So week 25 is a very big week in terms of high quality videos that accompany each song. The top three are definitely:

1. Disco 2000 by Pulp
2. Pacify her by Melanie Martinez
3. The Final Cut by Pink Floyd

I think out of these three, "Pacify her" by Melanie Martinez is perhaps the most interesting visually although the Final Cut imagery is also pretty evocative. Another video that is worth checking out is the final one for this week which was "New York, New York" by Ryan Adams. This video is particularly poignant because it features heavily the New York World Trade centre filmed on Friday the 7^th of September just 4 days before they were tragically destroyed in one of the worst terrorist instances ever.

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 many classic rock and roll songs that have now slipped into history. Probably the most famous Moody Blues song of all.

OK so I'm still prioritizing Christmas songs I enjoy over cheery content. This song from the Pogues is a classic although again doesn't quite fit the traditional Christmas theme. However, in all honesty the song does touch on a Christmas reality that all social workers know about.

My first job was working in a drug and alcohol clinic in Sydney and it was well recognised that the busiest time of the year for the clinic was indeed Christmas time — such is the tragedy of the human condition where often family conflicts are at their worst at a time that is meant to be good will for all men.

So this song is firmly attached to my first job after moving from Sydney to Manchester. At the time I was working as a PhD student in the Manchester University Stopford building (an incredibly ugly building very typical of late 1960s architecture). At the time, there was a young girl there called Juliet who was a bit of a goth. As we both worked away in a small tissue culture lab occupying adjacent class II containment cabinets, this song would often come on the radio and when it did she would often get up from her chair and cool-dance across to a culture bath to pick up her cells or whatever other tissue culture product she was incubating at 37°C.

Before we parted ways, we both ended up doing a parachute jump together which obviously is also a very distinct memory as let's face it, no-one forgets jumping out of plane, not even someone with a memory as bad as mine ????. One final thing about Juliet is she underwent a complete character change within a few short years transforming from a goth-like rocker to a very conservative Radio 4 listener who spent her also became a bit of an exercise fanatic. This was kind of unfortunate because she underwent this character metamorphosis while dating a guy in the lab who definitely matched her character when they first started going out but not by the time they parted company. So many interesting memories for me there!

This is the first song of The Beautiful South to appear in Covid Island Discs and what a lovely little song capturing the memories of a man looking back over the shared experiences of his long life with his lover. I particularly like the line: "Take a look at these crows feet, just look! Sitting on the prettiest eyes, sixty 25^th of Decembers, fifty-nine 4^th of Julys".

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.

I really like the piano in this Talk Talk classic although the name of the band reminds me of UK mobile phone company.