#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:

#33 Norah Jones - Miriam

(Halloween playlist, #7)
 Album: Little Broken Hearts (2012)

 Lyrics excerpt: Oh Miriam 
That's such a pretty name 
And I'll keep saying it 
Until you die 
Miriam 
You know you done me wrong
 I'm gonna smile when 
You say goodbye

 Reasons to love this song:
The fact that it sounds so innocent and gentle in the beginning, and that Norah Jones is best known for soft and gentle songs like Come Away With Me and Sunrise, makes it all the more shocking when you gradually come to realise that it's actually a murder ballad. Miriam reminded me instantly of Dolly Parton's Jolene -- it could be Jolene's dark twin. The narrator of the song is confronted by the same problem, but the solution is so different...

  YouTube link:
Like the song, the official video seems melancholy but innocent in the beginning -- until you see the blood-covered oar.
 

# 32 Loreena McKennitt: The Bonny Swans

(Halloween playlist, #6)

Album: The Mask and Mirror (1994)

Lyrics excerpt:

And there does sit my father the King 
(with a hey ho and a bonny o) 
And yonder sits my mother the Queen 
(the swans swim so bonny o)
And there does sit my brother Hugh 
And by him William, sweet and true 
And there does sit my false sister, Anne 
Who drowned me for the sake of a man 

Reasons to love this song:
I fell in love with this song at first listen just because of the tune, which is very pretty and not at all dark. Then I listened to the lyrics more carefully and thought I had heard something about making a harp out of human bones...
The Bonny Swans is a version of a ballad known at least since the seventeenth century, in many forms and under many different names (The Twa Sisters, The Cruel Sister, The Wind And Rain...). All these songs tell the story of a woman drowned by her sister because of jealousy; in the supernatural versions, such as this one, the bones of the murdered sister are made into a harp or a fiddle which, when played, accuses the murderer.
Loreena McKennitt adapted the lyrics and composed the music for this version. Although there is definitely humour in her version of the song (surely she had noticed that the heroine's father is a farmer in the first verse, but a King at the end?) the final two lines -- And there does sit my false sister, Anne who drowned me for the sake of a man -- never fail to make me shudder.

Youtube link:

The official video


And, for comparison, one of the non-supernatural versions of the same tale: Two Sisters by Clannad

#31 Joni Mitchell - Urge For Going

Album: Hits (1996); B-side to the You Turn Me on I'm a Radio single (1972).

Lyrics excerpt: 
I had me a man in summertime
He had summer-colored skin
And not another girl in town
My darling's heart could win
But when the leaves fell on the ground
Bully winds came around
Pushed them face down in the snow
He got the urge for going
And I had to let him go


Reasons to love this song:
Autumnal weather came rather suddenly where I live this year, making me want to listen to autumnal songs -- and Urge For Going is probably my favourite one -- even though I think of autumn as a colourful and pleasant season, and in this song the warm seasons are synonymous with life and love, and the cold seasons equal death and loneliness. (It's more complex than that, of course -- in this song's universe it is possible to escape from death and loneliness if you have "the wings to fly".) The music is melancholy, but I also hear it as incredibly warm, in contrast with the coldness described in the lyrics.

Youtube links:
Joni Mitchell performing the song on television in 1966. I love how the musicians around her all seem awestruck by her performance.


Tom Rush's version of the song (from his 1968 album The Circle Game, which also included two other Joni Mitchell covers):


My favourite cover of this song, by Charlotte Martin (from Reproductions, 2007):

#30 Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood - Summer Wine

Album: Nancy & Lee (1968)

Lyrics excerpt:
Strawberries, cherries and an angel's kiss in spring 
My summer wine is really made from all these things 
Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time
 And I will give to you summer wine

Reasons to love this song:
The songs I have written in this blog are mostly performed (and written by) solo female musicians, but I will make an exception now and then -- starting with this song, one of my favourite summer songs. It tells the story of a man who is seduced and robbed by a femme fatale, but Nancy Sinatra sings her part in a sweet and dreamy voice, not even trying to sound "evil".
The lyrics to this song have made a friend of mine, who is very literal-minded, angry. "No, your summer wine is bloody well not really made of all these things, because you can't make wine out of strawberries, cherries and bloody angel's kisses!" When I told her the wine in the song isn't necessarily real wine at all, but a metaphor for the female character's love, she grumbled: "Even worse."

