Has there ever been a song so widely covered, and so often ruined, as the astonishing 'Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?' Even though it is one of my very favourite songs, I have struggled to find a version that...
Would Nigel Farage enjoy this week's Friday Song? It would seem, on the face of it, unlikely. The great Italian songwriter Paolo Conte is sophisticated, arty, earthy and shamelessly foreign. He doesn't even speak English, for heaven's sake. He was...
A reliable indicator of songwriting talent is when a writer takes a hoary, overworked theme, one that has been mauled and murdered in countless second-rate songs, and makes it entirely new. Janis Ian, one of the great unsung heroes of...
If there were ever a song that illustrates the muddle we are in about race, tolerance and offensiveness, it's my Friday Song this week, 'That's Why They Call Me "Shine"'. The song has taken a peculiar journey over the past...
I was introduced to the extraordinary, unearthly music of Gillian Welch by the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro in 2002. He was on Desert Island Discs and his last choice of song was 'I'm Not Afraid To Die' from the 1998 album...
As every songwriter knows, one of the basic requirements of the job is to get the hell out of the leafy suburb of Clichéville, where everything is familiar and has been done before. The trick is to make it new....
I first heard 'The Ballad of the Sad Young Men' in the mid-1960s, sung by Davy Graham on his astonishing second album Folk, Blues and Beyond, and it has stayed with me ever since. I've always loved its opening lines,...
Embarrassment is a tricky emotion to convey in a song. And when it is used (I think Madness once had a song called 'Embarrassment'), it tends to swamp everything else. It becomes shame. In Randy Newman's 'I Miss You', from...
I've had the idea of once a week celebrating a song which means a lot to me but which is perhaps less well-known than they should be. Like Chaim Tannenbaum's 'London, Longing For Home'. When I saw a rare solo...
It has been clear-out time. I have been off the booze, filing the accumulated correspondence of the past three years, tidying up anything within reach. I have become a crashing bore, in fact. And it will be worth it, this...