COVID has done a number on us. We know it, our friends and family know it, and while I could be ascribing more sentience that is deserved, the virus knows it too. As we climb our way tentatively out of the hole the pandemic has dug for us, and start Continue Reading
Music
Songs, songs and more songs #58: Agnes, The Regrettes, iamnotshane, Running Touch, Flight Facilities (feat. BROODS) + new ABBA single + Eurovision 2022 update
What a year! So much pressure and exhaustion and dashed hopes and expectations as COVID once again trashed its way across normal life and left us wondering which way is up and what is time. Thankfully, while we have felt trapped in a prison not of our making, some very Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #57: Austen, Shallou, Yoste, Skylar Grey, Nina Nesbitt
Life, huh? Honestly, that’s a two-word phrase that has ricocheted through my mind over and over the last 18 months as one life-interrupting curveball after another has come screaming down the existential pike, adding to the already messily complicated business of living with a host of added things that I Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #56: Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Ben Zaidi, Holly Humberstone, Ty Segall, Sipper + September #Eurovision update
Life, huh? It’s good, it’s bad, it’s joyous, it is most certainly not and yet one thing we can all agree on is that it is complex and just waiting for insightful, creative souls to capture in all its contradictory glory. These five artists or groups have done and then Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #55: Frances Forever, Ella James, Bathe, Ruby Haunt, Lucky Idiot + #Eurovision update!
Good lord but the current pandemic-addled state of the world is anxiety inducing isn’t it? As you survey a world where normal is no more, and is constantly abruptly and messily changing, it’s hard to imagine how you could possibly ever sit back, relax and watch life go by. And Continue Reading
ABBA: An exploration of old fandom and new music
ABBA had previously been voted the band the British public would most like to see reunited. Alamy Shanika Ranasinghe, Royal Holloway University of London It may have been almost 40 years since their last single, but ABBA are now back in the charts with two new songs – “I Still Continue Reading
#ABBA Voyage #4 – Songs, songs and more songs: ABBA and five songs of energetic defiance
This post was originally published on 6 May, 2020. There is a popular perception of ABBA out in the general public of a Swedish group who were perpetually upbeat and sunny and whose music, composed of rich melodies and luscious harmonies, courtesy of the combined superlative vocal talents of Agnetha Continue Reading
ABBA Voyage #3 – Our Last Summer: The emotionally-evocative geography of ABBA’s songs
This post was first published on 25 November, 2018. ABBA is the great musical love of my life. Every single last one of their songs summon up some kind of powerful memory, including as a man in his ’50s a joyous/melancholic recalling of past memories, a theme that is common Continue Reading
ABBA Voyage: After 39 years, everyone’s favourite musical Swedes make sweet new music again
It’s a strange but wonderful thing indeed to find yourself taken back to the emotions and sensibilities of your youth. It can happen through all kinds of things – smells, old movies or TV shows and classic books but the medium which most quickly and completely transports me back to Continue Reading
Countdown to ABBA Voyage #2 – Ring Ring to The Visitors: My top 50 ABBA songs
With ABBA set to release (hopefully) their first new music in 39 years, with the announcement scheduled via a worldwide event commencing at 5.45pm UK time today (2.45am Australia – and yes, I’ll be up!), and the excitement for this longtime fan at fever pitch, it seems like a good Continue Reading