The first Tuesday Tunes of 2024 is upon us, after the inconvenient changes forced on me by the calendar! So it’s back to the usual routine of a set of tunes around a theme. While I was away I saw several posts around the theme of being brave – I think it must have been one of those prompts I usually ignore – and I thought I might use I too. I kinda changed it, though, for some songs which are about showing courage, which doesn’t necessarily mean the kind of bravery you might expect on a battlefield. These are my usual mixed bunch, and you may even know some of them!

So let’s get started. My regular rousing start comes from a band I’ve liked since they first burst onto the scene:

Mumford and Sons released I Will Wait in August 2012 as the lead single from their second album, Babel, which followed a month later. The official video, which I played here, was recorded during their performance at the famous Red Rocks Amphitheatre on 29 August of that year, and was released to promote the single early in September. It captures a really good feel for the joy and energy the band brings to their music, and the crowd seemed to be enjoying themselves. The song tells a story of having the courage to wait for someone to realise that they were meant for each other: Marcus Mumford, who wrote it, had got married earlier that year to the actor Carey Mulligan, with whom he had been penpals in childhood before reconnecting in adult life. Methinks there is an element of autobiography in this one! The single peaked at #12 in both the UK and the US, and has gone triple Platinum in both, selling 1.8m copies in the UK and 3m in the US. The album topped the charts in both countries and in several others too, and has sold well over 6m copies worldwide.

Today’s next tune is about having the courage of your convictions when others are telling you that you’ll never make it:

Imagine Dragons released Thunder as a single in April 2017, ahead of its inclusion on their third album, Evolve, in June of that year. The album peaked at #2 in the US and #3 in the UK, and has sold more than 4m copies worldwide – 3m of them in the States alone. As a single this song reached #4 in the US and #20 in the UK and this video is incredibly popular, with more than 2bn views on YouTube. I rather like its quirky feel.

Having started with a band making their debut on my blog, followed by another who had only been here once before, I’m back with one of my favourites for this next one:

Walk Unafraid was a track on R.E.M.’s eleventh album, Up, which came out in October 1998. In sales terms it wasn’t their biggest, but it still managed to get to #2 in the UK and #3 in the US. It was their first album after Bill Berry, their drummer, had left the band for health reasons, and they admitted that his departure had given them cause to think about splitting up. But they carried on and made four further albums, three of which reached #1 here in the UK, making that a total of seven UK chart toppers for them. They eventually broke up in 2011 but have left us a great legacy of music – one of my favourite bands of all time.

This next one goes back to the 70s, but it is a first appearance for the band here (it seems to be the day for that):

Rod Argent put together the band that bore his name in 1969, after the break up of his previous band, The Zombies, who ironically were enjoying massive success (#3) in the US at the time with their song Time Of The Season.  Hold Your Head Up was his new band’s biggest hit, reaching #5 in the UK, the US and Canada in 1972, though it had actually been released in October 1971. It was included on the band’s third album, All Together Now, which was released in April 1972 and peaked at #13 in the UK, at the same time that the single was taking off after its slow start. The album version was over six minutes long, but it was pared down to just over half of that for the single release, which is what the band are playing in the video I shared. It is, I think, very much a song of its time, but I’ve always liked it and the positive message it conveys.

I’m completing today’s set of (mostly) relative newbies with another band that I have only played once before:

The grammatically-challenged OneRepublic released Counting Stars in June 2013 as the second single from their album Native, which had come out in March of that year. The album did well, peaking at #4 in the US and at #9 in the UK, selling over 5m copies worldwide. The Counting Stars single did even better, getting to #2 in the US and #1 in the UK and Canada. To date it has sold more than 41m worldwide, including over 10m in the US and 3m in the UK – phenomenal figures by anyone’s standards. The video is another huge YouTube favourite too, with more than 3bn views. It has a positive message of looking beyond counting money to define success, which feels like a good place to end today’s selection.

That’s all for this week. One from a regular favourite, two making just their second appearance here, and two making their debuts. I tried to avoid the usual suspects for once, and I hope you’ve enjoyed them. I’ll see you again in a few days, so until then stay warm and dry, and keep away from the floods if you can. Take care 😊