YouTube link:
I love Nancy's little laugh at about 2:10. Bizarrely, in the beginning of the video her head looks as if it were screwed on backwards.

#29 Emmy The Great - Exit Night/Juliet's Theme

Album: Virtue (2011)

Lyrics excerpt:
But when the sun is getting lower then the highway marks the graves
And the taillights they circle like the roses of an infinite bouquet
And everybody leaves
Taillights for the grey ghosts of railways and candle holders

Reasons to love this song:
Emmy The Great is a new discovery for me. From her album Virtue, Paper Forest (In The Afterglow Of Rapture) was probably my favourite on first listen, but after several listens and paying more attention to the lyrics (which reminded me a little of Leonard Cohen), Exit Night eventually emerged as my favourite. Although the music is rather upbeat, it manages to convey the ghostly atmosphere of the lyrics, especially in the moments the backing vocals sound like gusts of wind.

YouTube link:

Emmy The Great performing the song in Queen Elisabeth Hall, London, in 2011.

#28 Nina Simone - Sinnerman

Album: Pastel Blues (1965)

Lyrics excerpt:
So I run to the Lord,
Please hide me Lord,
Don't you see me prayin'?
Don't you see me down here prayin'?
But the Lord said: go to the devil
The Lord said: go to the devil
All on that day.

Reasons to love this song:
I must admit, I was only a very casual fan of Nina Simone until I heard this song in the second season final of the BBC series Sherlock. I fell in love with the song instantly, and thought at first the singer was male until I found it was Nina Simone. I listened to all the versions of this (traditional) song I could find, including Les Baxter (1956) and Peter Tosh (1966) ; one of my favourites was 16 Horsepower (2002). But for me no other version can compare to Nina Simone's; her voice is, like Johnny Cash's, so perfectly suited for singing about the Apocalypse.

Youtube link:
The album version

#27 Kate Bush - Sunset

(summer playlist, #4)

Album: Aerial (2005)

Lyrics excerpt:
Who knows who wrote that song of Summer

That blackbirds sing at dusk?
This is a song of colour
Where sands sing in crimson, red and rust
Then climb into bed and turn to dust

Reasons to love this song:
Birdsong -- and the passage of one day -- are the subject of the second part of Bush's 2005 album Aerial, A Sky Of Honey. I chose to describe Sunset as a "summer song", but all the songs on A Sky Of Honey are actually summer songs, a celebration of life on a warm summer's day full of birdsong. If I say this album makes one happy to be alive it will sound horribly clichéd, but -- I'm sorry! -- it really does.

Link to Amazon preview:
An Endless Sky Of Honey
(The whole Sky Honey as one song)

YouTube link:
This video shows the album cover, which looks like a photo of islands in the sea, but is actually a waveform of a blackbird song.

#26 Cesária Évora - Sodade

(summer playlist, #3)

Album: Miss Perfumado (1992)

Lyrics excerpt:
Quem mostra' bo ess caminho longe?
Quem mostra' bo ess caminho longe?
Ess caminho pa São Tomé.
(Who showed you this long journey?
Who showed you this long journey?
The journey to São Tomé.)

Reasons to love this song:
"Sodade" in Cape Verdean Creole or "Saudade" in Portuguese is not a concept that can be translated in one word; I'm not a speaker of either, but I take it from good authority that "nostalgia" would be the closest one.
The song was written by Armando Zeferino Soares (also attributed to Amândio Cabral and Luís Morais), and describes the longing of Cape Verdean emigrants to São Tomé e Príncipe for their homeland.
For many listeners throughout the world, myself included, this song is tied to Cesária Évora, the singer who made the whole genre of morna internationally famous.

YouTube links:

A live performance by Cesária Évora in Paris in 2004:


Cesária Évora performing the song as a duet with Greek singer Eleftheria Arvanitaki -- I love how these two completely different voices sound together:

#25 Enya - Orinoco Flow

(summer playlist, #2)

Album: Watermark (1988)

Lyrics excerpt: 
From the North to the South, Ebudae into Khartoum,
From the deep sea of Clouds to the island of the moon,
Carry me on the waves to the lands I've never been,
Carry me on the waves to the lands I've never seen.

