Monday 22 February 2016

Story Songs, a Spotify playlist, including 7 Years by Lukas Graham

Joe writes: Everyone loves a song with a lyric that tells a story, so it's surprising how few songwriters write these kinds of songs. One good example is the current no. 1, 7 Years by Lukas Graham, which opens this playlist:


I have another observation about 7 Years. I reckon that until recently, a Danish soul/rap/pop hybrid might have been no. 1 everywhere in mainland Europe but still not broken in the UK. What's changed? Spotify, and their power to influence the charts and so UK radio. It's a huge change and mostly very positive.

Mike Skinner from The Streets did a great BBC 6Music show of his favourite story songs. It doesn't seem to be online anymore but he does talk about story songs here.

Friday 19 February 2016

The Mother Of All Playlists and what's happened to this blog

Joe writes: I haven't been updating this blog much but I have been spending as much time as ever seeking out great music new and old - it's just that nowadays when I find a great track I tend to just add it to a Spotify playlist.

I'm sure I will post YouTube or Soundcloud links here from time to time, but mostly I will post Spotify playlists here, which are updated regularly.

This is the Mother Of All Playlists, featuring 4000+ songs and growing, including most of my favourites and plenty of new discoveries from all genres.