Near the start of it all. There's a purity here that's difficult to process.
Friday, May 15, 2026
1967 Top 40 8th June # 31 The Happenings
A New York vocal group in the slipstream of The Four Seasons.
Thursday, May 14, 2026
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 73 Banco Del Mutuo Sorcero - Banco Del Mutuo Sorcero
Italian progressive Rock . 1972. I imagine you own this. It has an irresistible tug. Close your eyes. The years fall away..
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 171 DJ Sprinkles- Midtown 120 Blues
Deep House. Great to lsten to. Ifid it difficult to write about.
1967 Top 40 8th June # 32 The Monkees
The Monkees had the best songs. The best writers, The best colour. They had a lot going for them that band.
Santana - Santana
You can use music for many purposes. I'm currently channeling it as something of a restorative. To take me back to times and spaces. Particularly childhood but not only . Places in my life which are increasingly distant in terms of time and frankly it feels, space.
I come from a family unit of seven. We've since been reduced to five and the loss of the two who have departed is still a source of pain and loss to the five of us that remain. That's not a negative conclusion to draw I don't think. Just a basic facet of life, A passage of experience you never completely come to the end of.
When I was nine my family moved from Nottingham to London. To Richmond Upon Thames to be precise. House prices had not exploded to the ridiculous degree they proceeded to. We moved into a cramped house close to Richmond Station, My three older siblings got the three bedrooms on the top floor as they were approaching their mid to late teens. My parents got the front bedroom on the first floot and my sister and I shared a room and I eventually moved into my own block bedroom at the back of the first floor a few years later when we moved beyond the au pair years and my sister and I got to the stage that we were relatively self standing. I walked my sister to school and back and my mum and dad could relax a bit.
The Sixties were not really completely over in Richmond in my area. The house next door was ours was home to a group of young people in their twenties and thirties who had an air of slightly grubby bohemianism about them, They threw continual celebratory parties late into the weekend nights, much I suspect to my mother's chagrin,
There were conspicuous squats all the way down Church Road the route I and eventually my sister and I and I took to my Infants School. A glorious walk for me from eight to ten to visualise now. All the way up Mount Ararat and right unto The Vineyard and the teeming scrum of childhood noise. Football,conkers, cricket when we used our fisted hands to punch a tennis ball past crouched fielders and run between brief wickets. The screaming riot of constant noise enveloping us in a cocoon of blissful and unrepeatable childhood. A passage of time to experience and then forever try to recover.
One of our teachers Miss Collins was a distinctly hippie type. I seem to remember her wearing a wig or at least having a glorious perm, a fair bit of pastel make up and she wore fabulous multicoloured costumes. Beads and flares. Scarves, Earrings. She followed no apparent curriculum but allowed us to paint and draw pictures all day. Write and tell stories and when she'd run out of ideas lead us out into the playground to play french cricket at the end of most days. Bliss..
These are incredibly hypnotic moments of lost youth and while writing them what's the soundtrack been ? I'm using to carry me back there to the secret garden that everyone can access if the moment and soundtrack are right.. If you set the conditions. Like some DIY ouija board.
Santana's first. It's a magical record pure and simple. A glorious freeform indulgence from distant history.A good six years before the period I've been documenting but it feels incredibly apt to describe just how exciting and freewheeling being that age felt from 1975 to 1977 for me and how it feels now reliving it in writing.
A period where a whole different set of values challenged the given ones and the idea of freedom was actively sought, explored, enacted and celebrated. This a record I've only recently bought a battered second hand copy of on a whim. I play it quite regularly and it always casts a spell. The lion's head on the sleeve describe the martialed. chaos and purest ecstasy of the album itself . It's cast its spell on me for the last couple of hours and guided my typing digits.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,392 Den Der Hale
Den Der Hale are playing at The Cimberland Arms this evening.I probably won't go. I have an early start tomorrow and a few classes.to make my way through. But I would like to be there.Den Der Hale are a Swedish Post Psych quintet. What Post Psuch might be is anyone's guess. It's more Psychotic than The Sonics? Even darker.than Sunn O))).
I like their current album Larking About though the title is somewhat misleading. It's hardly a skip through sunlit meadows unless perhaps the meadow is heavily mined. It's an incredibly.monastic recird. Imbued with light and thoughtful repose. I probably won't venture out tonight bit I sense I'll be missing something..
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 37 Refuge of the Roads
Joni reflects on age. She's by instincts a thoughtful artist with an eye on her place in history. This song was originally on Hejira but its recast here for 2002's Travelogue. The roads provide refuge for us all.
