I’ve always thought that the Pet Shop Boys’ version of Always On My Mind was better than Elvis’s, which in turn was better than Willie Nelson’s. However, repeated listening of this playlist has recently led me to question this view. Elvis and the PSBs are flashier, but Willie’s the only one who sounds like he means it. If you wanted a version to make you cry, and why wouldn’t you, it would definitely be his:
So then I decided maybe it went Willie>PSBs>Elvis, but – but! – Elvis’s has just the best drumming ever, throughout and especially at 2:43:
But, obviously, the Pet Shop Boys can’t be last, because their version is one of the best songs in the whole world ever. I can’t hear that first zing of the Electrobang (or Orchestra Hit, as I’m told it’s really called) without wanting to get up and dance, much like these people are:
So I don’t know any more. Maybe, and this goes very much against my grain, I like them all the same amount. But if you have a favourite please let me know.
I am alive and bursting with things to write about just as soon as I get the time, but while you’re waiting here is a piece in Mostly Film where a bunch of people including me write about their favourite holiday films. Actually, I’m not certain that the one I chose is my favourite holiday film, but I had more to say about it than I did about my secret real favourite, which is Cocktail. And if you need more cheering up on this greyish Monday morning, here are the Beach Boys in all their eighties glory:
Radio is just about the best thing in the world. It’s free, it’s made brilliantly well on the cheap by people who love it, it’s the original social medium (we were doing phone-ins, requests and community events before the web existed), you can do it while cooking or running or commuting, and – even though some stations and presenters boast listeners in their millions – it’s still the most intimate and immediate medium of all.
With the advent of on-demand listening and the explosion in ways to get hold of audio content radio has more competition than ever, but it’s still doing what it does better than anyone else does it, and it is still uniquely placed to deliver an experience that your Spotifys and Last.fms can’t get anywhere near – a personally-curated listening experience hosted by a trusted, human, person; the opportunity to be introduced to music you might never have heard about otherwise, to become an active part of a community both virtual and real, to have a friendly voice accompanying you as you drive through the night or fight insomnia. Radio is just about the best thing in the world.
So in case you are not a radio listener, or in case you are one of those radio listeners who sticks devotedly to the same station at all times, I have put together a listening guide for a day’s worth of radio featuring some of my favourite programmes, as well as some ways to get more from radio than you do today. Even if you just try one of these shows, I think you’ll be glad you did.
Breakfast
I have listened to just about every London-based FM station first thing in the morning over the years; starting in the eighties with Capital, then moving on to KISS, XFM, Magic and Virgin Radio (now Absolute) before eventually settling down to Radio 4’s Today programme, which I endured for several years before deciding I didn’t need to be made that angry that early in the day. So these days, to keep my blood pressure down, I start the day with Chris Evans’ Radio 2 breakfast show (6.30-9.30am), which has enough news and sport to keep me interested, but is also funny and chatty and has songs. It’s the biggest breakfast show in the country, and in this case nine million people aren’t wrong.
Late morning
This is the one I’m most excited about sharing with you, because unless you are a cab driver you may never have spent much time listening to LBC, but James O’Brien (10am-1pm) is just simply the best broadcaster I have ever heard – thoughtful, interested, not afraid of silence or of awkward moments. He starts each show with a fifteen-minute monologue on the subject of the day, and listening to him talk on, seemingly unscripted, never gets old (he would, I am sure, do very well on Just A Minute). Then he goes on to host the only phone-in show I know in which people’s opinions are genuinely changed as the conversation develops. He is the very opposite of a shock jock, and he should be on twenty-four hours a day.
Lunchtime
I know we haven’t had much music yet but bear with me, because for your grown-up Radio 4 shot of news World At One (1-1.45pm) is a far better and less hysterical bet than the Today programme.
Afternoons
Absolute, Virgin as was, competes with Magic as the station whose musical tastes most closely match my own, but Absolute is (it pains me to say) a little bit cooler, and Andy Bush (1pm-5pm) is a good and funny presenter. They promise no song repeats between 10am and 5pm, so you can while away the afternoon knowing you won’t be subjected to the same Taylor Swift song once an hour.
Drivetime
…but if Magic is more your bag, then the time to listen is 5pm to 8pm when Angie Greaves, one of the UKs only standalone woman presenters (we are mostly on the radio as sidekicks, sadly), presents a mixture of music and features through which her warm personality shimmers at all times.
