My Top Twenty-One of 2021: #19

Today is the 15th anniversary of my life as a blogger. My first ever blog post (not here, but on this blog's predecessor, Sunset Over Slawit) was dated December 3rd 2006.

My how things have changed. One thing that hasn't is my need to record my favourite albums of the year in December. Here's the Top Ten from 2006, complete with my commentary...

10. Teddy Thompson – Separate Ways. Released at the back end of last year, but the singles came out in ’06. Mature, emotional song-writing… not entirely in his dad’s class (and obviously he can’t play guitar like Pops – who can?), but he deserves to stand on his own.

9. The Crimea – Tragedy Rocks. Also released back-end of 2005, this is a new band led by former Crocketts lead-singer Dave McManus. From what I remember of The Crocketts, they had one really good song. Here, there’s a whole album of them.

8. Belle & Sebastian – The Life Pursuit. Not as strong as (and less commercially successful than) Dear Catastrophe Waitress (maybe I’m just a sucker for Trevor Horn), but a definite grower. Stuart’s decision to let the rest of the band chip in with some of the songwriting might have something to do with this. Saw them live this year and it was all a bit of a shambles, but enjoyably so.

7. Jarvis Cocker – Jarvis. Very excited to finally have Jarvis back, and half this album is really strong. The other half, while good, strives a little too hard to be… well, not commercial, because I think he’s given up on that… but perhaps the word I’m looking for is ‘tuneful’. Jarv made a big deal before the record came out that it wasn’t going to be just him whinging on about life, that there would be some proper songs in there too. I’d have preferred more of the whinging!

6. Monkey Swallows The Universe – The Bright Carvings. Saw this lot supporting Richard Hawley earlier this year, and although they looked like a bunch of sixth-formers, they made a lovely noise. 

5. Thea Gilmore – Harpo’s Ghost. The critics call her “the best British singer-songwriter of the last ten years” and I find it hard to disagree. Unfortunately, we seem to be the only ones listening. She’s hard working too – when I saw her live this autumn, she was 35 weeks pregnant, and she’s back on the road in the New Year.

4. Morrissey – Ringleader Of The Tormentors. Only Number 4? Moz, you’re slipping! No, ROTT was a good album, but just didn’t have the staying power of YATQ. 

3. The Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. Far too much has been written about them already… if only this album didn’t live up to the hype!

2. The Handsome Family – The Last Days Of Wonder. Grower of the year. I’ve been a HF fan for ages, and couldn’t get into their new one at first… but now, I just can’t stop. Rennie Sparks is one of the best short story writers stuck in a songwriter’s body you’ll ever encounter, and her husband Brett looks and sings like Walter from The Big Lebowski. An album about the life of Nikola Tesla, the frustrations of being a ghost, and falling in love with the girl at the drive-thru window.

1. The Divine Comedy – Victory For The Comic Muse. Sometimes it seems the better a songwriter gets, the fewer people listen. That certainly seems to be the case with Neil Hannon, who delivered possibly his strongest record to date this year, then shot himself in the foot by releasing its weakest track (‘Diva Lady’) as the lead single. A collection that is in turn touching (‘Lady Of A Certain Age’), hilarious (‘To Die A Virgin’), quirky (‘Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World’, which I still think could have been a crossover hit in the vein of ‘National Express’ if he’d bothered to release it), inspiring (‘Light Of Day’) and literate (‘The Plough’). He also gave us the year’s best b-sides, which could easily have placed a second album in this Top Ten had he compiled them. Great live too, possibly my gig of the year.. I do hope he makes enough money to keep at it!

And now back to the present...

19. Smith & Burrows - Only Smith & Burrows Is Good Enough

Here's one that probably won't appear on many year end lists, more's the pity. Tom Smith is the lead singer of The Editors. Andy Burrows was the drummer in Razorlight, but don't hold that against him. He was also the drummer in We Are Scientists. And he played drums in David Brent's band, so give the guy some credit. He'll work with anyone!

Lately though, he's been doing more of the singer-songwriter thing, with a particular penchant for the 70s. It's therefore not completely absurd to call this record a modern day version of Godley & Creme... or maybe even Wax... which is about as uncool as you can get.

But I like uncool.

Ten catchy, quirky pop songs that feel like they've fallen out of a time warp. You might need to give them a few listens, but they soon work their way under your skin...

 

Saturday Snapshots #150 - The Answers

Here we go again. Thanks for playing. I hope you're all keeping well.

Answers...


10. Minor piercing... though it looks bloody painful to me!

Morris Minor.

The Prince Albert piercing gets another mention!

