Run for home - Lindisfarne

Run for home is a single from Lindisfarne's 1978 album Back and fourth. Not really a folk song or even a folk-rock song, it is a full production number featuring a beautiful cor anglais element that reflects the whistfulness of the lyrics. At the time, it was hailed as "Alan Hull's best song to date". Not their highest charting song, it sold more than any other. It fits broadly into the on the road genre of rock song but is more definitely a song that reiterates an idea at least as old as the 1823 song Home sweet home! For Lindisfarne home was the north east but there is nothing that ties this number to any particular place - it can be your home or mine (Wales - where I happen to be writing this). One wonders if the confessions (I've made some mistakes ... I've looned with them screamed at the moon Behaved like a buffoon) points to a Prodigal returning home theme but there are so few lyrics it would be hard to sustain the argument. It is best listened to as an assertion that when you've seen all that this world has to offer, you'll probably find that your heart feels warmest for the earliest scenes of your life, back at home. Or to go further, it encapsulates Proverbs 2:8 Like a bird that flees its nest is anyone who flees from home. I can certainly identify with the song's way of thinking, having spent most of my life outside Wales, in London. There's nowhere quite like home.

One day at a time - Lena Martell

A very popular Country and Western-style Gospel song, recorded by over 200 artists, it has reached No.1 many times. Chief writer, Marijohn Wilkin, had a conventional Baptist upbringing in the States and became a schoolteacher. Three years into her marriage her husband, a pilot, died in South Africa, in the war. She remarried and when she was 37 and moved to Nashville where she became a successful writer of country songs. Amid the acclaim, money and success she stopped attending church and eventually became addicted to alcohol. More than once she attempted suicide. When she was 53 she wrote this her most famous song. It came at a time when she was totally frustrated by what seemed to her an inability to write Gospel songs. She stopped by a small church and asked a young minister for counsel. She was the first person he had counselled, she discovered later. When he asked her what was wrong she confessed she did not know. “At that point in our conversation" she has said "he said a funny thing, but it was okay, because it worked. He asked, ‘Did you ever think about thanking God for your problems?’" She returned home, sat at the piano and wrote the song's chorus. Her ‘Nashville mind’ told her it was a hit. She wrote some verses but did not complete the song until she had help from Kris Kristofferson the next day. It was first a hit for American country singer Marilyn Sellars in 1974. I particularly remember the version by Scots singer Lena Martell recorded for the UK market in 1979. A big success, it stayed at No. 1 for three weeks. I remember it because as an evangelical Christian and knowing Lena Martell was a favourite of my unconverted dad's, I hoped it would have a good influence on him. It did not appear to. How come? Apart from the fact people often do not take in song lyrics, the song, despite an apparent dependence on Jesus, is pretty man-centred and more an exercise in positive thinking. Yes, there is Just give me the strength To do every day what I have to do  but then there is also Help me believe in what I could be And all that I am Show me the stairway I have to climb Lord for my sake, help me ... The If you're lookin' below betrays a very tentative sort of faith. So when Joe Walsh recovered from heavy alcohol and cocaine addictions in the early 90s this is the song he went to. "I wanted to put that song on the album for anybody that comes across my music and might be in trouble too. It feels like the 'phone weighs 80 pounds when you pick it up, but you gotta pick it up and ask for help." The message then is not trust in Jesus for forgiveness but admit your weakness and ask for help, an important message but not the gospel.

Sylvia - Focus

Sylvia, which was recorded and released in 1972 on the album Focus III, has the distinction of being one of those relatively few hits that are instrumental. The single came out at the beginning of 1973 and reached No 4 in the UK (it only reached the bottom half of the Top One Hundred in the USA). It was originally written as a vocal track near the end of the sixties in honour of a Dutch actress and singer called Sylvia Alberts. The lyrics have apparently long been lost. The track begins with Jan Akkerman's distinctive jazz guitar riffs (evidently written by Thijs van Leer's older brother, Frank). Ambience is enhanced by heavy reverb from the other speaker acting as a sort of drone against the chopped chords. The organ and bass join in next, then the drums too for the opening section. Next the guitar leads the band on the lead theme until the chopped chords return to be followed once again by the guitar-led theme. Just over a minute in there is a brief bridge that features again under a minute later when it is repeated three times accompanied by van Leer's vibrato voice. We visit the main theme once again at the two minute mark (note the distinctive variation 20 seconds in). This leads to a false ritartando ending when the chopped chords break in for the last time as we approach the three minute mark, before fading to a close. When I first heard it I thought it rather old fashioned but have grown to love it. It is unlike any other song I know.

Luka - Suzanne Vega

This self-penned song by Suzanne Vega was on her second album and came out as a single in 1987. An accompanying video helped promote the song. Luca with a C is likely to be a Latin name, with a K it is more East European. The song, written in the first person of the child is intimate and haunting. The song was a widely acknowledged popular and critical success. Vega has said that it was inspired by a real life Luka who she would see with other children playing in front of the building where she once lived in New York. She felt he seemed set apart from the other children. She has no reason to believe he was being abused, as the child in the song clearly is. By only hinting at the problems and having the child denying what is going on, the listener is drawn in and the song bears many listenings. It may be that the widespread incidence of child abuse in the twentieh century (something we grow ever more familiar with) has subtly helped make the song popular. There are very few songs that even attempt to go here. What is basically a folk tune is enhanced by some excellent pop guitar playing. The tune is quite jolly even though the subject matter is dark. I wonder if the way you find yourself enjoying the song but then thinking "but it's about child abuse" replicates the disturbing nature of this fearful subject. Prince is said to have written a fan letter to Vega declaring the song to be "the most compelling piece of music I've heard in a long time" which is about right.

Colours - Donovan

There are at least two versions of this song, perhaps more (not including a duet with Joan Baez at the Newport Festival where the lyric about having been loved appears to change to having been low). The 1965 hit is a straight folk song with guitar and banjo. There seems to be a harmonica (quite prominent on some versions) and may be a bass in the mix. This track was not as successful as the previous and probably superior Catch the wind. For some reason (probably contractual) in 1968 a more interesting version with a jazz backing appeared. In both versions the  best thing is the voice of the song's writer, Donovan Leitch. The combination of folk and jazz music that informs the later version is very attractive. Donovan clearly understood well the rudiments of folk music and here relies on the  age old idea of colours. Wisely, only three are explored - yellow, blue and green, each shaping one idea each, the rest being chorus or refrain. Rather than doing the colour theme to death the other two verses reference a mellow feelin' and the word freedom, hinting at a love reference and a political one, while perhaps evoking drug references, or at least anti-authoritarianism, too. Donovan has enough of a sense of humour to sing on one live version "Yellow is the colour of my true love's teeth  In the morning, when we rise  But it doesn't matter to me, yeah!" Guitar teachers will show you that with open tuning the basic song is very easy to play, though the twiddly bits are more demanding.

God only knows - The Beach Boys

Any God fearer is going to be a little nervous about a song that uses the phrase "God only knows what I'd be without you" over and over, especially when this has become a meaningless cliché for most. Lyricist Tony Asher was aware that God's name did not usually appear in a pop song. He and fellow composer Brian Wilson were really not sure whether the use of the word would deny them airplay. It did not. (The Beach Boys had already recorded a version of the Lord's Prayer three years earlier but that is different and time had moved on. Here the idea of God is apparently not a particularly Christian one). If the phrase is taken at face value, there certainly is a mystery for most couples, known only to God, when they contemplate life without their partner, whether that is due to death or some other unforeseen circumstance. It has been claimed that the song (released first on the legendary album Pet Sounds) heralded the reinvention of the love song and that may be the case. Asher's lyrics (I may not always love you But long as there are stars above you You never need to doubt it I'll make you so sure about it) are certainly above the average pop song (Why do fools fall in love? Why do birds sing so gay? And lovers await the break of day Why do they fall in love?). The song is sung by Carl Wilson and has very much a Beach Boys sound, though the instrumentation is very forward looking - using French horns, accordions, sleigh bells, harpsichord, etc (played by 16-23 different musicians) and a string quartet dubbed on later. The musical structure has often been cited for its harmonic complexity, its rejection of authentic cadences and a definite key signature. Its closing section features perpetual rounds, unusual in pop music at the time. There is something very baroque about it.

 

Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

It is 40 years since the release of the amazing Bohemian Rhapsody which stayed at Number 1 nine weeks the first time (and five weeks the second  - 1991). People go on about the video, which was groundbreaking in itself and since its release the song has had a life of its own and succeeding generations will have their own take on the piece. Personally, I feel it is the song itself that makes it so great. I remember getting the single for Christmas 1975 (I was 16). We put it on my sister's portable fidelity record player and enjoyed it again. We already knew it well from endless radio plays and Top of the Pops. Scaramouche, the fandango, Figaro and Bismillah were all words pretty obscure to me then. At the time there were several Queen fans in school and we often had silly arguments about their merits as against those of my favourites, Focus. I remember being envious for Focus. It seemed to me that they could have done it better but being Dutch they never would have. The song, however, does exactly what Hocus Pocus and, on a different scale, Hamburger Concerto, do. The real genius of Bohemian Rhapsody is that it is a classically inspired pop song with a beginning, middle and end. (The parts have been identified as intro and ballad segment [beginning] operatic passage and hard rock part [middle] and reflective coda [end]). The best bit is the hard rock bit but that would be nothing without the rest. By 1975 many had discovered that a guitar band can actually do what an orchestra does and were doing it. Queen's success came from doing it so well, although it must have been a nightmare to record. Final point - it was recorded in Wales (at Rockfield Studios).