May did indeed come, and now it has gone, so that must mean it is time for a monthly review. You know, that one I do each month reminding you of the cornucopia of delights you may have missed, in the vain hope that some of them might get a few additional views. A guy can dream, right? Well, in case you missed them, there were fourteen offerings in the merry month of May, almost all of which were music-related.

One of the non-music ones was, of course, my previous review. Due to the calendar getting in the way this wasn’t my first post of the month but it was still fairly early on, and gave you the usual look back, plus the song whose title I borrowed for it. It was called April Skies – this was a new one for me as it was the first time I had ever played anything by the Jesus And Mary Chain.

There were five Tuesday Tunes pieces last month – that calendar again! The first of them was Tuesday Tunes 147: More Rain which, as its title suggests, was a follow up to the previous week’s offering of songs with rain in their title. The music came from The Cascades, Travis, Carole King, Eurythmics, Ann Peebles, James Taylor, Bruce Hornsby and the Range, and Adele. And just for fun I threw in a new video of Oysterband playing a traditional British folk song for May Day. A bumper issue!

I followed that up with another piece about water, with Tuesday Tunes 148: River. As the name suggests, all of that week’s tunes had river in their title: they came from Ike and Tina Turner (sadly prophetic), Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, America, R.E.M, James Bay, Otava Yo, my lovely Russian folk band, and I closed with Creedence Clearwater Revival.

The following week saw a special post, which marked the fact that it was Mental Health Awareness Week here in the UK with a set of songs themed around anxiety, focusing on the meaning of the lyrics in each case. This was Tuesday Tunes 149: MHAW and I gave you music from The Beatles, Men At Work, Matchbox Twenty, Black Sabbath, Ingrid Michaelson, Of Monsters And Men, R.E.M. (again!), and Queen with David Bowie.

Next week saw me in celebratory mode, as I marked a series milestone in Tuesday Tunes 150: Sunshine. I wanted to play some happy songs for this, and all of them had the word sunshine in their title (but not sun or sunny, I was very strict with myself!). They came from Katrina and the Waves, Cream, Stevie Wonder, Donovan, Osibisa, Herman’s Hermits, OneRepublic, and The Beatles. A pretty mixed bag of happiness!

For the final one of the month I had chosen a theme but just couldn’t get it to work. So I went back to the mega list of my favourites that I compiled some months back and gave you a themed set from that, which became Tuesday Tunes 151: British Favourites. The tunes were by The Rolling Stones, The Equals, Elton John, Ralph McTell, Fairport Convention, Cat Stevens, Small Faces, and Rod Stewart. I didn’t realise it until I’d almost finished writing the piece, but all of those songs came from a short period – 1966 to 1972 – which probably says a lot about when my musical tastes were being formed.

As has now become my habit I also took part in Song Lyric Sunday. The first of the month gave us the theme of boy bands. Eschewing the temptation to play a load of crap aimed at teenage girls I went for a band from my own teenage days (but I wasn’t a girl). I played a couple of songs by The Monkees, in Song Lyric Sunday: Boys – still much more palatable to my ears than most present day pop pap, though I do accept that it is an earlier version of what happens now. But the pop charts were so much better then, weren’t they.

The following week saw Jim redress the balance by inviting us to play something by a girl group. I was tempted to go for The Go-Go’s but instead opted for Song Lyric Sunday: Bangling, which gave me the opportunity to play not only The Bangles hit Manic Monday, but also the fabulous version by Kate Rusby that came out three years ago, in the midst of pandemic lockdowns, with a beautiful home-made video in which her two charming daughters stole the show.

Next up was disco music, which I marked with Song Lyric Sunday: Disco – not my most imaginative of titles! I played a song by Blondie from the peak disco period of the late Seventies, and added in another from one of the revival periods – the Noughties – by Kylie Minogue. I wouldn’t usually expect to play anything by her, but that song was absolutely massive and is a great earworm generator. The video has a certain attraction, too…

For reasons best known to himself, Jim chose hip hop rap as the theme for last Sunday. I nearly didn’t take part, but managed to find a song of that ilk which I did quite like, so I played it in Song Lyric Sunday: Can’t Touch – who would ever have thought that I would be playing MC Hammer on my blog! I did balance it out, though, with a fun alternative version from Family Guy, in which Peter Griffin struts his stuff.

One of my most popular posts during May was one that I just put together on a whim. This was prompted by a news story I read about the latest Lewis Capaldi video giving people emotional reactions. So I watched it and could see why, and shared it in Wish You The Best. If you haven’t seen it do take a look: it is a lovely song and the video is beautifully done.

A couple more of my midweek posts were music ones. The first of these was Tuesday Tunes Reprise: Sixties Albums, in which I revived a post from October 2020 playing music from some of my favourite albums of that time. The tunes came from The Moody Blues, Bob Dylan, The Who, The Byrds, The Beatles, and Led Zeppelin. Rather a list of my usual suspects, but they are all still great tracks.

The other music post was rather a sad one. It was Simply The Best, in which I paid tribute to the amazing talent of Tina Turner, who had passed away the day before. I was really spoilt for choice for this, as she had given us so much great music down the years. In the end I opted for the two big UK hits from her days with Ike, and then a run through seven of her songs from the Eighties when her career gained its second wind, with a string of three superb albums. She is a sad loss, but has left us a wonderful legacy to remember her by.

That just leaves one post for me to cover. I mentioned earlier that May saw the UK marking Mental Health Awareness Week, and in addition to the musical piece I did a ‘proper’ one too, simply called Mental Health Awareness Week 2023. As is my habit with these I gave you some background, a little bit of personal experience, and a lot of links to click for more information from people who know better than I do what they are talking about. The response to these posts always pleases me, and this one has been no exception: it is my most viewed post of the month. Those tags we put on our blog posts do work, don’t they!

That completes my round up of posts. All that remains is for me to sign off with the song whose title I purloined for this post. When I went to YouTube in search of a video for it I found several other songs with the same title, but preferred my original thought. The alternatives included Herb Alpert trumpeting away with someone I’d never heard of, a song from the musical Moulin Rouge, not really my thing, and something by those purveyors of wimp rock, Air Supply. So I’m staying with two of my favourites, who got together in 2016 on the back of a thirty year friendship, wrote some songs and made an album together. This is the first one they wrote, and is the opening track on the album:

As you can see from that, Shawn and Steve titled the record simply, just using their names. That is in keeping with their uncomplicated approach and it is a very enjoyable album. It peaked at #128 in the US Albums chart, #13 in Country Albums, at #8 in Folk Albums, and at #16 in Rock Albums, but didn’t make the charts anywhere else. It’s a nice way for me to close today, I think.

I hope you’ve found something of interest here, maybe one you missed first time round? I’ll see you again on Sunday (definitely no hip hop or (c)rap this time!).