#36 Nadine Shah - Dreary Town

Album: Love Your Dum And Mad (2013.)

Lyrics excerpt:
We were down and out in London
Sharing beds and sharing money
But we were satisfied
With our hot milk and honey
For the young and beautiful
The life with no regrets
So let's toast to a short-lived love
And drink to all the rest
I'm not gonna follow you to the ground
Darling, I'm leaving this dreary town
I'm not gonna follow you to the ground
When there's greener pastures waiting to be found

Reasons to love this song:
The lyrics quoted above are probably not completely correct because I wasn't able to find them online, so I attempted to write them down as I heard them and it took me several repeats to make them out. But that just makes me appreciate Nadine Shah's voice even more: normally I consider the lyrics to a song at least as important as the music, if not more important. But this song instantly got a place among my all-time favourites during the very first listen -- while I understood very little of the lyrics -- because of the melody and the singer's amazingly expressive voice, which reminds me of the voice of a fado singer.

YouTube Link
The official video:

#35 Madonna - La Isla Bonita

Album: True Blue (1986)

Lyrics excerpt:
Last night I dreamt of San Pedro
Just like I'd never gone, I knew the song
A young girl with eyes like the desert
It all seems like yesterday, not far away

Reasons to love this song:
True Blue was one of the first albums I ever owned. I remember I listened to it until the tape was all worn out. Decades later, I have completely forgotten some of the songs (Jimmy Jimmy? Where's The Party? Love Makes The World Go Round?), but the others, especially Live To Tell and La Isla Bonita, have stood the test of time wonderfully. Just hearing the first few bars of La Isla Bonita makes me imagine tropical islands, bright orange cocktails with ice cubes and little umbrellas in them, and palm trees outlined in the sunset.

I like to listen to this song in a playlist with:
The Beach Boys - Kokomo
Kaoma - Lambada
Chris Rea - On the Beach
UB40 - Kingston Town
(Other summery songs from the same era.)

YouTube link:
The official video, featuring an adorable short-haired and wide-eyed Madonna:

#34 k. d. lang - Summerfling

Album: Invincible Summer (2000)

Lyrics excerpt:
Early morning mid-July
Anticipation's makin' me high
The smell of Sunday in our hair
You ran on the beach with Kennedy Flair
Sweet, sweet burn of sun and summer wind
And you, my friend, my new fun thing
My summerfling

Reasons to love this song:
So many of my favourite summer songs are melancholy and nostalgic. Summerfling is definitely one of them. I suppose it is because summer and nostalgia are so firmly linked to one another. For a child, summer is a seemingly endless time of being completely carefree. As adults, although most of us cannot afford to be completely carefree, I think we still try to capture some traces of this feeling, and k. d. lang's song captures them perfectly, from the anticipation to the final bittersweet loss.

I like to listen to this song in a playlist with:
Lana Del Rey - Summertime Sadness
Madeleine Peyroux - The Summer Wind
Boney M - Still I'm Sad
Tori Amos - Indian Summer
Beautiful South - Everybody's Talkin'
(These songs do not resemble each other, but to me they all seem to share a summery/melancholic/nostalgic mood.)

YouTube link:
The official video: