Category: Music

Poll: Which is the best The Power Of Love?

On By Laura MorganIn Music

It’s odd, isn’t it, that there are three songs called The Power of Love which all came out within a year of each other? And not covers of the same song, but three completely different songs? I love the FGTH song, but I think that for me Jennifer Rush sneaks slightly ahead. And Huey Lewis and the News have the most boring song, but they get points for being from Back To The Future, so altogether it’s a close call.

So I’m doing a poll! It may go horribly, embarrassingly wrong if I am the only person to vote, which is quite possible: I can’t always tell from my blog stats how many people who visit actually look at the most recent post. Still, if I am the only person to vote, my favourite will win, so that’s OK.

In case your memory needs refreshing, I’ve provided handy links to each song. So which is your favourite:

The Power of Love by Frankie Goes To Hollywood

or

The Power of Love by Jennifer Rush

or

The Power of Love by Huey Lewis and the News?

Vote now!

Advent song for December 4

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

The lyrics of this song have nothing at all to do with Christmas, but it has a Christmas video and is on all the Christmas compilations, so it definitely counts.  It’s also a great song. I do like a cheesy Christmas ballad (watch out for several more over the coming days!).

(My laptop is presently in the possession of a nice young man from Brixton who’s going to make it go faster and stop shutting down unexpectedly, so for the weekend’s advent song’s I’ll be experimenting with WordPress’s scheduled post functionality. If the songs for December 5 and 6 appear at the wrong time or not at all, you’ll know I got it wrong.)

Advent song for December 2

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

I would have had this one last time around, but the official video is uncharitably protected by complicated copyright rules which mean I can’t embed it on the page. But while I was watching The Greatest Christmas Songs Ever last night (purely for research, you understand), I noticed that VH1 were showing this alternative, which is just as nice and freely available. Happy Christmas, Kyoko! Happy Christmas, Sean!

Advent song for December 1

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

This is a lovely song. The quality of this recording isn’t great, but it makes up for that with bags of charm. If the Christmas fairy were to grant me one wish, I might choose to be living in an age when primetime TV was given over to hour-long live performances by the popular singers of the day.

2009 advent calendar

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music, Small pleasures1 Comment

I have pondered long and hard over whether to give this year’s advent calendar a theme or a twist to distinguish it from last year’s. I wondered about clips from my favourite musicals, or country and western Christmas songs, or just 24 Christmas songs by Ella Fitzgerald. But then I remembered how many favourites I had to leave out last year, and how agonizing it was choosing which ones to ditch, and I realised I would have more fun doing the same thing again than I would having to stick to a theme, or a meme, or any kind of scheme.

I promise not to include Mistletoe and Wine again. Not in the actual, official advent calendar, anyway. It’s still November, right?

Oh, Mandy

On By Laura MorganIn Music, TV and radio

Peter Mandelson was brilliant on the radio this morning. He and Evan Davies got into one of those tedious scraps where everyone is shouting and nobody can be heard – usually a signal that it’s time to turn off the radio and get out of bed, because it’s impossible early morning listening – but somehow Mandelson managed to stop it with a very patient, very measured “Evan, with the greatest love and respect I think I’m going to have to take some time to answer your questions.”

Whereupon Evan shut up for a good ninety seconds. It was lovely, and I wish more of Today’s guests had the guts, or the presence, or both, to try it.

But you don’t want to listen to Today when you don’t have to. Here’s Barry Manilow instead.

Weekender

On By Laura MorganIn Films, Music

I was sad to hear that Liam Maher, the singer with Flowered Up, has died. You know how some bands have a sound that instantly sends you back to a time when anything was possible? Flowered Up do that for me. Aged 16, I spent £4.99 on a VHS copy of the 20-minute Weekender video, and I couldn’t tell you how many times I watched it with my friends that year, except that I guarantee that my immediate family will recognise this song as soon as it starts, through no choice of their own.

Liam doesn’t play the video’s hero (and he is a hero), but he has a cameo as the homeless guy who appears just as the song is properly starting (which is just over 3 minutes in; it’s a very long video, which is why it has to be split into two parts to fit on YouTube).

I saw Flowered Up about three years ago on Clapham Common, and they were every bit as good as in the olden days. I suppose everyone thinks the bands of their youth had a unique energy, but – well, just listen to the record. It’s the perfect way to kick off the weekend. Warning: contains swears.

The Proclaimers

On By Laura MorganIn Football, Music, Reasons to be cheerful

In honour of tonight’s trip to see the Proclaimers, here’s my favourite song of theirs (even though it’s about god, sort of):

Edit: oh boo, sorry, you have to click through to YouTube to watch. It’s worth it, though!

The comments below are almost as much fun as the song. These were my favourites (in case you didn’t already know, Sunshine On Leith is to Hibs fans as Glad All Over is to Palace fans):

Rfc1Darryl
This song is for all scots, not jus hibbs fans, n not jus cause am a rangers man, am probably the only rangers fan ye would ever meet that doesnt wave a union jack, scottish independence 2010 !!

Duncsta22
Good on you man. There is a bit of work to do with the rest of your crew though.