This week all the videos are worth watching. I think there are at least 4 which are visually evocative:

1. Road to nowhere, Talking Heads
2. Mad hatter, Melanie Martinez
3. Be Good Johnny, Men at Work
4. One of us, Joan Osborne

Out of these four, the "Be Good Johnny" video really captures in the rather negative pressure that was put on my generation of Australian males to be good at sport. I really like the caricature of the older Australian male asking the boy "are you going play cricket this year Johnny? Nah, Nah, Nah... So tell me, what kind of boy are you Johnny?"

Melanie Martinez song is of course really out there in terms of visual imagery fitting the LSD-type altered reality of the Mad Hatter.

The video for "One of us" goes really well with the lyrical content of this song. The video switches back and forth from Joan Osborne singing to images of humanity living their lives in the strange reality in which we all find ourselves. The images have been purposely red colour-shifted so the whole thing has a more observer-like quality as one watches the various scenes unfolding in the video.

Yet this week my vote goes for Talking Head's video "Road to nowhere" as the imagery in this video consistently matches the theme of the song reflecting on the apparent meaninglessness of life's progression. I particularly like the sequence from 1 minute to 1 minute 21 seconds capturing a couple going through their whole life's events and ending in a dancing kiss — what a cool way to resolve life's apparently meaningless paradox!

So today I watched a very interesting video analysis of a song by the Beatles called A Northern Song. Post Covid Island Discs now usually records the death of famous musicians and of course poor old George Harrison passed away many years before the Covid-19 pandemic. So I guess this post is in memorandum to George Harrison even if he did pass away so many years before this website was even born. Yet there appears to be so much more to this song of Harrison's than meets the eye as explained by James Hargreaves in his video which is also included under the Beatles Anthrology recording of Harrison's clever song which I think, as Hargreaves argues, is a passive-aggressive dig at the way McCartney and Lennon treated him as an inferior member of the Beatles.

After watching Hargreaves excellent analysis of the Harrison's song, along with his detailing of the complicated tensions that existed between the Beatles in the late 60s, it became obvious that the band was always in trouble and it was only a matter of time before the fab four would go their separate ways. Hargreaves analysis challenges the commonly held idea that the breakup of the band was solely down to Yoko entering the scene as clearly relational tensions in the Beatles were not just confined to John and Paul.

A less known version but better version (in my opinion) of the song before Lennon and McCartney fell into a possible trap set by Harrison (see Hargreaves analysis below).

Analysis of the song and its meaning by James Hargreaves

The mainstream version of the song as first published on the Yellow Submarine Album

So my centre of gravity appears to be songs of the seventies and eighties right? I have occasionally ventured into the 21^st century but now it is time to go even further back to 1969 and this timeless classic. This song has such classic lyrics. I particularly like

you get an even suntan on your back and on your legs. And when the snow falls your found in St Moritz with the other jetset, and you sip your Napoleon brandy but you never get your lips wet.

"All we ever want is more, a lot more than we had before, so take me to the nearest store." The character of the modern age. The beginning of this song always sounds like the same sound effect sequence used in Pink Floyd's "Money". Now the odd thing about her album entitled "Up" is Shania did two versions of each song. One was called the red version the other the blue version. Although she has uploaded the red version song to Youtube, there is not video clip to go with it, but I have included it below just in case you want to directly compare the two musical styles she uses across her two albums.

The Red Version

The Blue Version

A dark song from Radiohead. To me the meaning of this song is ambiguous. I guess the simple interpretation is that he thinks he is a creep as he looks upon the woman he loves who he knows he is totally unworthy of.

Yet another interpretation is one of deep sarcasm where he is processing how a woman has made him feel in terms of the way she has treated him and he is taking on that persona. An interesting song either way although a strong language warning for those who are sensitive to swearing.

Another very clever thing about this song is the musical progression. The music in the verses is very smooth but at the point in the chorus where Thomas sings "I'm a creep" a very dissonant out of time guitar chord is struck which really matches the dystopian meaning of the words that are being sung at that point. Such a very creative use of rock music matching it to the overall theme of the song.

Wow who remembers this classic? Ha he sounds a bit like Rees Mogg. Should have posted this a week ago for halloween but sadly that was the day Sean Connery died.

Men at work are probably known in most countries as a one hit wonder band with their most famous song being Down Under (Covid Island Discs day 30).

However in Australia they did have other hits, and this was one of them.

OK we shall finish the week off with a song from the band Crowded House. Now this song was only published last month so for once I am citing song which are up to date rather than my usual living in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Poor old Neil Finn is looking a lot older than I remember him in the days of Split Enz. I've only listened to the song a few times but it is pretty good with what I would describe as a fairly laid back feel to it. The video clip is also pretty interesting with lots of evocative images in it.