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 172 Sleater Kinney - One Beat
I saw Sleater Kinney around this juncture, They were propulsive. Righteous !
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 24 Spiritualised - Pure Phase
We're shifting towards summer. It won't get dark intil half past nine tonight. I've finished my tea and washed up the plates and now I'm listening to Side Four of Pure Phase by Spiritualised a double album from 1995.
I've had this record for a number of years, but I've never listened to it in iy's entirety until now. This is the way it should be listened to. The way it makes best sense. I'm fortunate in being able to crank up the volume pretty much as high as I wish. That's exactly what I've done. .
It's a great recird. It still sounds very much like the future even though it also makes clear which elements of Rock & Roll's past it most reveres; Stones, MC5, Kraftwerk, Neu! The Velvet Underground, The Stooges. Gospel and Soul. It almost sounds like a classical record in terms of its ambition and grace. 2001. It aims for the stars. Effortless. .
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 74 Syd Barrett - The Madcap Laughs
In some ways this should be a disturbing record to listen to because it's made by a deeply disturbed man who dropped off the radar pretty soon after its release. But it's actually a very easy record to listen to. What must have made it odd on release no longer feels particularly odd. It's alao too influential to even begin to measure. A key record for many, many artists who came thereafter. Ask Graham Coxon, Robyn Hitchcock and Peter Buck.Ask Pete Doherty.
1967 Top 40 8th June # 33 Walker Brothers
The Walker Brothers could sing the bus tumetable and it would sound divine. Here they sing The Ronettes and it will do.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 38 Night in the City
An immediately wonderful grasp om colour, melody and sunniness. Joni sounds impossibly fresh and exuberant here. But there's also a wonderful control. 'She sounds as happy as a lark.'
Song(s) of the Day # 4,391 Basement - Wired
Rough Trade are onto this and that's good enough for me. I went across the road just now and mentioned them to Nick the owner of the record shop and he put Wired, their latest album on and he agreed. It doesn't take much to get this stuff right. Intent, conviction. Drive.A vague alienation. But not too forced. You don't need to frighten the horses.
Wired isn't weird but it has plenty of independent fire md melody. And heart. .Basement are the best thing thing to come out of Ipswich since Kevin Beattie, They've reformed sporafdcally since 2029. This takes Pixies, Smoking Popes, Radiohead, Ulrika Spacek amd lots of other bands you've never heard of to wonderful effect
Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 75 The Clash - London Calling
'Come out of the cupboard you boys and girls....'
It seems like a good time to listen to London Calling. I hear a lot of people diss The Clash . But this strikes me as frontline Rock & Roll.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 173 Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle
Bill Callahan is a comforting artist. He goves you the sense that it's stull the Sixties bur with an added knowing dimension. Some of the lyricism here is extraordinary.
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1967 Top 40 8th June # 34 Petula Clark
This makes me think of my childhood. And my beautiful mother who had a great array of summer Sixties dresses. It's all sunlight and youth.,.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 39 You Turn Me On (I'm a Radio)
David Geffen asks Joni for a hit and Joni in tesponse is playful with the form.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,390 American Football
I've surprised myself by falling hard for American Football's self tutled fourth album over the last couple of days. It's spacey and grandiose. In The Smith and Radiohead's ballpark. Incredibly inventive and slightly remote and withdrawn. The band are pegged as Emo and hail from Urbana, Illinois. It makes sadness feel slightly stately.
Monday, May 11, 2026
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 40 Chinese Cafe
If you came of age in the Eighties you had a slightly awry perspective on a number of artusts. Elton Jihn, Springsteen, Bowie, Dylan and Joni. This was Joni in the Eighties. Looking back. Not what a twenty year old like me wished to do. As for Timeless Melody. In Joni's defence you'd have to say she's nothing if it an artist and paints the world as she sees it. As it is. Studious.Elegaic.
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 76 Lucifer's Friend -Lucifer's Friend
The author if this list is Swedush aand naturally has a different perspective. I've never heard of Lucifer's Friend. Pn immediate acqyauntance they appear to be Deep Peoplessom.Actually they're from Hamburg. The record is ludicrous but bracing.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 25 Bang on the Drum - Songs From Play Away & Play School
The stuff of everyone's youth. At least those if a certain age. Roughly mine. Btian Cant, Toni Arthur, Derek Griffiths, Carol Chell Tony Ball et al. Talented people. Noteworthy musicians many of them. It's not as easy to keep young children as happy as you might realise.
