1980s pop has a lot of fans which comes as a surprise to some of the people who were there at the time (including your Song of the Week correspondent). Mind you, you should have been around in the 70s.
Still, even the most grudging of critics has to admit to one or two gems and this is one of them. Great hook, great title, stupid video. No comment on the hair. Welcome to the 80s.
it is often said that there were no great British composers between Henry Purcell (1659-1695) and the 20th Century and certainly no great opera composers between Purcell and Benjamin Britten after the Second World War. Then again, Purcell left a very high bar. This famous aria is from his only opera, Dido and Aeneas.
What better way to celebrate a sizzling weekend than hot stuff from the Man in Black. Ring of Fire was co-written by June Carter, Johnny Cash's future wife, about their early relationship (and no, Cash wasn't the other co-writer). There is plenty of Johnny Cash on YouTube including his famous concerts at American prisons in the late 1960s. Cash himself had spent a few nights in prison in his time.
In the first week of June, here is a song about June performed by the comic genius of Stan and Ollie. Like much of their routine it starts well...
There used to be singers and there used to be songwriters. Okay, that is a massive simplification, but the term 'singer-songwriter' only really took off in the late 60s and early 70s. Joni Mitchell is one of its leading lights with a large catalogue spanning five decades. This performance is from 1970. It must have been something to hear that voice live.
Cilla Black became best known for hosting the ITV dating show Blind Date. But she had started as a singer and in the 1970s had a regular BBC Saturday evening 'light entertainment' show (i.e unwatchable if you were under 50).
American modernist composer Charles Ives first wrote the Unanswered Question in 1908 before revising it in the 1930s. It wasn't performed until 1946. In the piece a trumpet repeatedly asks the question. The woodwind struggle to find an answer. Sound familiar?
Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto (1919) was one his last works but it was made famous many years later by the 20-year-old Jacqueline du Pré. This concert is from 1967, 2 years after that first recording. Daniel Barenboim conducts the London Philharmonic. It (the Adagio) is over 8 minutes, but what an 8 minutes.
PS. Apologies if the ads appear mid music. Does anyone actually use Grammarly?