Each Thursday on Lost In Music we run a feature called ‘Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue’ (it could be snappier we grant you) whereby I get to play a classic from the past, a shiny new tune, a great cover version and a love song as chosen by you.
This week’s is a particularly tasty installment so be sure to tune in from 7 to hear this week's choices on the wireless.
Something Old
David Bowie – Let’s Dance
I’m a child of the MT-USA generation (ask your parents) where sombre Sunday hours would wiled but never wasted with saucer eyes greedily drinking in the latest music videos. Few have stayed with me but I’ll never forget first seeing a bleach blonde David Bowie strum his guitar in a dusty outback pub as he strummed the title track of what was to become his best selling album ‘Let’s Dance’. The 1983 album was produced by disco genius Nile Rodgers and for many it reintroduced Bowie to a more commercial sound and audience. It would provide him with one of his biggest ever selling singles in the UK and rather remarkably his second and last number-one in the U.S.
Bowie's epic lyric about dancing under 'serious moonlight' and the brilliant filching of the crescendo 'ahh!'s from the Beatles' version of the Isley Brothers' 'Twist and Shout' were masterstrokes, each complimented by that iconic guitar riff make for a timeless classic that still brings me back to that delirious wet afternoon in Cork.
Something New
Sean OB – Trouble
Trouble is the second single from Tallaght native Sean OB and follows the debut Teacher, released earlier this year. It was recorded with acclaimed producer Rob Kirwan (Hozier, PJ Harvey and The Horrors) in Westland Studios and Exchequer Studios and was mastered in Metropolis Studios in the UK.
Displaying remarkable skills as a song-writer and lyricist, Sean writes with a hard-hitting honesty. He counts stand-up comedians like Doug Stanhope and Bill Hicks as influences that are just as important as the likes of Hunter S. Thompson and John Lennon. Backed up by his explosive band he is now striking out for much bigger things!
Something Borrowed
Soft Cell – Tainted Love
If you can name a better intro to an 80’s song then I’ll arm wrestle you til I convince you that you’ll find it in Soft Cell’s ‘Tainted Love’. It was this 1981 effort "Tainted Love," that brought the duo to international prominence; written by the Four Preps' Ed Cobb and already a cult favourite thanks to Gloria Jones' soulful reading, the song was reinvented as a hypnotic electronic dirge and became the year's best-selling British single.
Soft Cell's version of "Tainted Love" ranked number 5 on VH1's 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders of the 1980s and in 2015 the song was voted by the British public as the nation's fourth favourite 1980s number one in a poll for ITV.
Something Blue
...well that's up to YOU!
