Look, I'm on holiday and I can't think of any Cheryl Cole songs off the top of my head, so you'll have to make up your own puns today. Likewise I have no idea who won this week as I'm writing this on Thursday night. I'm sure whoever got up first did very well indeed. Thank you all for playing... unless nobody did this week, in which case: yah boo sucks.
Brief answers / explanations follow...
10. R.E.M. slows down and shouts like crazy.
REM is Rapid Eye Movement. Slow it down and it becomes SEM... add a shouted bellow.
I was a huge Everclear fan back in the late 90s, around the time they ditched their grunge roots and went power pop with the album this came from: So Much For The Afterglow. Yes, I liked them when they became popular... not a very muso thing to admit, is it?
No idea who the White Men in Black Suits are in this song... however, part of me hopes they're alien investigators... or just your basic, bog standard aliens. That'd make me happy. Like the imminent return of Mulder & Scully has made me happy.
Rocks a lot harder than most Hollies songs - largely because they were doing their best to imitate Creedence when they recorded it. John Fogerty was, apparently, not impressed.
A wonderfully sarcastic lyric from this Irish singer-songwriter...
I found out how to keep you keen, I read it in a magazine. One of those expensive ones, so it must be true, it must be true. Seems large amounts of alcohol is all it takes to make you fall. If I stroke your ego through the night, it'll be all right, it'll be all right.
Creeping southern blues rock classic (though Alannah herself was Canadian), this still drips sweat and sex all over the turntable. It would have been a little less steamy had she kept her real name... Alannah Byles.
With typically cynical paint, Warren daubs the image of a paranoid, crack-smoking loser whose girl has left and not come back. He's starting to worry terrible things may have happened to her...but we suspect the truth might be a little more obvious.
One of the stand out tracks from Suzanne's eight studio album, Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles, released just last year. Conclusive proof... she's still got it.
My colour is black black black For the crone, and the bastard The schoolgirl in uniform The servant in the hall.
Black is the truth Of my situation, And for those of my station In life. All other colors Lie.
Melodrama never came classier than the Shangri-Las. Here, a forbidden love affair leads to teenage heartbreak on a Wagnerian scale, (over-)produced with Spector-esque glee by George Francis "Shadow" Morton - the man who brought the shadows to many of the Shangri-Las greatest musical moments.
When AC/DC front-man Bon Scott died in 1980, the band almost called it a day. Instead they decided he would have wanted them to carry on, so they offered the job to Geordie's Brian Johnson... and gave him the unenviable task of writing a lyric paying tribute to his predecessor. This is what he came up with... the title track from an album that stills ranks as one of the Top Ten highest selling records of all time.
Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day And tell the world that everything's okay But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back Until things are brighter, I'm the Man In Black
(Though, in truth, it was just easier to keep black shirts clean when JC was on long tours.)
1. The Smiths - Unlovable
Another example of Morrissey and Marr throwing away classics on b-sides. The ultimate maudlin-Moz lyric... he wears black on the outside because black is how he feels on the inside. And if he seems a little strange... well, that's because he is.
Even when I was a drinking man, I was never really a cocktail fan. That Tom Cruise film was enough to put me off for life.
Special mention, of course, goes to Bucks Fizz, one of the first pop bands ever to catch my eye. Obviously the bit when the skirts came off did it for me. I was at a very impressionable age.
Perfect for a hot sunny afternoon... if you can remember what those are.
1. Rupert Holmes - Escape (The Pina Colada Song)
Come on... it had to be! I mean, if you like Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain... if you're not into health food... if you have half a brain...
Not sure about the making love at midnight bit. I'm usually asleep by then. Obviously getting old.
If music be the drink of love... which tuneful tipple take your fancy?
