The Family Playlist.

I listen to The Guardian Family Podcast, and each week they get this person (almost always a Guardian Newspaper contributer) to talk about 3 songs that mean something to them about family. So I shall do that now.

1) Frank Sinatra - My Way.
My Dad used to play Frank all the time, since I can remember. It's his voice that is car journey's of my childhood and it makes me feel safe. My Dad can't sing at all but he always tries and gets all the notes wrong, but we're always word perfect. And Frank Sinatra is, like, the bomb. This song in particular is my favourite.

2) Garth Brooks - Friends in Low Places.
Well, first off, this is probably the best song ever. And Garth Brooks can sing. This is also a song that reminds me of my mum and playing so loud in her car that the speakers broke. It's just one of those songs that makes me feel close to her because we just laugh all the time when we're singing it as loudly as possible, especially when we get to the low bit you can't really sing without testicles. She's passed on her love of country music to me and it kind of culminates in this song.

3) Gordon Haskell - Harry's Bar.
His album always used to be playing when my parents had dinner parties when I was a little girl. So I associate it with sitting on the top of the stairs looking through the bannisters at my slightly tipsy parents and their friends. It's a cliched memory but it's true. And his voice... you can tell he means what he's singing.

Aaaa-whooo!

Werewolves of London!

I was just listening to the brilliance that is this song, when I remembered being slightly drunk on our last night in The Lake District, wandering around the caravan park in the rain and the dark, repeatedly going:
Aaaa-whooo! Werewolves of London!
Because it was a full-moon. And thinking I was hilariously, side-splittingly funny.

(And, if you are a certain girl with a name beginning with 'A', one of the tags is just for you ;) )

We are not our Sorrows.

So says Nerina Pallot on her song "Human", from her new album "The Graduate."

God.  I knew it would be beautiful, after all, someone who wrote "Idaho", a song that made me sob because, when I first listened to it, it seemed to be me, in song form.  But, it really is very, very good. 

It's a bit more poppy than 'Fires', but I like pop, and it's meaningful pop - if you see what I mean.  I think my faveourite song is "Human", because I was in a really bad place yesterday, and I heard that song and it made me stop in my tracks, and lie on my bed and want to cry because it had made me feel so much more uplifted.  Seriously, the lines:

"We are not our sorrows,
We are not our scars,
No, we are only human,
This is what we are."

really, really struck a chord with me.  It helps that she also has a voice like no-one else's (in a good way.)

Another song I LOVED, was "When Did I Become Such A Bitch?"  It was amusing, and catchy, and I sang it all day.  At one point, my best friend turned to me in RE and said: 'You've always been a bitch, now shut up!" 
Ah, that's why I love her.

BASICALLY....
What I'm trying to say is, go out and BUY IT. 
Please.  I can promise you won't regret it.  And I did it legally, with a real-life CD again. 

Sugar daddy but he's just a Munter.

Those are the kind of lyrics that pepper Mika's new album, that particular gem can be found on "Good Gone Girl", which is shaping up to be my faveourite track.  I'm also in love with "I See You."  There's something about the way he sings it that makes it sound so... haunting, I guess. 

And, I love Mika so much that I went totally Old School.  I actually bought it, not downloaded it or got someone else to copy it for me, but went to HMV, picked it up and bought it.  I know.  Radical.

I love having it in my hands, even though if I'd have bought it on iTunes I'd have got bonus tracks.  But it's good.  It's better than good, it's great.  I loved how he kept the Life in Cartoon Motion elements, but kind of upgraded them.  He is a genius =]

Toodles,
xxx