25. A song by an artist no longer living

I intended not to repeat an artist on this meme, but the answer to this question has to be Bowie, doesn't it?

A song from Ziggy Stardust, because when I was about 14 I wanted to be Ziggy Stardust (this was the early 80s, the era of "Let's Dance," but it was the earlier album that really moved me). I wore weird makeup and weird jewelry and got ferociously bullied for it; the fact that it was primarily Ziggy Stardust* and not wanting to a "a pretty girl" that inspired me to try makeup should perhaps have been a clue. Anyway, this song and this album were a big part of my covertly queer youth.

*Full disclosure: and Duran Duran, who were also boys in makeup. I loved my poster of them more than I ever loved their music, I think.


David Bowie, "Lady Stardust"




( All the prompts )

23. A song you think everybody should listen to A song by a band who probably should have broken up after their first album

I'm not confident enough in my musical taste to recommend something to everybody; I don't think my taste in music is bad, but it's very limited. So I've created a question I like better, inspired by question 24 ("a song by a band you wish were still together").

I loved the first Mumford and Sons album. I adored the banjos and the folk-rock fusion, and the lyrics struggled with religion and ethics and doubt and temptation in a way I found interesting. Then came the second album, and it was not good. The music was more conventional, and worse, the lyrics had become preachy and all the doubting humanity seemed to have vanished in favor of doctrinaire Christian assertions. So here's a song from the first album. I like it because it's very human, often emotionally ugly, and because it can be very easily be read as queer, though I'm not sure it was intended to.

Mumford and Sons, "White Blank Page"

21. A favourite song with a person's name in the title

Yeah, I know. This song has problems. It uses stereotypes and it includes imagery of deception that is not healthy for trans* people. But fundamentally, it's a love song. It's not about hatred or violence, and for 1970, that's pretty damn good.

Also, I love the Kinks and wanted to include a song by them.

The Kinks, "Lola"





( All the prompts )

19. A song that makes you think about life

"Thinking about life" seems to me a fundamentally adolescent thing. I don't mean that as an insult; it's just that in my experience, as people get older, the questions become more specific. There's a loss of ambition, or arrogance, or energy; "life" is just too big a topic.

So here's a song about adolescence and (I think) about the looming spectre of adulthood.

The Mountain Goats, "Damn These Vampires"





( All the prompts )

17. A song that you would sing as a duet on karaoke

I don't sing in public. But if I did, I might pick this song, preferably with two accomplices rather than one. (What's the word for a three-person song? Anyway, in the case of this song, "threesome" is probably as good a term as any.)

Mitch Ryder got famous doing blue-eyed soul in the 60s, then nearly tanked his solo career in 1979 when he released How I Spent My Vacation, which is mostly about his sexual and romantic relationships with other men.* He continued to release music but as far as I know it sold very badly. In 1983, he made a "comeback" album, Never Kick A Sleeping Dog, produced by John Mellencamp, which includes this song.

*A lot of Ryder's music is not really my cup of tea. He first appealed to me because of the queer element, which I learned about around the time NKASD was released; astonishingly, within a couple of months I found a vinyl copy of HISMV in a secondhand store in the very small town where my family did its shopping** and listened to it over and over again on the sly. I only loved it for its queerness, but that was enough.*** I do genuinely like much of Never Kick A Sleeping Dog, though, and especially the following.

Mitch Ryder with Marianne Faithfull and John Mellencamp, "A Thrill's A Thrill"





**We didn't live in a town. We lived in the country about 40 miles away and only came to town for shopping and other necessary things.

***A queer element was how I discovered a lot of music as a teenager. The Smiths, for example, and David Bowie (like a lot of queer boys I wanted to be Ziggy Stardust; I just happened to want it a decade too late) and the Jam (via Paul Weller's later project the Style Council and the swirling rumors, all too vehemently denied by Weller, that he and bandmate Mick Talbot were a couple).

Speaking of the Style Council, ( this ended up getting long and not fun, so it's under a cut )

15. A song that is a cover by another artist

This is another one where I have to link two songs.

First, and predictably if you know my taste, is the Doug Anthony All Stars' cover of "Throw Your Arms Around Me," originally by Hunters and Collectors. I've listened to a lot of versions of this song (OMG stop judging me!) and this really is the best I've heard.





Second, here's Jonathan Coulton's cover of Alanis Morrissette's "You Oughta Know." I've picked this not so much for the musicianship or the singing (it's just a little whim that Coulton released online, and he's audibly embarrassed by some of the more explicit lines) as for the way it totally changes the meaning of the song--making it more interesting, in my view--without changing a word.





( All the prompts )

13. One of your favourite 70s songs

This song was released in 1973, and surprisingly became a hit. You probably are familiar with the fandom phrase "no heterosexual explanation": well, there's no heterosexual explanation for this song.

If I knew how to vid, I would make a Professionals vid to it.

Starbuck, "Do You Like Boys?"





( All the prompts )

11. A song you never get tired of

The Jam, "Town Called Malice." This video has adorable baby!Paul Weller. If you can't understand all the words (and the words are really good), there's a lyrics vid here.





( All the prompts )

9. A song that makes you happy

This is a live version, because I can't find the album version on YouTube.

(A further source of happiness, or at least amusement, may come from the way the singer's accent changes from American when he's speaking to sort-of-English when he sings. I say this with great love for Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, and with the ruefulness of one Anglophile recognizing another.)


Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, "I Never Thought I Could Feel This Way For a Boy"





( All the prompts )

7. A song to drive to

What better than a song about a journey? Or about several journeys, I think, only one of them physical.

This is a live version, because, annoyingly, the album version is blocked on YouTube for copyright reasons.

Paul Simon with Vincent Guinea* and John Selowawane*, "Graceland"

(*Name spellings are my best guess based on how Simon pronounced them)





( All the prompts )