suckers.

But this bombastic single, obviously, dwarfed the other two. And the totally bizarre video had to have been a factor in its success.

Trivia: Jim Steinman wrote “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” He also wrote Air Supply’s “Making Love Out Of Nothing At All,” which got stuck at #2 for three of the four weeks “Total Eclipse” topped the charts.