Feelings bring us pain.

Morris Albert - Feelings

9. Ban worms! Knock it off.

Ban worms was a simple anagram.

Sam Brown - Stop

Very nice segue from #10 to #9 if this was a radio show.

8. Jenny said when she was just five years old, there was nothing happening at all... except an Italian god.

"Jenny said when she was just five years old, there was nothing happening at all..." comes from Rock n Roll by the Velvet Underground.

If Jenny was five years old, she would be a child.

Italian for God? Dio.

Dio - Rock n Roll Children

7. Robert Wagner is not allowed here. Neither is Stefanie Powers. But tiny scared arachnids are fine.

Robert Wagner & Stefanie Powers were Mr. & Mrs. Hart. (When they met, it was Moidah.) Ban them!

Topical references my forte, as always. But Alyson was on the right track. Coming up with a clue for Devendra was beyond me though.

Devendra Banhart - Little Yellow Spider 

6. Airborne proposition from Barry's girl x 200.

Barry's girl was Mandy.

X is 10 in Roman Numerals. 200 would be CC.

10cc - I'm Mandy, Fly Me

5. King's footwear manufactured by German free man... sounds like a psycho!

Carl is a North Germanic male name meaning "free man".

Antony Perkins played Norman Bates in Psycho.

This song was made more famous by the King of Rock n Roll... but the original was by...

Carl Perkins - Blue Suede Shoes

4. Bono return - clown vanish!

Not that Bono! Think instead of the one who knew Cher...

Clown vanish is an anagram.

Shawn Colvin - Sonny Came Home

3. A bear for the Twins... you might find something humerus here.

Teddy bear + Thompson Twins...

Humerus is a bone in your arm.

Teddy Thompson - In My Arms

That's such a joyous video, especially when Rufus arrives. Happier times...

2. Staring contest between Marvin & Child interrupted by fashion designer in romantic trailer.

The eyes of Lee Marvin & the eyes of Lee Child interrupted by Jasper Conran.

Isley Jasper Isley - Caravan of Love

Very different from the Housemartins version, but the original is still pretty cool.

1. Arthritis... don't fall off!

Arthritis causes. among other things, Stiff Little Fingers. (With me, it's my thumbs!)

My Top Ten Self Pity Songs (Volume 1)

Things are still pretty hectic at the moment and I'm swamped with trying to decide what my Top Ten Albums of 2016 will be... and writing the posts to accompany them. However, rather than go a week without a Top Ten, I thought I'd plunge into the archives and re-run an old favourite. My Top Ten Self Pity Songs (Volume 1... if I'm still stuck, I'll run Volume 2 next week) originally appeared six years ago in my old blog, Sunset Over Slawit. That was more than just a music blog, but I lost interest in writing about all the other aspects of my life and packed it in just before starting this one. I made the old blog private although many of the posts had by then been stolen and re-posted by a clickbait website on the other side of the world so they may still exist on the internet somewhere (despite reporting the thief to the google police, nothing was ever done about it).

I've edited this re-post slightly because I'm not the same person I was five years ago...

Ironically, it's the complete opposite to the post I would have written this week if I'd had time. I'd planned to follow Swiss Adam's lead and post ten happy, upbeat songs to counteract the tsunami of bad news we've had to face in recent weeks. Turned out I couldn't even manage five...

Isn't self-pity great? I hereby declare it the most ace emotion ever! If I'm having a bad day, there's nothing guaranteed to cheer me up more than a good long bout of feeling sorry for myself.

You'd think that with all the money and groupies and cocaine and stuff, your average rock star wouldn't have much time for self-pity, yet they seem to get off on it almost as much as I do. Although to be fair, most of the anthems to self-loathing listed below come from early in the respective artist's career - by singing about how shit they felt, they made oodles of money and hence stopped feeling so shit about themselves... and then went on to stop writing such good songs, since happiness is rarely conducive to artistic greatness.

This is Volume 1 simply because there are so many great self-pity songs, I really couldn't narrow it down to just ten. I'll throw some more onto the fire the next time I'm feeling crappy. Do feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments box...

10. Mansun - What It's Like To Be Hated

How are you feeling today, Paul Draper?

Ugly, scruffy, no one

Really?

Nasty, bitter, enraged

Right...

Hated, broken

Oh, come on now, cheer up - it can't be that bad.

Disturbed, unwanted at birth
The fucking joke that we are
I've never had any friends

Fair enough then.

9. Teddy Thompson - Turning The Gun On Myself

I really should do a list of suicide anthems. And this really should be on it. But as it's possibly the best song Richard Thompson Jr.'s ever written, it deserves its place here too.