Evenings
We haven’t had any classical music yet, and if you’d like to add some to the mix then switch over to Radio 3 in the evenings for Live In Concert (times vary), which this week features live performances of works by Shostakovitch, Stravinsky, Britten, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Dvorak, among others.
Late nights
I’m going to offer you a choice here, depending on your mood. On XFM John Kennedy’s Exposure (10am-1pm) is the station’s showcase for new music and the closest it gets to the XFM of old. Over on Planet Rock, though, the mighty Alice Cooper hosts three hours of rock classics interspersed with interviews and anecdotes. I’m not always a fan of celebrity radio presenters, but Alice is an inspired choice.
Overnight
Should you be awake between 1am and breakfast time, the World Service is the place to be. The calm, unfrantic style of presentation – which I assume arises from the fact that many listeners don’t have English as a first language – is very soothing, and the station’s remit allows it to cover stories which you simply wouldn’t get anywhere else.
Honourable mentions
These are the shows which don’t fit into my prescribed day of radio listening, but which you should listen to anyway.
KISSTORY (11am-12pm) is KISS’s old-school hour. There’s nothing like hearing the dancefloor classics of your youth to liven up a dull morning.
The Archers (R4, 1pm and 7pm). You may be able to get into it: I still haven’t managed it, but I continue to try, because the people I know who love it love it SO MUCH. I have learned the names of at least four characters, so perhaps I’m getting there.
Radio 4’s comedy slot at 6.30pm is very much a mixed bag, but if you haven’t ever listened to Just A Minute or I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue then you must certainly remedy that very quickly.
Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review on 5Live (times vary) is a once-a week affair, and I’m never sure when it’s on, but that’s OK because instead of listening live I download the podcast, which has extra bits, and listen to it later in the week.
And, brilliantly, now more than ever you can listen at a different time from when something is broadcast, so you never need miss anything, and you can download podcasts and listen to them offline, and you can listen online or via mobile apps so that you no longer need to be in Glasgow to listen to Clyde 1 or in Manchester to listen to Key 103, or even in the US to listen to NPR: my favourite podcast, other than Kermode and Mayo, is Click and Clack’s Car Talk, which – being a US phone-in show about cars – doesn’t on paper sound like something I should enjoy, but actually I really, really do.
You can also listen online via aggregator services like TuneIn – which is a bit of a confusing mess, but gives you access to thousands of radio stations from all over the world – and UK Radioplayer – which works beautifully and gives you access to all UK radio stations from one place, so it’s the perfect starting point for your day of radio discovery. Now, get listening.
I always have a couple of books on the go – one on the Kindle; one flesh-and-blood, in case I need to read in the bath. Usually they’re two completely different sorts of book: I will often read trashy, disposable stuff on the Kindle so as not to (a) waste shelf space and (b) have anyone know that I’m reading it. But just now my Kindle book is Within A Budding Grove and my real-life book is 1982, Janine and I am switching between the two more or less indiscriminately, and it occurs to me that they are weirdly similar.
I mean, sure, one is a French, hundred-year-old exploration of young love, loss and grief and one is a Scottish, thirty-year-old sexual fantasy, but both take place in the minds of lonely old men lying feverishly in bed, and both are characterised by an obsessive, fetishistic obsession with detail for its own sake. One is about memory and one about invention, but both have the feeling of a dream, because none of what is described is happening at first-hand.
Nicholson Baker and Primo Levi, two of my favourite writers in the world, both write in compulsive, time-slowing detail, so I should be congratulating myself on a happy pair of choices, only I have just discovered from reading that Wikipedia page that À la recherche du temps perdu IS UNFINISHED, which is something I feel like I should have known about before I committed to its 4,215 pages. Oh well. I guess I’ll just have to enjoy the ride.
I should have posted this on Monday, but it took me two days to recover from staying up until 5.30am on Oscars night, liveblogging for Mostly Film. But I’m better now, you’ll be pleased to hear, so I’ve gone back and done the maths and I am delighted to be able to inform you that I did beat my 50% hit rate from last year, though not by much – I correctly predicted 15 of the 24 winners, which (I think, I’ve never been brilliant at sums) works out at 62.5%. The joy is tempered slightly – only slightly – by the fact that the beloved managed 19 out of 24, but I console myself with the knowledge that had I allowed myself to change my mind in the moments before some of the awards were announced, I would have done better (it was pretty obvious by halfway through the night that Jessica Chastain for actress, Lincoln for picture and Spielberg for director were all going to be off the mark, though I still wouldn’t have guessed at Ang Lee, even though I am glad he won because he’s so nice).
