Randy Travis - Forever And Ever, Amen

Randy Travis' first single off his second album Always & Forever really added to his momentum. Having enjoyed great success with his 1986 debut album Storms Of Life, he really nailed it with the follow-up. "Forever And Ever, Amen", written by Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz, was the perfect vehicle for Travis' pretty boy looks and deep, ingratiating voice. I truly love this song!

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The Jesus And Mary Chain - April Skies

After the fuzzfest of The Jesus And Mary Chain's debut album Psychocandy, "April Skies", the first single off the follow-up album Darklands (1987), was quite a surprise. In many ways it's a more conventional pop song that was mostly hinted at earlier. "April Skies" bears a slicker production than anything on the debut, but boy what a killer song it is! It reached number 8 on the UK singles chart and became the band's biggest hit.

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King Creosote - One Floor Down

King Creosote - or Kenny Anderson as he's known by friends and family - became semi-famous with his 2011 collaborative album Diamond Mine with electronica producer Jon Hopkins. From Scotland With Love is his first album since, a soundtrack to a film commisioned by the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games and directed by fellow Scot Virginia Heath. The album is astounding, consisting of 19 more or less traditionally constructed songs, albeit with the unusual factor of having been written with film clips from Scottish everyday life as a template. The film is said to be quite fascinating and the songs accordingly so, perfectly written vignettes by a songwriter who was obviously up to the task. "One Floor Down" is my favourite song on the album, and as a whole, this is an album that just may be among the very best to be released this year. We'll see when 2014 is up.

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London Grammar - Hey Now (Tensnake Remix)

British pop trio London Grammar's 2013 debut album If You Wait was really quite exciting, especially because of singer Hannah Reid's intoxicating, deep and dark voice. "Wasting My Young Years" and "Strong" are two of the album's awesome singles, but my personal favourite is the opening track "Hey Now". The Tensnake Remix though, lifts the song to stratospheric heights, employing the bassline from Talk Talk's 1984 classic "It's My Life", turning it into an exotic and, indeed, infatuating piece of music. This just sounds sooooo good!

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Bee Gees - How Can You Mend A Broken Heart

How perfect a ballad isn't "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart"? Bee Gees' 1971 hit was written by Robin and Barry Gibb (in 2009 the third brother Maurice was finally given co-write credits), and they originally offered the song to Andy Williams. For some mysterious reason Williams declined it, and Bee Gees recorded it themselves. Wise move as it became their first number one hit in America. And what a great song it is! "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart" is a love song for the ages, posing eternal questions like "how can you stop the rain from falling?" and "how can you stop the sun from shining?" - good questions indeed.

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Elvira Nikolaisen & Mathias Eick - You Can Have Him

One of my favourite albums of 2013 was Norwegian singer/songwriter Elvira Nikolaisen and trumpeter Mathias Eick's cover record of jazz standards called I Concentrate On You, named after the Cole Porter song. The highlight is their take on Irving Berlin's "You Can Have Him", popularized by Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald and others. Funny though, how Elvira sings it like she owns it, and actually eclipses every other version I have heard. Respect! The clip below is of dubious quality, recorded on a cell phone probably in the record shop Big Dipper in Oslo, but you get the idea of how good it is and you'll see the ease in which Nikolaisen sings the song. For good measure you'll find links to the recorded version in Spotify and WiMP too. Please enjoy!

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Listen in Spotify

Listen in WiMP

Psychedelic Furs - Heaven

To watch Richard Butler, Psychedelic Furs' lead singer, turn around and around, singing in the rain, in the video for his band's perfect 1984 single "Heaven", was a joy back in the day, and it still is. I'm sorry, but pop music doesn't get much better than this, and that's a fact!

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Chromeo - Jealous (I Ain't With It)

Chromeo is a Canadian synth-pop group, and their hit single "Jealous (I Ain't With It)" is among this summer's most immediate hit songs. It's actually the fourth single to be released from their current album White Women and the one to break them through to a larger audience. Cathcy as it is, that's no mystery. I love this song, it's simply perfect pop music.

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Jenny Lewis - Just One Of The Guys

Former Rilo Kiley singer Jenny Lewis has just released her third - and best - solo album, Voyager. "Just One Of The Guys" is the lead single, and as good as it is, it's not the best song on it by a long shot. Still, it's a great country-ish song by the indie darling, with a fabulous music video to boot. To think that this is taken from her first album in six years! She really should be recording more often.

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Tony Borders - Gentle On My Mind

Tony Borders is a soul singer so obscure he doesn't even have a Wikipedia article to his name, and that is saying something. I discovered his version of John Hartford's classic "Gentle On My Mind", cut in 1969, through the excellent compilation CD Behind Closed Doors: Where Country Meets Soul in which black, or African-American, singers perform country songs popularized by white singers. Regarding Borders' take on "Gentle On My Mind", quoting from the CD booklet, "leave it to a Southern soul singer to get under the skin of the song and understand the mixture of loneliness and love expressed by a man torn between lust and wanderlust". Truer words have rarely been spoken.

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