Here’s a list of the songs that I performed in public for the first time during July 2025. Each month I aim to play at least one new song from each of the following repertoires:

• Songs that reached #1 in the UK.
• Songs that reached #1 somewhere else.
• Songs that have not reached #1 anywhere.

Songs that reached #1 in the UK

Date	Song (Artist, Year it reached #1)	Notes
Sun 6-Jul-2025	I want to hold your hand (Beatles, 1963)	Still so many Beatles songs to add to my repertoire
Sun 13-Jul-2025	I’ve Never Been to Me (Charlene, 1982)	Featured on “Pick of the Pops” recently, when it was #1. I just had to revisit this one, a Motown #1 no less

Songs that reached #1 somewhere else

Date	Song (Artist, Year it reached #1)	Notes
Sun 6-Jul-2025	Love Train (O’Jays, 1973)	#1 in the US. Rod Stewart performed it at Glastonbury the previous weekend, which prompted me to learn it
Sun 13-Jul-2025	Gypsies Tramps and Thieves (Cher, 1971)	#1 in the US. It features in my favourite episode of “The Simpsons”, S2Ep11 “One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish”
Sun 20-Jul-2025	Save the Last Dance for Me (Drifters, 1960)	#1 in the US. Reportedly the last song that Leonard Cohen ever played live.

Songs that have not reached #1 anywhere

Date	Song (Artist, Year it reached #1)	Notes
Sun 6-Jul-2025	Dolphins (Tim Buckley, n/a)	A frequent choice by the house band at my favourite music nights (which ended in March this year). There’s a great “Old Grey Whistle Test” performance of this, which is where I first heard it. “Sometimes I wonder, do you ever think of me?”
Sun 13-Jul-2025	Snowbird (Anne Murray, n/a)	My son’s choice, something he heard on Tony Blackburn’s Golden Hour on Radio 2. I used to play it 50 years ago, from a songbook owned by an Architecture student who used to stay with my family in term-time.
Sun 13-Jul-2025	Until it’s time for you to go (Elvis Presley, n/a)	One of Elvis’s great 1970s recordings, written by Buffy Sainte-Marie. My mother bought this as a 7” single, along with “I just can’t help believing”
Sun 20-Jul-2025	My Boy (Elvis Presley, n/a)	Another of Elvis’s great 1970s recordings. Memories of my final year at college, two friends who shared a suite of rooms, and a music centre. This, and the album “Fantastic” by Wham! were the records we played the most
Sun 20-Jul-2025	That’s All Right (Elvis Presley, n/a)	A classic early Elvis song for the repertoire
Sun 20-Jul-2025	Down in the Tube Station at Midnight (Jam, n/a)	I revisited this one back in February, when Rick Buckler died, and finally played it in public several months later
Sun 20-Jul-2025	Suspicion (Elvis Presley, n/a)	Like “The Girl of My Best Friend”, a 1960s Elvis recording that became better known in the 1970s, on re-release