I've enjoyed listening to this on repeat all day. We talk about childishness but is this as foolhardy or negligible as voting for Populists. Committing adultery or having a nasty spat? Frankly I know what I'd choose.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,389 Seefeel
Seefeel are a band that graced the pages of the Melody Maker every week in the early Nineties when I used ti buy it and The NME pretty much every week . They regrouped in 2007 and find themselves on the cover of the latest cover of The Wire. Not great for their bank accounts perhaps. But fortunately not all musicians are primarily guided by their bank accounts. .
Their new album Sol.Hz is elctronuc hiss. It sounds great In their early days Seefeel used to be loosely connected to the Shoegaze scene but now their sound is perhaps best described as electronuc, atmospheric noise.
This sounded most in place as I was listening late last night. It sounds huge too as eight becomes nine on Monday morning . 'Oceans fall and mountains drift.'
Sunday, May 10, 2026
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 174 Roddy Frame - Surf
'When i was young the radio played just for me. It saved me....'
Roddy Frame sad a poet's heart and a troubadour's stride. An artist's vision.
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 77 Cressida - Cressida
Released in 1970. Rather in thrall of The Moody Blues. A band I've always found a trifle soppy but it has had a rich legacy down the decades. Ask Midlake, Fleet Foxes or Espers.
Slightly fiddly for some tastes but not lacking in warmth or compelling energy.. Like everything on this list it grows in me the longer it plays and comes to convey a heraldic, medieval quality.
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The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 41 The Magdalene Laundries
Tragedy and wickedness on an industrial scale. It's difficult listening to a song of such import and essential solemnity.
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Song(s) of the Day # 4,388 Aldous Harding
Aldous Harding Train on The Island it seems is the record which will carry me through May. It's almost an act of hypnosis I'm finding. I'm listening to it now and it feels like a wave which is bearing me up.. It's immediately clear that its a special album and will make her further friends. She stands out I'd say.
Harding's an artist who sets her own rules.. The review of the record in Mojo where it's Record of the Month says its riddled with clues like the streets on a street quest puzzle playground.Train on The Island clearly has longevity high on its running order.
Akdous seems an artist intent on setting her own agenda. determined to follow her own path. To speak her own language and travel at her iwn pace. Train on The Island feels much like being on a train ir at the window on a ferry. Warching the fields pass or the waves rise and ebb. It's giddy with peace and opportunity. It feels like a record you want to lift and drag back to the beginning so you can further your understanding of why you love it,.
It's a record that leaves a lot of questions answered. It's open ended. A bpt like erm..... life. Forty minutes of pure enchantment. It sets the bar high. The show goes on........
Saturday, May 9, 2026
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,397 Oasis - The Masterplan
I've done my share of slagging. Let's give this a go.I find myself skipping sings. It has its moments. But mostly uts pale imitation to me about stuff that the Beatles Kinks, Small Faces, Who and Stones did much better thirty years earlier,
1967 Top 40 8th June # 37 The Small Faces - Here Come The Nice
This song seems so clearly to be an explicit drug related song that it might well have come with a street map of Soho enclosed, Cheeky Chappies !
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 175 Spoon - Gimme Fiction
Melodramatic wordy, nocturnal Rock & Roll. I lost a good friend who is the biggest Elvis Costello fan I've ever know. He's also very keen on Spoon. I'll give him EC. Much of Gimme Fiction gives me an utch I'd rather not scratch.
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 78 Soft Machine - Third
Four tracks. Four sides. Over eighty minutes. The third Soft Machine album following the departure of Kevin Ayers. will not be to everyone's taste and frankly it's not always to mine, At least initually. .It's something that demands full immersion. Eventually I find myself immersed. At a certain point I actually find myself hoping it will last forever. Certainly coveting it. A cast spell.
I needed a second more informed opinion so messaged a friend who's more informed in these matters . He loves the record and told me a story about how he was on his way back frim the Inner Hebridean Isle if Tiree, listening to it amd a breach of dolphins breached next to the boat. As with the best listening experiences this has been an epiphany
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 43 All I Want
We're all on a lonely road and are travelling. Looking fir the key to set us free.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,387 Jesca Hoop
Saturday morning becomes Saturday afternoon. And Jesca Hoop's new album Long Wave Home suddenly is a preferable option to.... well anything. It's like sitting diwn and switching on your TV to find The Clangers or Noggin The Nog playing. And.getting yourself a cup of tea and some toast. And leaning back on the settee.
Long Wave Home is a reminder that's not really needed of what makes her such a singular and cherishable artist. It's a playful, intricate set of songs shifting fluently between the personal and the political. From the off the album feels like a process of gradual accumulation if beauty.
