Today Randy Edelman is a well-known film and TV composer, but back in the mid-1970s he wrote and performed one of my favourite songs. Although “Uptown, Uptempo Woman” wasn’t a global smash hit by any means, and just squeaked into the UK Top 30 for a couple of weeks in…

Unit 4+2 had a UK Number One with “Concrete And Clay” in 1965. And while they weren’t strictly a one-hit wonder, that’s the song they’re best known for today. Unit 4+2 also made the Top 30 on the Billboard Hot 100, after being hotly pursued up the charts by a…

I hadn’t heard “These Words” by Natasha Bedingfield for years…until it popped up on the car radio the other day. This is the main reason I listen to the radio in the car instead of a streaming service…you never know quite what the next song will be and, every now…

“Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?” is one of those love-it-or-hate-it songs. John Peel, the ultimate arbiter of good taste in British popular music for four decades, hated it, allegedly. I’ve always rather liked it. Yes, of course, it’s very much a song of its time in the late…

Doing some research for this article, I stumbled across the answer to something that has always vaguely troubled me about “(If Paradise Is) Half As Nice”. I wouldn’t say it jarred, particularly, or reduced my listening pleasure in any way. …

Given how popular the movie was on its release in 1977, I’m surprised “The Goodbye Girl” is so seldom heard of these days. It’s not even like it was a niche-interest art house film. It was written by Neil Simon, one of the leading playwrights of his day. …

If you choose, it’s not difficult to find things to worry about in the world at the moment. A quick trawl of social media should surface more than enough to keep you worrying about something or other for days on end. And while denial isn’t good for us, worrying too…

“Feeling Good” is an often-covered song, but it would be churlish not to recognise Nina Simone’s version as the definitive one. Even her version was a cover though. “Feeling Good” first appeared in a long-forgotten British stage musical called “The Roar of the Greasepaint — The Smell of the Crowd”…no…

Although we’re pretty keen on song lyrics around here, I don’t believe you have to understand the lyrics, necessarily, to enjoy a song. For example, I enjoy listening to songs in French, Spanish and Portuguese. Beyond a bit of basic French I have no idea what’s going on in these…