If you recall, last week’s tunes were themed around thunder, following a suggestion from Carolyn, aka joyroses. The second part of that was to play some lightning songs: I admitted that I had only recalled five at that point, and sought your help. A number of you came up with some ideas, and two of your suggestions have made it into this week’s set at the expense of two that I had thought of: I’ll be opening and closing with them. So let’s get going, shall we?

I always like to start if I can with something uptempo, and as a couple of you reminded me of this one it seems like a good place to begin:

That was Aerosmith, with Lightning Strikes. This was a track on their seventh album, Rock In A Hard Place, which was released in August 1982, reaching #32 in the US and #24 in Canada. They had yet to break into the UK charts at that point: it took five years and two further albums before that happened. It is reported that the band spent $1.5m recording the album, so maybe those chart placings felt a little disappointing to them – receiving a Gold Disc in 1989 for 500k sales may have softened that blow, though. The song wasn’t released as a single but made #21 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, which was based on radio airplay. It gets us off to a rousing start, though!

You may recall that I played a Richard Thompson song three weeks ago, but as he is one of my favourite singer-songwriters I couldn’t leave him out of this selection. This is an iconic track, and a superb live performance:

That was a performance on the BBC4 version of Songwriters Circle: there is an American version too. The shows gather three singer-songwriters to talk about their craft and to play some of their songs, and you probably noticed that Suzanne Vega and Loudon Wainwright III were also in this edition, which I think dates from 2010. 1952 Vintage Black Lightning was a track on Richard’s seventh solo album, Rumor And Sigh, which was released in May 1991 and peaked at #32 in the UK Albums Chart. We apparently forgave him the Americanisation of the spelling in the title, which was due to his taking it from a posthumously published poem by Archibald MacLeish: “Rumor and sigh of unimagined seas/ Dim radiance of stars that never flamed.” Despite not being issued as a single, this song became a fan favourite and is one of his most highly acclaimed solo compositions. In 2011 Time magazine listed it in its “All TIME 100 Songs”, a list of “the most extraordinary English-language popular recordings since the beginning of TIME magazine in 1923.” Praise indeed!

This next one isn’t my usual style, but I couldn’t resist having a little fun by playing it:

As if you needed telling that was John Travolta singing Greased Lightning, from the movie Grease. The movie was based on a theatre show from 1971, and was released in June 1978. To date it has grossed more than $366m, not a bad return for its $6m budget! The double album soundtrack was released in April 1978, as a teaser for the movie, and went to #1 in the UK, the US, and just about everywhere else that Wikipedia lists! It has sold more than 30m copies worldwide, including 17m in the US and 2.7m in the UK. This track was released as a single, peaking at #11 in the UK and #47 in the US. I think that’s what you call a hit movie!

A couple of you suggested this one, but it was already on my list and I was intending to play it anyway:

Lightning Bolt was a track on Jake Bugg’s self-titled debut album, which was released in October 2012 and got to #1 in the UK and #75 in the US. The song was released as a single on Christmas Eve 2012 and peaked at #26 in the UK chart: it is one of those that surprised me when I saw that stat, as I remembered it as having been a much bigger hit. It also made #15 on the US Adult Alternative Songs chart, which is based on radio airplay. Being true to his British roots, Jake shot the video in…Amsterdam and Brussels. So British readers may not be surprised that they don’t recognise any London sights in it, which is what I was expecting! The song gained a little bit of fame when the BBC used it as the backing-track to a recording of the 100m win by Usain Bolt at the 2012 London Olympics earlier that year. Interviewed in October 2012 on BBC Radio Nottingham, Jake confirmed that the song “had no relevance to the Olympics”, but that he thought “it was great that they used it”.

I’m closing this week with something which is a real rarity for me. The song was suggested by Ed, aka Boromax, who blogs at Trivial Music Silliness and is always an entertaining read. I must have received around twenty suggestions after last week’s request for help, and was diligently working my way through them when this one popped up. I was a little bit wary, as the band are described as being purveyors of Christian music, which isn’t something I usually go for, but I put prejudices aside and gave it a listen. To say that I was pleasantly surprised is an understatement, as I really liked it and hope you do too:

As well as the song there are so many things to enjoy in that video, the cute baby and the tortoise with lightning on its back among them. The band is The Afters, who are an American Christian rock band founded by Josh Havens and Matt Fuqua. They first worked together in a Starbucks coffee shop in Mesquite, Texas, where they performed songs for customers, before deciding to form a band in 1999. Lightning was a track on their sixth album, Fear No More, which was released in May 2019 and made #14 on the US Top Christian Albums chart. The song was also released as a single, making #47 on the corresponding chart. The video came out in July 2020 and bears all the now familiar hallmarks of a lockdown collaboration, and the creativity people put into things in ways they might not previously have done. Although the lyrics reference the coming of the Holy Ghost as being the lightning of the title, this is only sung once and doesn’t dominate – it could just as easily have been a regular love song about the way a girl smashed into his heart. The song and video are great fun, which is one of the things I always enjoy in music, and I think they make for an excellent way to close today.

That’s all for this week’s tunes, but I’ll be seeing you again in a couple of days. Enjoy your week, and keep your fingers crossed that the weather forecasters’ predictions of deluges are wrong 😊