Music has always been a big part of my life so, when we were preparing for Isaac’s arrival […]
Category Archive: Music
I’m unapologetically a child of the eighties, so when I stumbled upon the tweet below I couldn’t help […]
A regular series delving into my musical archives to look back at tracks which are at least 20 […]
A regular series delving into my musical archives to look back at tracks which are at least 20 […]
A regular series delving into my musical archives to look back at tracks which are at least 20 years old.
Didn’t she almost have it all?
It was with sadness but no great surprise that I woke up this morning to discover that Whitney Houston had been found dead in her hotel room in Los Angeles on the eve of the Grammy Awards. The daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, cousin of Dionne Warwick and goddaughter of Aretha Franklin, she was just 48.
A regular series delving into my musical archives to look back at tracks which are at least 20 years old.
The three Gibb brothers (Barry, Robin and Maurice) from the Isle of Man were prolific recording artists in their own right, racking up five UK number one singles spanning 20 years – from Massachusetts in 1967 to You Win Again in 1987 – among a total of 18 top ten hits, including the definitive soundtrack album of the 1970s, Saturday Night Fever. But they have also written a host of major hits for a wide variety of other artists, ranging from Celine Dion to Tina Turner, and from Conway Twitty to, er, One True Voice. (Remember them? I thought not. They were the boy-band formed opposite Girls Aloud in the one-off Popstars: The Rivals.)
In celebration of one of British music’s most successful global exports, here are five songs which have the Bee Gees’ familiar lyrical and melodic stamp on them, but were made famous by other artists.
A regular series delving into my musical archives to look back at tracks which are at least 20 years old.
To kick off my Nostalgia Jukebox series, which explores various connections linking classic tracks in my music collection, let’s start with a topical theme: Christmas number ones. 2012 will mark the crowning of the 60th seasonal singles chart topper. After two days’ sales, it already looks certain that the Military Wives Choir’s Wherever You Are will topple X Factor winners Little Mix’s cover of Damien Rice’s Cannonball on Christmas Day.
Hard as it may be to believe there was a time when the machinations of Simon Cowell did not determine the identity of the UK’s Christmas number one. For five of the past six years, the winner of Cowell’s X Factor contest has topped the charts at Christmas. Only Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name broke that sequence, after a successful online campaign to prevent 2009 winner Joe McElderry’s The Climb ascending to the coveted top spot. (It still made number one the following week, though.)
Regular readers will know that music has always been an important part of both my and my sons’ lives. Although I make an effort to keep up with current releases, the ability to listen to anything in my collection with a couple of presses and swipes on my iPod means I increasingly find myself digging back into the archives for something to listen to when I am in the car or when I am chained to my desk at the office.
Have I become some old fuddy-duddy stuck in the past? Undoubtedly there is an element of that. But the music of my adolescent and young adult years is more than just a comfort blanket to cling to. Great music is all about triggering emotions and personal associations. Familiar songs are bookmarks to memories and events of my past, as I have occasionally explored through my Classic Albums series.
Out of Time – R.E.M. (1991) The album Out of Time was the album which catapulted an acclaimed […]
The Kids From ‘Fame’ – The Kids From ‘Fame’ (1982) It’s time for a slight departure from the […]
The Joshua Tree – U2 (1987) The album: The Joshua Tree was U2‘s fifth album, following on from […]
Jagged Little Pill – Alanis Morissette (1995) The album: First released in the summer of 1995, Jagged Little […]