Reasons to love this song:
To some people, "Enya" has become not only the name of a single artist but also the name of a whole genre. Consequently, her name has also been used derisively by some people, as a synonym for bland elevator music. Well, I think these people are very silly and they don't know what they're talking about.
I still remember how I felt when I first heard this song in 1988 -- the video came up on MTV and I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and heard, unlike anything I had heard before. The fact that her music has been emulated so much has never, for me, cheapened its appeal.
Once, in the nineties, I was traveling by ferry to a Mediterranean island and they were playing Watermark (the whole album) on the ship's stereo. Listening to this album and looking at the blue sea what an unforgettable, dreamlike experience.

Link to Amazon preview: 
 Orinoco Flow

YouTube link: 
The official video

#24 Emiliana Torrini - Unemployed In Summertime

(summer playlist, #1)

Album: Love In The Time Of Science (1999)

Lyrics excerpt:
Let's get drunk on saturday
Walk on Primrose Hill
Until we lose our way
We''ll get sunburned on the grass
Playing silly buggers 'till I make a pass
And you laugh at my face

Reasons to love this song:
Do you remember how, when you were a child, summers would last forever -- a seemingly endless time without any obligations? And then, as you grow older, time starts speeding up and summers get shorter and shorter and much less carefree. But in your early twenties there is still something left of that superpower children posess: slowing down time. This song captures the feeling of a long, carefree summer perfectly.

YouTube Link:
The official video:

A little postscriptum on Gypsy by Suzanne Vega

In this post I mentioned that Suzanne Vega's songs Gypsy and In Liverpool were based on the same person, her first love. I saw her in concert last week and she joked about this connection in a very charming way.

By some strange coincidence, just as she was about to play Gypsy, a man from the audience shouted: "In Liverpool!" She said "Thank you for the suggestion, but not right now," and went on to tell the story about the summer camp where she taught folk music and disco dancing, and the man who inspired Gypsy taught art. She didn't mention that this man was from Liverpool, but she suddenly asked in a dreamy voice: "Are you from Liverpool, sir? You who requested the song?" That would have been a lovely epilogue to this story, if this man from her past appeared at one of her concerts and requested a song about himself. It wasn't him, though! Or at least he didn't want to admit it...

She did play In Liverpool as an encore, and it was great.

#23 The Pretenders - 2000 Miles

(Winter/Christmas playlist, #2)

Album: Learning to Crawl (1983)

Lyrics excerpt:
In these frozen and silent nights
Sometimes in a dream
You appear
Outside under the purple sky
Diamonds in the snow sparkle
Our hearts were singing
It felt like Christmas time

Reasons to love this song:
For me it is one of the two best non-religious Christmas songs (the other one being The Pogues' Fairytale of New York). It perfectly captures the melancholy feeling of separation from a loved one as Christmas is approaching (regardless of whether the loved one is physically far away or even dead -- the song is said to be inspired by the 1982 death of The Pretenders' guitarist James Honeyman-Scott.
2000 Miles was used in the series Beverly Hills, 90210, in a scene in which the character Steve Sanders leaves to search for his real mother. I remember that, even though I didn't like the series very much and I thought Steve was an unsympathetic character, the song gave poignancy to the scene and almost made me cry.

Link to Amazon preview:
2000 Miles

YouTube link:
A live performance from 1995:

#22 Thea Gilmore: Sol Invictus

(Winter/Christmas playlist, #1)

Album: Strange Communion (2009)

Lyrics excerpt:
Come the dawn, come the call

Come, the beating air
Chill the night, soldier light
We'll be dancing there
And rise up, rise up
Day stretching weary wings

Reasons to love this song:
Sol Invictus is the opening song of The Gilmore's excellent Christmas album. In contrast to most of the other songs, which are much more upbeat, Sol Invictus is an a capella choral prayer to the sun and the day. Sol Invictus was the late Roman sun god, celebrated on December 25th; while listening to this song, I can easily imagine Thea Gilmore as his priestess, leading the believers in prayer while waiting for the sun to rise after the coldest night of the year. This is a truly heartfelt, spiritual song about longing for light.

