For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday Jim is asking us to play a song that references ‘image, picture, scan or view’ – he tells us why in his post, Celebrating World Radiography Day. I am going for what I think may be the easiest of those – picture – and have two songs for you. One of them is, I think, well known and may be played by someone else today, but I’d put money on the other not being familiar.

Let’s start with that one, shall we:

Frank Turner with Polaroid Picture, the lyrics for which can of course be found at genius.com.

Frank is an English punk and folk singer-songwriter. He began his career as the vocalist of post-hardcore band Million Dead, then started a primarily acoustic-based solo career following the band’s split in 2005. In the studio and during live performances he is accompanied by his backing band, The Sleeping Souls, who are Ben Lloyd (guitar, mandolin), Tarrant Anderson (bass), Matt Nasir (piano, mandolin) and Callum Green (drums), as you can see here. To date he has released ten solo albums, and Polaroid Picture is a track on the fifth of those, Tape Deck Heart, which came out in April 2013 and reached #2 in the UK and #52 in the US, though it got to #4 in the US Americana/Folk Albums chart. He wrote all of the tracks for the album, which has gone Gold in the UK and is his best seller here, having surpassed the 200,000 mark. This was the fifth and final track from it to be released as a single, but it didn’t make the charts. It is a song about the passing of time, the inevitability of change, and the need to recognise the importance of moments as they pass, hence the imagery of a polaroid photo, which captures a moment and stays as a reminder. I am a big fan of Frank, and have all of his albums – not just the ten, but also the various compilations and re-releases. He’s nothing if not prolific!

I said my second tune for today is probably better known, at least to those of my vintage. Tell me if I’m right:

Rod Stewart and Every Picture Tells A Story, and here are the lyrics, courtesy as usual of genius.com.

Every Picture Tells A Story is the title track of Rod’s third solo album, which was released in May 1971 and got #1 in the UK, the US, Canada and Australia, going Platinum in the US for sales of 2.5m and Gold in the UK for 100,000. The song was co-written by him and Ronnie Wood, and is a narrative of the singer finding adventures with women all over the world but eventually returning home after having learned some moral lessons. It isn’t without its detractors though, as the American critic Denise Sullivan commented that some of the lyrics are racist and sexist (e.g., describing an Asian woman as a “slit-eyed lady”), and that the song “is a real nugget from a brief period in time when rock singers didn’t worry about what it meant to be rude — in fact, the ruder and cruder, the better.” Maybe a little harsh, but I can see her point. In a live version from 1982 Rod actually removed the verse that contained that reference, so perhaps he saw it too ? The album is listed at #177 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time, and this track features in one of my favourite movies, Almost Famous, in a scene where the main characters William and Penny walk through the halls of a hotel. A reflection of the amazing soundtrack to that movie!

Two lively songs for you today, a little louder than last week’s offerings! I hope you enjoyed them, though, and as always I am grateful to Jim for hosting the show. See you again for some Tuesday Tunes? Hope so. Until then, take care 👍