Dolly Parton - Jolene (Todd Terje Remix)

Joe writes: No-one is better at remixing classics than Todd Terje.

Tobias Jesso Jr - How Could You Babe

Joe writes: I thoroughly approve of Tobias Jesso Jr because I love the seventies soft rock he's referencing, and he's doing it authentically - you could play this next to Nilsson or the first Elton John album and it would stand up. OK this is no Your Song or Without You, but it's a decent song, with shades of George Michael's One More Try.

Your Song:




Without You:





One More Try:

R.I.P. Lesley Gore

Phil writes: Lesley Gore will surely be remembered for one monster hit that has echoed down the years.  It may or may not be great music.  I happen to think that it is a worthy pop classic.  When a song is played so many times over so many years it usually deserves to be on WGM:

LunchBox Lewis - Bills

Joe writes: Fun pop hip hop tune on Dr Luke's label Kemosabe/Sony.

Houndmouth - Sedona

Joe writes: This is such a clever song. The backing track is a very simple eight bar loop. The vocal seems to start midway through a line, then embarks on an extended melody that finally resolves 36 bars later (yes, I counted them). Björn and Benny or Bruce (Springsteen, circa 1975) would be proud.

Ellie Goulding - Love Me Like You Do

Joe writes: A song written from the point of view of the female protagonist of 50 Shades Of Grey could be very bad, but this is very good. It was produced by Max Martin and Ali Payami and written by those two plus Savan Kotecha, Ilya and Tove Nilsson. I especially like the line "What are you waiting for?". I also admire the relentless opportunism of Ellie and her team - almost every single seems to have an angle of some kind, and there are a lot of them.

James Bay - Scars

Joe writes: This is the first James Bay track I've really liked, but I do really like it.

OMI - Cheerleader (Felix Jaehn Remix) and Kygo - Firestone

Joe writes: Two massive tracks from round the world that haven't happened in the UK yet:

Emile Haynie feat. Lana Del Rey - Wait For Life

Joe writes: Magic

Emmy The Great - Swimming Pool

Joe writes: Someone on YouTube described this as Lana Del Rey without the artifice which seems accurate.

Jeff Buckley - Mama You Been On My Mind

Joe writes: Lapsley did the bedtime mix on Annie Mac's Radio 1 show last night including Jeff Buckley's cover of this early Dylan break up song:




Jeff Buckley was a brilliant interpreter of other people's songs. He needed nothing more than a guitar and vocal to elevate them into something magical (he reminds me of Eva Cassidy in this respect).

I've just added this to my Spotify playlist of favourite Dylan songs:

Ona Watson - Take This Job And Shove It

Joe writes: I heard this on Cerys Matthew's excellent 6 Music show. She prefaced it by saying that a large proportion of people who quit their jobs do so in January. It's a 1978 cover of a song by David Allen Coe. It wasn't a hit and Ona doesn't appear to have recorded again, but he's still performing in Birmingham, Alabama. The track is hard to find but it has been compiled by the excellent Tony Rounce on the album Cold Cold Heart: Where Country Meets Soul volume 3, which is available here.

Bob Seger inspired Prince to write Purple Rain

...as this article explains (it also explains a lot of other fascinating stuff about Purple Rain).

Joe writes: So here are my two favourite Bob Seger songs.

We've Got Tonight - you can hear how this might have inspired Purple Rain:

and Still The Same, which my dad used to sing all through my childhood, but didn't own, so I didn't hear the Bob Seger version of it until years later:

and here's Purple Rain which is even better than the best of Bob Seger:

Dion and the Belmonts - Where or When

Phil writes: One of my all-time favourite songs by a singer I like a lot.  Released in 1959, it's very much a performance of its time but it's no wonder that it was his, and their, greatest hit:

Hot Chocolate - You Sexy Thing

Joe writes: Iggy Pop just played this on 6 Music (along with Alfie by Cilla Black). Sometimes hearing a track in an unexpected context makes me realise how brilliant it is. The backing track is super catchy - classic Mickie Most - but what really makes it stand out is Errol Brown's unbelievably passionate vocal.

Like Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive, this started life as a B side and ended up being Hot Chocolate's (and, arguably, Mickie Most's) greatest hit.

Sad Christmas songs

TQ - Westside

Joe writes: I heard Westside by TQ on 1xtra recently. It still sounds great. This kind of melodic rap/R&B hybrid was never cool even when it was huge, and seems to have disappeared now, although I guess you could say there's a hint of it in Drake's music.



See also Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.

Kitty, Daisy & Lewis - Baby Bye Bye

Joe writes: Is this ray of sunshine a cover? I do hope not - I'd be really impressed if it's not.

The Best of The Crimea and The Crocketts

Joe writes: The Crocketts built a dedicated live following but there was something slightly comedic about them (not least their name, as their singer was called Davey), which I felt held them back. But they did have one wonderful song, Mrs Playing Dead. Its opening lines are almost perfect: "It's not every afternoon that you walk into a bar" (I always thought it should be "a room") "and I look at a woman and I know I'm gonna love her all of my life".

Next came The Crimea, who featured two members of The Crocketts - singer and songwriter Davey Macmanus and drummer Owen Hopkin. They were a serious band with a serious name which was partly a reaction to the comedic element I mentioned earlier. I stumbled across them by chance at In The City (a now-defunct music industry conference which gave many bands early opportunities). Their gig was shambolic but I thought songs like Baby Boom and Bombay Sapphire Coma were literate yet anthemic, with the most wonderful extended melodies, and lyrics that pinpointed the male psyche like no-one else. They became the first signing to my publishing company and the first band I worked closely with.

There was a time when every relevant Radio 1 specialist DJ was a fan of theirs, including John Peel and Zane Lowe. Then they signed to Warner Bros US and disappeared to the US to remake their album (which, in retrospect, was unnecessary). By the time they returned home, their moment at Radio 1 had passed, never to return.

After leaving Warner Bros, they made headlines around the world by giving their second album away for free online, but they didn't manage to capitalise on that moment in the spotlight, nor on a TV ad for the most commercial track on that album, Loop The Loop.

Like The Crocketts, they built a loyal fanbase without truly breaking, and I'm still hurting about that, but at least they left behind some wonderful, unique music:

There's one Crimea song you should hear that isn't on Spotify et al - Six Shoulders Six Stone, wherein Davey's girlfriend dies from anorexia. It's hard for me to be objective about The Crimea so I will you leave you to decide whether this is brilliant or uncomfortable or both. It's definitely brave:

The Best of Laura Marling

Joe writes: I know lots of people love Laura Marling's debut album but I didn't get it at the time and, as you'll guess from this playlist, I still don't. But from the second album onwards, she became one of my favourite artists. For me she just gets better and better. She's one of very few contemporary artists who I feel could have stood shoulder to shoulder with the folk rock greats of the early seventies.