Link to Amazon preview:
Sol Invictus

#21 Nico - Afraid

Album: Desertshore (1970)

Lyrics excerpt:
Cease to know or to tell
Or to see or to be your own
Have someone else's will as your own
Have someone else's will as your own
You are beautiful and you are alone

Reasons to love this song:
A few times I've come across music critics saying something along the lines of "The Velvet Underground were a great band, too bad Andy Warhol forced them to perform with Nico". I would take it as a sure sign that I need not pay any attention to any of their reviews. Yes, Nico was a beautiful woman, but she was far from "just a pretty face"; she had a unique, warm and deep voice coloured by her German accent, a way of singing I've seen compared to a priestess chanting, and she developed a songwriting style that sounded timeless and didn't fit into any existing genre.
I've always understood Afraid to be similar to Tori Amos's Girl -- the artist addressing and comforting her younger and more insecure self. Nico's chant-like way of singing gives the impression of a prophetess or deity comforting a mortal.

Link to Amazon preview:
The album version by Nico: Afraid
A lovely cover by Espers from The Weed Tree (2005): Afraid

YouTube link:
Nico performing Afraid live in Manchester in 1980:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG2JNv5r6yE

# 20 Madonna - Mer Girl

(Halloween playlist, #5)

Album: Ray Of Light (1998)

Lyrics excerpt:
I ran past the churches and the crooked old mailbox
Past the apple orchards and the lady that never talks
Up into the hills, I ran to the cemetery
And held my breath, and thought about your death

I ran to the lake, up into the hills
I ran and I ran, I'm looking there still
And I saw the crumbling tombstones
All forgotten names

Link to Amazon preview:
Mer Girl

Reasons to love this song:
A rather simple, bleak and poignant song about death that concludes Ray Of Light. I've noticed that, when I play this song to friends unfamiliar with Ray Of Light or quote a part of the lyrics, they often seem surprised it's a Madonna song -- and yet, it's probably one of the most personal songs Madonna ever made.
I've seen some conspiracy theories about an alleged deep occult meaning to this song (an example can be seen in the comments to the YouTube video linked below), but I firmly believe they are rubbish. There is no need to look for hidden meanings if there is an obvious meaning -- the singer's thoughts about her mother's death and about her own mortality.

YouTube link:
A fragment of the song with the (beautiful and disturbing) backdrop video made for the Drowned World Tour:

#19 Emilie Autumn - Miss Lucy Had Some Leeches

(Halloween playlist, #4)


Album: Opheliac (Deluxe edition, Disc 2) (2010)

Lyrics excerpt:
Lunatics are dangerous
And doctors are obeyed
They also go together just like toast and marma-

Ladies are like children
With brains the size of squirrels
Lets give clitoridectomies to all the little ...

Girls are helpless trasures
That daddies must protect
So lie upon the table for the doctors to in-

Reasons to love this song:
I can't imagine a song with more dark humour than this one. It's a parody of a children's clapping song with many variations (Miss Lucy Had a Baby/Miss Suzy Had a Baby/Miss Lucy Had a Steamboat), describing the mistreatment of women in 19th century medicine and psychiatry. As in some versions of the children's song, the last word or syllable of each stanza is missing, but it is implied by the rhyme and by the first word in the next one. The simplicity of the tune and Autumn's cheerful voice make the subject matter even more terrible -- and yet, you can't help laughing. I wasn't able to get this song out of my head for days after I first heard it.

Link to Amazon preview:
Miss Lucy Had Some Leeches
Miss Lucy Had Some Leeches (Live)

YouTube link:

#18 Charlotte Martin - I Am Stretched On Your Grave

(Halloween playlist, #3)


Album: Reproductions (2007)

Lyrics excerpt:
I am stretched on your grave
And I'll lie here forever
With your hands in mine
I'd be sure we'd not sever

My apple tree, my brightness
It's time we were together
For I smell of the earth
And am worn by the weather

Reasons to love this song:
Although I have labelled all songs from my Halloweeen playlist as "halloween: creepy songs" for simplicity's sake, there is nothing creepy about this song. It's a passionate song about longing to be united in death with a dead lover, in a similar spirit to Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights or Patrick Wolf's Damaris.
The lyrics to the song are a translation of an anonymous Irish poem from the seventeenth century, and the tune is traditional. Charlotte Martin's version is a cover of Sinéad O'Connor's version from I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got (1990), and O'Connor in turn credits Phillip King, who recorded the song in 1979.
Personally I prefer Charlotte Martin's version to O'Connor's, because it is more passionate (strangely, I think, because Sinéad O'Connor is on the whole a more passionate artist.) I also love the darker, more mystical version recorded by Dead Can Dance.

Link to Amazon preview:
I Am Stretched Out on Your Grave (Studio)

YouTube link:
Charlotte Martin performing the song live in 2007: