As the Madam and I do the final whizz around cleaning in preparation for receiving visitors, and I turn my attention to preparing the buffet - I think some musical highlights from 2023 are in order, to get the juices flowing for a party!
And the "Song of the Year":
However, as my 60th year passes into the ether, let's have another outing for my song from my birthday post - this:
Happy New Year, dear reader!
In previous years I might have taken this opportunity - in this "bit in the middle" - to put in a load of effort, go back month-by-month, and choose a variety of tracks that have caught my attention during the year to produce a summary of fave choons.
This year - when everything we might have hoped for (after the initial arrival of COVID in 2020, and the expectation that that was it) was cancelled or fucked-over, including our usual break in Spain in February, our Eurovision party, visits to Kew Gardens, Gay Pride, the annual pilgrimage to Amsterdam for my birthday, our regular picnic, Proms in the Park, and now our New Years' Eve bash - I say stuff that!
There is only ONE song from this year I really think deserves the prize...
They remain the campest thing under the sun, and I love them!
Fuck you, 2021.
[A cornucopia of previous musical choices from this, and previous years, is available if you clink the "Pick of the Pops" label at the foot of this blog post]
There are very few certainties in life, but when it comes down to musical tastes, dear reader, you can be absolutely sure that no list of my "favourites" will ever include: whining gits like Ed Sheeran, Lewis Capaldi or Coldplay; nor urban/rap/grime/whatever-the-latest-term-is for the likes of Stormzy, Drake, Megan Thee Stallion and so on; nor wibblers like Rihanna or Ariana or their newer competitors in the "ear-bleed" stakes; nor will there be much in the way of Country or Rock. No Taylor "Gwyneth Paltrow-lookey-likey" Swift, nor Harry Styles, Justin "somebody smack him" Bieber or the GaGa creature. Nor Captain Tom Moore.
Artists who did "tickle my fancy" during 2020 included Róisín Murphy, Shapeshifters, Jess Glynne, Doja Cat, Dua Lipa (well, one of hers, anyhow), Jaxx Jones and Martin Solveig - all featured (or linked to), among others, in Part 1 of this personal year-end round-up...
...and this lot!
Without further ado, here in Part 2 - these are the songs that I loved the most in 2020.
First up, a song that has had not one, not two, but three iterations in a matter of eighteen months - not least the Xmas version I featured here. However, this was the one that made me laugh out loud (and lord knows we needed it this year):
From laughter to tears. A superbly-arranged collaboration between some very big names indeed (to raise funds for Children In Need); you'd have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by this one...
Changing the mood completely, despite the fact that (like just about everything) the Eurovision Song Contest was cancelled in 2020, this song - which indubitably would have won - remains an exercise in pure, understated genius:
What's this? Two bites of the cherry for "Little Miss Weeknd-without-an-e"? Yes. I adored this song for the whole of lockdown #1, and I love it still:
Our beloved Patron Saint of Belting Dame Shirley Bassey apparently hung up her sparkly frocks for the last time in November with a "farewell" album, much to our dismay - but from it came a boppy little number that has been receiving quite a bit of airplay on BBC Radio 2 ever since:
Speaking of Patron Saints and Divas, Kylie exploded back into our lives with her DISCO album, from which came first the sublime Say Something - and then, this!
Ramping up the camp-with-a-capital-C (as only they can), 2020 was also a busy year for the fantabulosa Steps, who released a couple of genuine earworms, Something In Your Eyes and, from the album of the same name, this house favourite here at Dolores Delargo Towers:
And finally, if there is to be an end-point, a pinnacle, a crescendo for such a list of remarkable numbers from an otherwise benighted year - here is the "Queen of the Lockdown" herself, with not only a brilliant cover of an all-time camp classic, but also with a poignant video that just about sums up our feelings about this "year of shuttered venues". Let's hope that by this time next year, we'll have a had few happier times on a dance-floor somewhere...
As always, let me know your thoughts, my leetle chums!
Yes, I am more than well aware that I haven't really been keeping my ear on the pulse of newer music as regularly as I used to. I make few excuses for this, other than a) the joys of getting older and more disconnected, and b) seeking comfort in more familiar stuff in a most unsettling year when every one of our usual entertainments was cancelled. However, dear chums, there are one or several choons I could tick off as "quite jolly discoveries of 2020", such as these...
Let's start as we mean to go on, with a faboo uplifting track [featuring on vocals the lady cavorting with all those lovely mirroball items in the photo above] that might have filled the floor at many a club and festival, had there been any:
Next, the biggest hit of the year, both in sales and in streaming [unless there are any sudden surprises]. Mr Abel Makkonen Tesfaye [yes, that is his real name!] has a penchant for gory videos [as I mentioned when I posted my own personal fave song of his back in April], but some clever bugger out there has merged this song with footage of that dance scene from The Breakfast Club instead - and it works perfectly!
Speaking of all things retro, Erasure received a great reception for their new album The Neon in the summer, and from it, this drag-queen-heavy video:
Speaking of drag - an unexpected [for me] joy next, from a hitherto unknown reggaeton artist from Puerto Rico, who plays all the female roles here...
I was overjoyed when one of my favourite eccentrics made a bit of a comeback, with a typically odd-yet-very-catchy number:
This year, I observed an ongoing trend in new songs that leaned heavily towards the sounds of the 1970s and 80s, including other favourite tunes of the year not actually included in this list by Dua Lipa and Doja Cat [as well as the above-mentioned The Weeknd] - and here's another in a similar vein that was a bit of an "earworm" in Spring:
And, rounding off this "first half" - another sure-fire dancefloor hit that unfortunately wasn't...
Part Two of this self-indulgence will be winging its way in a couple of days.
As always, dear reader, let me know your thoughts!
Another mid-summer fave was a little Gallic number by Dombrance featuring Sourya - The Witch:
