2025
I’ve loved Mexican music for a long time and the first time I heard it was on Ry Cooder’s 1976 album Chicken Skin Music. And the songs that stood out were the ones featuring the accordion of Flaco Jimenez.
It’s the height of summer – and what better way to kick off a July playist than with the nu-disco sounds of Goldfrapp? We’ve also got some old-time country (Southern Raised) and old-skool reggae (Michael Rose) and a more modern Polish-Jamaican reggae hybrid. Plus the oddest tribute to Ozzy Osbourne you’ll ever hear with a cabaret version of Paranoid… in German. And lots lots more besides.
Heavy metal was never my music and Black Sabbath were never my band. But Ozzy superseded the genre he and his mates invented.
It’s ironic that Connie Francis unwittingly reached a new generation when this song went viral on Tik Tok in May – two months before her death at the age of 87.
This was the song that sent Dave Cousins and his band of former folkies The Strawbs into the pop charts for the first time early in 1973.
Another one gone: this time it’s Keith Dobson, aka Kif-Kif of Here & Now and World Domination Enterprises.
Princess Nokia aims for the mainstream with a brand new electro anthem, Drop Dead Gorgeous, with a satirical video to match.
Summer’s here (and some!). So here’s a soundtrack for these long sunny days. Two hours of pleasure, opening up with The Prodigy, fresh from their Glastonbury triumph, and ending with Kim Gordon bidding us farewell as she gets ready for a holiday. In between there’s a bit of everything: funk and soul, reggae and country, metal and jazz. Start the dance!
The sensational CMAT was the talk of Day One at Glastonbury 2025 with her superstar-making afternoon set on the Pyramid Stage.
For a while in the early Seventies, just after Glam’s holy trinity of T. Rex, Slade and Sweet had peaked, Mott The Hoople were my favourite band.