The songs feel complementary. Not showy. Music like this is a placebo fundamentally. A message that things are going to be OK. Calm your nerves and make yourself anither piece of toast. Curl up. Which is precisely what I intend to do,
Thursday, May 7, 2026
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,398 Car Seat Headrest - Twin Fantasy
Leesburgh, Virginia's finest. A strange reinvention of the sixties and severnties Rock & Roll dreams. This is pretty damned exciting stuff.
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Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 79 Millennium - Begin
This is an absurd and wonderful list full of staggering and brilliant records you never knew existed but fall in love with almost immediately. I want to shake this guy's hand. This came out on Columbia Records in 1968 and is a Psychedelic Folk marvel.
According to Wikipedia this was the most expensive album recorded in 1968. It's gorgeous Sunshine Pop. On release this sank like a stone, Some of the gretest treasures lie on the ocean bed.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 176 Jack Rose - Kensington Blues
Pelt main player takes you back and plays you a lot of Folk Raga drones that weren't a hit before your mother was born.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,386 White Denim
White Denim's 13 sets off as if it's Frank Zappa's crazed nephew. I can't stand Frank Zappa so I'm not hopeful. But I persevere. I've liked previous albums. But I get slightly weary fairly early and suspect that I'm not going to go back to this one
. It's not White Denim I'd say it's me. This is Clever, Clever Dick stuff and not my current cup of tea. This is a record that seems to wish it had come out in 1973. It's probably too clever for itself. I have records by the artists it venerates and feel I should get to know them better.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 43 Shades of Scarlett Conquering
Hissing of Summer Lawns was probably the furst Joni album I bought. When I was about 17. As with many of my acquisitions at that point in my life I imagine I bought it because The NME advised me to buy it. Or U thought it would have approved. Just as I tried to read Saul Bellow at the time. This is incredibly sophisticated music and knowingly so which is my slight suspicion of both Joni and Bellow.
Wednesday, May 6, 2026
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 177 The Hold Steady - Separation Sunday
I always likes me a good story.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 44 Jericho
Sometimes the coffee table nature of much of Joni can turn me off. This is tasteful.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,385 Friko
My eyes go wide, when I put on a record where it's immediately apparent that there's something at stake, A sense of engagement a drive to be alive while we're here.This drawback can have its drawbacks and pitfalls. U2 and Arcade Fire two of those most committed / melodramatic/ ashamedly over the top Rock & Roll bands ever to tread the boards.
Add Friko to that list. They mind me of U2 and Arcade Fire and aslo early Waterboys. A band incredibly adept and not afraid to let it be known that they care. A LOT ! Here come another .
For it seems boy princes, Friko have landed on the coast and are matching on London to claim their rightful throne with latest album Something Worth Waiting For. On bicycles judging by the album sleeve. Histrionic, preening types. Well! Isn't that what youth is for. This is a rattling good album and I await Friko's inevitable forthcoming coronation with considerable anticipation.
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 80 Message - From Books & Dreams
A living dream. This countdown is catching my imagination to an intense, vivid degree.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 26 True West - Drifters
'Still looking fir the past.'
I don't want to get all 'gather round my knee young 'uns on you.' I'm only 60. But I think it's happening to me. A lot has happened to the world in the time I've been on the planet and I'd say we haven't seen anything yet.
We have little conception of the impacts of the technological revolution we are experiencing . Yesterday a friend of mine sent me a link about a man who studied the same subject as me at the same university as me buyt left in 2009 and is now an AI related billionaire who is claiming that they are developing technolgy which will kick start a revolutuin ten tume larger than the industrial revolution in a tenth of the time.
I can't get my head round this idea so I'm listening to True West's debut album Drifters in my living room. I bought it when it came out in 1984. In a record shop in Kingston On Thames. A half hour walk from my home in Teddington.
I knew the guy who owned the record shop. He was a fair bit older than me. In his thirtues or forties bit we mavens recognuse one another instunctively and we babbled for a while about the Paisley Underground, R.E.M. and ither related matters. I bought Drifters .
I was following Happy Trails in the slow but organic way that you had to dioin these pre Internet and Spotify days. Music papers, friends and evening radui shows. From R.E,M. to Let's Active to True West on one family tree. Antecendents Television, The Doors, Creedence, This process took me most of the eighties and half way through the nineties. Then I took an enforced break before I was reunited with my record collection in my current beloved flat in 2011 and went back to working on the jigsaw puzzle.
