The best video for this week is definitely Cyndi Lauper's "Girl's just want to have fun". The video itself tells quite a funny story of the long suffering parents of a daughter who gathers up all and sundry from the her local street and ends up holding a massive party in her room.

So keeping to my musical thread, yesterday I posted the hit Watching the Wheels by John Lennon which appeared on his final album Double Fantasy. A little bit of rock trivia. Apparently, he was stimulated to come out of retirement and produce Double Fantasy after hearing Rock Lobster on the radio. Another great song to get you dancing around your living room with your fellow family prisoners.

PS: Why is the guitarist playing a guitar which is missing the D and G string? Perhaps he wants it to be a ukulele?

Fast forward some years

Now we move from London (see yesterday's clip Comfortably Numb) to Sydney. A fantastic piece of rock and roll. And what a find on Youtube to see it was performed at the Sydney Opera House. Brings back memories seeing the old Manly to Circular key hydrofoil in action which was later replaced by the jet cats. This 3 part song traces the full story of Evie, from courting through to losing her.

Second song in Covid Island discs by the Verve. I particularly like the string instruments in this song and the line: "trying to make ends meet, you're a slave to money then you die" Not the most cheery line I must confess.

I think it is time for another Dido song. This one has Dido's signature laid back percussion feel to it. The perfect song to unwind to after a hard day at work. The video to this song is also pretty clever.

So this is a song that was released by Alan Parsons after 15 years of musical silence. The video of this song is also really worth watching because it really is in some ways Parson's musical autobiography. I watched this song just after preparing Parson's biography for Covid Island Discs (Week 23) and what is fascinating about the video is seeing all the important landmarks of Parson's life in the imagery of the video, including Abbey road and his past famous albums. In fact, even the very opening scene of the video has a piece of old ship paper with the words "Dark Side of the Moon" inscribed on it as this was one of the early albums Parson's helped to produce along with the iconic Beatles album, "Abbey Road", when he first went to work at Abbey road studios as a young man.

So far I have only cited one song from the Rolling Stones as I'm not a great fan of their music. However, my daughter was watching a seventies hits cable TV channel and the Stone's classic song "Angie" came on. This is another song of the Stones I particularly like because it reminds me of the wife of one of my closest friends who still lives in Australia.

I think this is probably Alanis' best song of all. I really love the musical progression and the intensity of the chorus especially where she jumps notes at the point "thank you 🎵 disillusionment"