Anyway, that’s enough of that. On to the dresses! It wasn’t a standout year, I think. There was less beige than usual, but it was mostly replaced by bridal white (click on images to enlarge):
Amanda Seyfried, Jennifer Lawrence and Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron
Vampy black:
Rebecca Miller and some guy, Jenna Dewan-Tatum, Sandra Bullock
Or a combination of the two:
Helena Bonham Carter, Kelly Rowland and Zoe Saldana
All of which made anyone who turned up in a bright colour look very daring, although it’s far to say that Jane Fonda’s choice was, in fact, pretty daring:
This actually hurts my eyes
I had two favourites in the end. Jenna Dewan-Tatum is clearly one of those women who looks even better pregnant – look at her literally glowing in that picture at the top of the page! – and I love her dress, even though it’s the same as everyone else’s. But for me the very best combination of dress, hair, makeup and all-out movie-starry stunningness came from Jessica Chastain:
How can you turn up looking like this and not win a prize?
In a non-vintage year not just for frocks but for both the ceremony and the winners too, it’s good to know that there are still nominees who can turn up and knock it out of the park, even if they don’t go home with the prize.
Next year, though, I might take two days off work afterwards.
I know it’s really a New Year song, but I couldn’t resist the chance to include a clip from the best Christmas film of all, and if they can sing it on Christmas Eve in Bedford Falls, then so can we. Also, I visited Scotland for the first time as an adult this year and fell in love with it, so it feels entirely appropriate to finish up with a little bit of Burns.
If you haven’t seen It’s A Wonderful Life then cancel your plans for the rest of the day and go and watch it immediately. If you have, remember that the following clip will make you cry, so don’t watch it on the train or at the office (and what are you still doing at the office? Go home!).
<A pause while you recompose yourself>
Together, all these songs provide about an hour of music, which as it happens is about how long you’ll need to eat the main course of your Christmas lunch, so as a Christmas present to you, here is a Spotify playlist of them all. Sadly Song’s song from Korea isn’t on Spotify (at least, it probably is, but I have no idea what it’s called so I can’t check), so in its place England finally gets a look-in with the King’s singers rendition of Adam Lay Ybounden. The clip from It’s A Wonderful Life is a bit longer and I’ve had to use different versions of one or two of the songs, but otherwise it’s largely the list you’ve already seen and heard here. Happy Christmas!
(If the embedded version doesn’t work for you, here’s a boring old link.)
I have aways had a few more songs floating around my list than there was strictly going to be time for, and since tomorrow’s song is all tied up and has been since before we started, today is the last chance to sneak in a spare. Also, I feel like today is the last day before Christmas when you might have time to stop and listen to three different songs (I have included two versions of one of them). Tomorrow is a short sharp burst of Christmas goodness, but today let’s wallow in it.
From Austria, here is the lovely Stille Nacht, composed by Father Joseph Mohr and Franz Xaver Gruber in the early part of the nineteeth century, first performed on Christmas Eve 1818 in Oberndorf bei Salzburg and just about the most famous Christmas song in the world (or maybe the second most famous, but more on that another time). There is almost nobody you can think of who hasn’t recorded a version at some point, but for authenticity’s sake here is the Vienna Boys’ Choir, sounding as good as you’d expect them to:
Today’s second song is O Tannenbaum, which started out as a Silesian folk song, was turned into a tragic love song by Joachim August de Zarnack in 1819 and then, by the addition in 1824 by Ernst Anschütz of two more verses, into a Christmas song, and don’t say I never spoil you because today you are getting two versions: a gorgeous German one sung by the Tölzer Knabenchor, and the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s arrangement for A Charlie Brown Christmas, because that’s the one that really makes me feel Christmassy.
(If you object to the Hollywoodification of a traditional and originally non-Christmassy song, incidentally, you might want to exercise caution when visiting tomorrow, and if you think you can guess the final song from that clue let me know and if you’re right I’ll send you a prize.)
W żłobie leży is a traditional Polish carol dating from the seventeenth century, and it’s another one which has made it, via various adaptations and translations, into English, as Infant Holy, Infant Lowly. I really like the original, especially in this beautifully crackly 1946 recording made by the Poznań Nightingales, founded in 1939 and taken over in 1945 by the conductor, composer and teacher Stefan Stuligrosz, who was just 19 at the time and who remained associated with the choir until his death in June this year at the age of 92.
Do watch the video (or slide show, really) which “Oliver K” has lovingly put together to accompany the recording:
Glad All Over 
