Seven Songs for the Week #104 - 2nd Apr 25

YouTube told me to listen to this because I don't have any Nigerian soul music in my collection.

I have been reading the recent Randy Newman biography, A Few Words In Defence of Our Country. Like many biographies it does tip into a point where the successful years can take up less time to tell the story than the evolution years. Randy has only released four albums in the last 40 years - that's four albums of "Randy Newman Songs". He has done about 25+ soundtracks in that time. Including "You've Got A Friend In Me" - the book recounts that when Randy was scoring the first Toy Story, realising it was going to be huge, he took out his wallet and said to it "this movie is going to be very good to you".

Bad Love is one of the "recent" Randy Newman albums (26 years ago!) and could it be his best? I love the sound of it, Mitchell Froom does an excellent job producing, and the decade prior of scoring films means that a song like Shame absolutely glows as a result of its arrangement. The backing singers, the horns, Pete Thomas' drumming, and Randy doing his thing.

Ofege reminded me of this song, a highlight of Nuggets Volume 2.

A friend gave me this album a few years ago and I listen to it every now and then, go "this is excellent" and then forget about it till the next time. If you don't know Parachute bt The Pretty Things, I recommend...

New single from CMAT, the first ahead of her third album Euro-Country. I first saw CMAT about 5 years ago in the early days of the lockdowns when I came across one of her early videos. There is so much dull stuff in the universe, she immediately got my attention and it's been wonderful to see her only get bigger and bigger. I got my tickets to see her at the 3Arena in Dublin in December - that's a 10,000+ venue.

I did not listen to Tempest when it came out. Can't give a reason, but the "busy with tiny kids" years means that a lot of stuff fell by the wayside. I picked up a CD of it for £4 and, gosh darn it, it's an excellent record. Not sure why I had assumed it wasn't. 13 minute song about the Titanic and a tribute to John Lennon seemed to raise eyebrows when it came out, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

I have owned the Tug Of War album for decades, however, I was recently given a gift of it on vinyl, and I've never had it on that format. On vinyl it works really well, got a much better sense of what it must have been like to buy it in 1982 (I'd only had CDs). Yes, it's a top tier McCartney album. The demo of this song is even lovelier, but it omits all the counterpointy stuff, so here's the song itself. (Fact fans: Wanderlust was the name of a boat Paul hired in 1978 to record the London Town Wings album on but the owner was not happy that there were pot-smoking ne'er-do-wells on board, and Paul would have to get himself another recording studio boat.).