Damn right it's better than yours!

Sharing the day, as she does, with an assortment of random notables such as Dame Janet Baker (91), Princess Margaret, Aubrey Beardsley, Count Basie, Kenny Rogers, Usain Bolt, Kim Cattrall, Peter Weir, Friz Freleng, Patrick Juvet, King William IV, Barry Norman, Joe Strummer and Liam Howlett of the Prodigy, it's the 45th birthday today of Kelis (Rogers)!

Always more successful over here in the UK than she was in her native USA, it all began with this one [which I cannot deny I found irritating when it was first released, but - gulp! - 21 years down the line, it has become a bit of a camp classic, and we still sing it!]:

Kelis - Milkshake

Surprisingly, there are quite a few other songs in her repertoire that - probably because they were all collaborations - she gets less credit for than she deserves, including these three:

Kelis featuring Cee-Lo - Lil Star

Calvin Harris ft. Kelis - Bounce

Disclosure with Kelis - Watch Your Step

Of all her work, however, this one [from summer 2010] remains my favourite:

Kelis - Acapella

Faboo!

Earworms

One tries one's best, but sometime a song or three sneaks itself into one's brain, and takes some shaking out again. Such as...

...this one. I really ought to loathe it - a) because it features the tasteless trash that is Miley Cyrus; and b) because it's Country'n'Western - but actually, this "Dolly-lite" number is inescapably catchy:

Mark Ronson ft. Miley Cyrus - Nothing Breaks Like a Heart

Then there's this, which, if you disregard the chuntering rap in the middle that unnecessarily disturbs the flow, is obviously a tribute to Carlos Jobim...

Tom Misch feat. De La Soul - It Runs Through Me

This one was everywhere in the late summer and autumn last year, and has yet to go away from either the Radio 2 playlist or my head. [But is he really singing "I can't do golden rain"?]:

Calvin Harris, Sam Smith - Promises

And, of course, the Take That boys have an unerring ability to keep one humming their songs for days after one first hears them - it's their - ahem - everlasting appeal, I suppose:

Take That - Everlasting

Enjoy!

Winter Warmer...

The extensive gardens of Dolores Delargo Towers on my birthday in August.

...here's the song that took over the dancefloors during that long, hot, glorious five-month summer of 2018:

Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa - One Kiss

Pass me the suntan oil, would you?