Here's a summary of the Substack posts I've published since the start of the year, with links to each. 1. The Whole Blessed Thing. An essay about the lessons we learn from songs, inspired by a lyric from a Robbie Fulks song: 'If you've ever heard Hank Williams sing / Then you know the whole… Continue reading Songs and Objects 01.2025-03.2025
Tag: experience
2024 in review
My year-end review of music is available on my Songs and Objects Substack site. At the end of the post is a link to a 100-track playlist of 2024 tracks; I've also embedded this below. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4wWeMzPM0yELFavKzK0t8u Other recent posts on Songs and Objects include: 1. My Life at Thirty. A reflection on the anniversary of… Continue reading 2024 in review
Songs and Objects: A Taster Menu
A Year of Songs and Objects Songs and Objects, the newsletter I publish via Substack, is one year old. I sent my first tentative post out on 10 November 2023 with two goals in mind. The first was to share a lifetime’s reflection on songs and the role they play in people’s lives through a… Continue reading Songs and Objects: A Taster Menu
My review of “Hard Rain: Bob Dylan, Oral Cultures, and the Meaning of History”
My review of Alessandro Portelli's 2022 book Hard Rain: Bob Dylan, Oral Cultures, and the Meaning of History has now been published on the website of Oral History journal. This brilliant book takes the form of a set of responses to the 1962 song ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’, mixing these with narratives about the… Continue reading My review of “Hard Rain: Bob Dylan, Oral Cultures, and the Meaning of History”
Songs and Objects: June and July 2024
I published four posts on my Songs and Objects Substack in June and July. I summarise each below. Sixteen Song Moments. I write about some of my favourite in-song sounds, moments that jump out of a song and grab me. Willie Nelson's Hands. I use a photograph of the country legend's hands and guitar to… Continue reading Songs and Objects: June and July 2024
Recent posts on Songs and Objects
I've been continuing to publish weekly posts to the Songs and Objects Substack. Posts since the start of this year cover topics such as seasonal songs (with a focus on January and the turning of the year), a three-parter on the songs of Mary Chapin Carpenter, a piece of life writing that maps songs on… Continue reading Recent posts on Songs and Objects
Music for Girls Online Symposium
I'll be participating in the 'Music for Girls' online symposium on Wednesday 18 May 2022. I'm planning to present material from my ongoing Songs and Objects project, specifically looking at how song lyrics foreground evocative objects and how these reflect the importance of such objects in everyday life, memory and life-writing, as well as considering… Continue reading Music for Girls Online Symposium
ppp: the personal, the political and the piano
The news that today is being celebrated as National Album Day has inspired me to post the following text on Nina Simone’s 1969 masterpiece Nina Simone and Piano! It’s a text that’s being lying dormant for a few years and now seems a good time to do something with it. The concept shouldn’t have been… Continue reading ppp: the personal, the political and the piano
Who Knows Where The Time Goes?
I have contributed to a programme on the song 'Who Knows Where The Time Goes', part of Radio 4's series Soul Music. The programme airs at 9:00am on Wednesday 14 June, then again at 9:30pm the same evening; it will also be available to download on the Radio 4 website. The song was written by… Continue reading Who Knows Where The Time Goes?
The Late Voice now available in paperback
The paperback edition of my book The Late Voice: Time, Age and Experience in Popular Music has been published. In the eighteen months since the publication of the hardback edition, two of my major case studies have died (Ralph Stanley and Leonard Cohen), as well as two artists whose work had a profound influence on… Continue reading The Late Voice now available in paperback
Late Voice 