True West looked back as R.E.M. did in many ways. But their was somethung inspiring about their traulblazing, their guitar duels. Which harked back to Haught Ashbury and Moby Grape and Quicksilver Messenger Service. This us a flawed record in some ways. It could have greater cohesion and impact. But there are any number of glorious, instigative moments,
Tuesday, May 5, 2026
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 26 Jobriath - Jobriath
A mythical and tragic figure in Rock & Roll lore and a record I'm pleased to own. It finds its way off the racks and onto my turntable every six months or so and immediately radiates a brash and slightly tagged glory. Morrissey loved this as a hapless lad and little wonder. He met Marr which helped him make his way to acceptance.despite his inner fragility and essential oddness. It seems Jobriath never met his Marr or his Mick Ronson though Peter Frampton played on this. His tragedy. It's a blessing we have this. Its a record which deserves and will be remembered.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 178 Current 93 - Sleep Has His House
You have to work your way through lists like these to begin to appreciate how vast and inkmowable music is . This is medieval and tender.
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 81 Caravan - Into The Land of Grey & Pink
I'm listening to Caravan on my television. We might as well be living in The Jetsons. It's certainly a different universe from the one Caravan released Into The Land of Grey & Pink into in April 1971 on Deram Records.
The record is unmistakably quaint to 2026 ears. But that's precisely why it will appeal so much to so many not born when it came out. It's a skip down long inhabited lanes. Caravan take their time and although the fluidity of the jams might try your patience occasionally it has a purity that's highly beguiling. Over hill and dale.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,384 Big Big Train
Big Big Train serve up a big big sound on latest album Woodcut. With mixed results. They dip their ties in every Genre known to man. Yeah we have access to all this music but there's no need to try to use as much of it as you can. This is Prog, then Christian Rock from the Greenbelt festival then Queen off- cuts. I gave up after ten minutes.. Ghastly and confused
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 45 Just Like This Train
'I'm always running behind the time. Just like this train. Shaking into town with the breaks complain.'
Joni reflects on a relationship that's failed. Always one of life's more interesting activities. Looking at the possessions around the place that you lived that you shared with them. Some schadenfreude here.
Monday, May 4, 2026
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 82 Linda Perhacs - Parallelograms
This is an album of a particular quality, an essence. Some Joni. Sime Nick. But thise were the chord changes that characterised the time. There's something that marks out a space for Parallelograms that's all its own.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 46 Night Ride Home
The sampled cricket rather drowns out the best intentions of the song here.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 179 Regina Spektor - Soviet Kitsch
Regina Spektor is an artist who takes her own road and has an admirable ambition and taste for melody, quirkiness and romance. She understands that an important element of life is to take your own road. Whether the high road or the low road.. At times this is straining for grace.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,385 Failure
Failure is not endemic or inevitable. Don't believe the hype. Listening to Failure may be a good move. Some records and artists sometimes sound as of they were designed in test tubes rather than being genuinely creative poetically birthed exercises to me. There's something of this going on here for me. I'm not complaining, I realise my own ideas of musical perfection and majesty are not shared by everyone.
Take Failure. Los Angeles Failure in case you want the failure pinned down to a specific region. First of all that's a great Rock & Roll name if ever there was one. Where did you get the idea that Rock & Roll was about success. Do you really fancy a peek at Elon Musk's record collection?
Failure have been round the block a few times. They were originally active between 1990 and 1997 and reactivated in 2014. Up to now they've released seven albums and any number of EPS.
Latest record Location Lost feels strangely weightless. I was minded of a hot air balloon kicking clear of its moorings and heading towards the heavens Their sound is dense but strangely crystallised and poised. A list of points of influence and interest on their Wikipedia page was instructive and covers a lot of ground; Bowie, Pixies, Sonic Youth, Radiohead, Kate Bush . Doesn't really sound like failure to me. Cool record !.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 27 David Bowie- Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars
Every line is a short story. A realised dream. The best night out of your year. Ot mine for that matter I don't mean to be cruel. But Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars makes life sound unbelievably exciting. There aren't very many albumstwhere every single line is impossibly thick with possibility. Spin it and weep !
1967 Top 40 8th June # 39 Val Doonican
Val Doonican. Where to start with Val Doonican. Saturday nights growing up in the late Seventies is one place to start. Val had a show oo BBC One on Saturday evenings. Mid evening. Not going out and hanging on street corners like the cool kids in your class. Not where the action was. A Stranglers concert somewhere. Out in the night....
Val in his comfy sweater and hus comfy slippers on his comfy rocking chair. Everything was comfy and safe. Val, Vickty and Lavinia his dreamy backing vocalists swaying over his shoulder. Somehow it all felt like the saddest thing on earth. Now of course you'd do anything to get back there. Two Streets is as wholesome as you could possibly want.
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Sunday, May 3, 2026
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 180 Girls Aloud - Tangled Up
Oh. Another Girls Aloud record. I imagine it's spectacular.
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