8. Strangelove - Freak

If your name was Duff, you might expect your life to follow suit. So, cheesed off that fate had robbed him by leaving that all-important 'y' off the end of his name - otherwise he might have been The Man From Atlantis or Bobby Ewing - Patrick Duff formed Strangelove and channeled all his negativity into this...

I walk the plastic streets
Just like a monkey
Just like a geek
My scraping knuckles bleed
I hear my Mummy crying out
He's a freak
I live a life alone
And all my friends are gone
It kind of turns me on
I hate them one by one by one
I'm a freak

7. Eels - Dog Faced Boy

Coming home from the school today
Crying all along the way
Ain't no way for a boy to be
Begging ma to shave me please

You little punks think you own this town
Well someday someone's gonna bring you down
Life ain't pretty for a dog faced boy

E from the Eels has built a career on feeling sorry for himself, understandably so when you consider some of the things that have happened to him. That said, he's always aware that things could be worse. He could always have a face like a shaggy mongrel.

Ma won't shave me
Jesus can't save me
Dog-faced boy!

 6. Wheatus - Teenage Dirtbag

I don't care, I love this song. It encapsulates how shit it is to be a teenager, listening to Iron Maiden, unable to get the girl you want because she's dating a dick. The video features perpetual loser Jason Biggs trying to cop off with Mena Suvari (from Amy Heckerling's underrated teen-com Loser). The band followed this supreme ode to woe with an Erasure cover. But as one-hit wonders go... wow.

5. Eric Carmen - All By Myself

When Eric Carmen was young, he never needed anyone. Making love? Making love was just for fun! Sadly, those days are gone. Now he's living alone, thinking of all the friends he's known... but when he dials the telephone... nobody's home.

I don't know about you, but I'm welling up.

4. Simon & Garfunkel - I Am A Rock

I've built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It's laughter and it's loving I disdain.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

See the genius of Paul Simon here is that, bad as he's feeling, he's actually convinced himself he's better off that way. There was a time in my life I lived by the following lines...

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.

Listening to this song reminds me how much better off I am now.

3. Beck - Loser

For many years, I thought that Beck sang "So - open up the door - I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?"

Only when it comes to writing this post do my investigations reveal he's actually singing "Soy un perdedor", which, according to the internet... is Spanish for "I'm a loser".

2. Radiohead - Creep

I wish I was special. Don't you?

1. The Smiths - I Know It's Over

Of course, I could have compiled an entire Self-Pity Top Ten just from Smiths songs. And I could have made a Top Hundred just from sticking pins at random in Morrissey's solo catalogue. But none of them would have been quite as majestically miserable as this. It begins with Morrissey climbing into an empty bed he equates with a grave... and goes rapidly downhill from there. He then imagines a relationship with a potential partner who turns round and says to him these immortal words...

"If you're so funny
Then why are you on your own tonight ?
And if you're so clever
Then why are you on your own tonight ?
If you're so very entertaining
Then why are you on your own tonight ?
If you're so very good-looking
Why do you sleep alone tonight ?
I know ...
'Cause tonight is just like any other night
That's why you're on your own tonight
With your triumphs and your charms
While they're in each other's arms..."

Then again, if you've never sat alone late at night and asked yourself these questions... count yourself very, very lucky.



There - that was so much better than a Top Ten Feelgood Songs, wasn't it?

Wasn't it?

My Top Ten Writing A Novel Songs

As you'll notice if you turn your eyes a few centimetres to the right of this post, my novel I Wish, Wish, Wish You Were Dead, Dead, Dead is finally available for download to your kindle, tablet or e-book reading device of your choice. (With thanks to Davey for the smashing cover.)

Any excuse for a Top Ten...


10. Fryars - Novelist's Wife

There are a lot of unhappy novelists out there...

9. Paul Simon - Rewrite

We write. Then we rewrite. Then we rewrite some more. There comes a point you have to stop working on the rewrite and just let your book go...

8. Lloyd Cole - Writer's Retreat

Lloyd's lady spends more time on her book than with him. He's not sticking around...

You can get a beat from a broken heart
You could write the book while falling apart
You can have it all save the one you want
Going for a song

7. Teddy Thompson - Jonathan's Book

Jonathan gives up his life for his writing... but he's hardly Shakespeare.

He says, I don't have any inspiration
And my subject matter lacks invention
If I only had an opening line
Then I'm sure the rest would turn out fine

6. Harry Connick Jr. - I Could Write a Book

Perhaps more memorably recorded by Frank, Ella and Miles... but I have a soft spot for Harry's version from When (another) Harry Met Sally.

