This post is over 3 years old. Thanks for stopping by. Please follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/ReillySJ) You’re probably familiar with the nursery rhyme “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”. There’s a version here with the usual first verse sung repeatedly, and then “in the round”. It has been viewed nearly 74 million times. The words… Continue reading “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, and a few extra verses
After yesterday’s reflections on “You’ve got to hide your love away”, here’s another Beatles song that has been on my mind in the last few days, “Golden Slumbers”. Did you hear Elbow’s version of it? It was released before Christmas last year and accompanied an advert for John Lewis. You can check out the official… Continue reading “Golden Slumbers” and conjunctions
This earlier piece, about my childhood enthusiasm for London Transport, could have been written anytime in the last 20 years. It recounted a week that I spent with a schoolmate, just before my 11th birthday, travelling the length and breadth of the London Underground. What prompted me to finalize and publish it was hearing the… Continue reading “You’ve got to hide your love away”
Here’s another weather-related piece, begun while there was still snow on the ground in our corner of West London, but finalized when the temperature had returned to its more familiar level for this time of year. Two days ago I wrote about having the right sort of clothes for our recent cold spell, and yesterday… Continue reading “When you walk through a storm”, and “The Blizzard”
“The Gambler” is the title of an 1867 novel by Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and a song written in the 1970s by Don Schlitz. “Gambler” (without the definite article) was a 1985 hit by Madonna. This piece is about the Don Schlitz song, made famous by country music superstar Kenny Rogers. Here in the UK… Continue reading “The Gambler”
You are probably familiar with “Vogue”, Madonna’s worldwide hit from 1990. If not, here’s the official video from YouTube, which shows the accompanying dance moves. Vogue, as a verb, is defined by the Oxford Dictionaries website as, “Dance to music in such a way as to imitate the characteristic poses struck by a model on… Continue reading Word of the week: Vogue
As earlier pieces have noted, including this page on the Lyrics Menu, I spend a lot of time listening to, and thinking about, the words to pop songs. That’s why there’s a category for them on this Blog, but I think about lyrics far more than the 20 pieces published here so far would suggest.… Continue reading “Bobby’s Girl”
The shortest “Word of the Week” item so far on this Blog is this one about kakistocracy. I first heard the word on a quiz show back in March. As that earlier piece notes: “Some of these … pieces are about words that have come up in a few different contexts in the weeks beforehand… Continue reading Word of the week: taiga
Last month, in this piece about the Clarence Carter song “Patches”, I posted some links to it and gave you a “mascara warning”, noting that it “is right up there with “Honey” by Bobby Goldsboro as a song that is likely to make a grown man, or a grown woman, cry”. I was reminded of… Continue reading More about songs that make you cry
This month, while thinking about lyrics, I seem to be stuck in 1977. Last week it was “God Save the Queen” (the Sex Pistols version) and this week it’s something very different, “Yes sir I can boogie”, the global disco hit by Spanish duo Baccara. The song’s title featured in a recent edition of the… Continue reading “Yes sir I can boogie” and other self-referential lyrics
The Compartments 