5. Rockpile - When I Write The Book

 Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds write a thousand words a day...

4. The Beatles - Paperback Writer

Every time I send off a submission letter, I think of this lyric...

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?
It took me years to write, will you take a look?

Every time I receive a rejection letter, I think if this one...

If you really like it you can have the rights,
It could make a million for you overnight.
If you must return it, you can send it here
But I need a break and I want to be a paperback writer.

That's why it's good to finally see my book published without any more rejections. At least someone might read it now!

3.  The Beautiful South - My Book

Already included in my Top Ten Diary Songs, but too good not to squeeze in here too. One of Paul Heaton's best.

This is my life and this is how it reads
For every chapter, a thousand memories
A murder, a mystery where everybody bleeds
A fantasy, a thriller with romance and disease

2. Father John Misty - I'm Writing A Novel

Breaking out of the Fleet Foxes proved an excellent move for Father John. His debut album was a cracker, and this was my favourite track on it.

I'm writing a novel...
Because it's never been done before (!)  

1. Elvis Costello - Every Day I Write The Book

Don't tell me you don't know what love is
When you're old enough to know better
When you find strange hands in your sweater
When your dreamboat turns out to be a footnote
I'm a man with a mission, in two or three editions

There's no better written song on this list. Costello should have been a novelist (too).




Which one has pride of place on your bookshelf?

My Top Ten Sloth Songs (Seven Deadly Sins #4)

Yawn. I really can't be bothered introducing the fourth deadly sin...


10. Oasis - The Importance Of Being Idle

Yes, I chose an Oasis song. It's not completely unheard of. I reckon this is one of their best, perhaps because it owes far more to The Kinks than The Beatles. Plus I like Rhys Ifans in the video... but more on that later.

9. The Charlatans - Can't Get Out Of Bed

See also Can't Get Up by Supergrass, I Should Get Up by Teddy Thompson and, of course, Get Out Of Your Lazy Bed by Matt Bianco. Give it time, I'll do a whole Top Ten of them.

8. Moxy Früvous - The Lazy Boy

Ah, Moxy. Whatever happened?

I have a life of pleasure
I am submerged in armchair leisure
I put my feet on the ottoman....empire!

7. Belle & Sebastian - Lazy Line Painter Jane

Another infamous lazybones, Stuart Murdoch did write most of his most famous songs in his bedroom. See also Sleep The Clock Around and We Are The Sleepyheads

6. Suede - Lazy 

Here they come, gone 7am
Getting satellite and Sky, getting cable,
Bills and Bens and their mums and their friends
Who just really, really want to be loved,
Uncle Teds and their legendary vests
Helping out around the disabled,
From the flats and the maisonettes
They're reminding us there's things to be done.

Nothing lazy about those lyrics.

See also the gorgeous One Lazy Morning by Brett Anderson, solo (i.e. the rest of the band stayed in bed).

5. The Kinks - Sunny Afternoon

As in "Lazing on a..."

Poor old Ray, the taxman's taken everything he's got.

See also Dead End Street... then go listen to that Oasis song again. (Lazy Noel even nicked the video from Ray & Dave.)

4. The Supernaturals - Lazy Lover

What a bunch of lazy bleeders the Supernaturals were - not only lazy lovers who can't be bothered getting into bed... but when they eventually do, they moan I Wasn't Built To Get Up. They can't even stay awake in their videos.

See also this little ditty from The Auteurs, who have apparently been married to The Supernaturals for 20 years.

3. The Small Faces - Lazy Sunday

Probably should have been Number One... but I just couldn't be bothered.

Gor blimey, hello, Mrs. Jones - how's your Burt's lumbago?

2. Morrissey - Lifeguard Sleeping, Girl Drowning

When it came time to select songs about sloth, Morrissey was obviously going to feature. Take your pick from The Lazy Sunbathers or All The Lazy Dykes... but this one's my favourite: quintessential Mozzer... 

Please don't worry
There'll be no fuss
She was... nobody's nothing
 
When he awoke
The sea was calm
And another day passes like a dream

1. The Lemonheads - The Outdoor Type

While the rest of the artists on this Top Ten are bone idle Brits (with the exception of comatose Canadians Moxy Früvous), the laziest man in rock has to be American "Slacker King" Evan Dando. This could well be my favourite Lemonheads song, in which Evan confesses his lethargic credentials...

I can't go away with you on a rock climbing weekend
What if something's on TV and it's never shown again?
It's just as well I'm not invited, I'm afraid of heights
I lied about being the outdoor type

Can you be bothered to leave a comment?