John Lee Hooker is a legend and pivotal figure in this archive. He was very much "there" as blues became rock.
This article is not about Hooker though. It is about a band that stood behind Hooker.
The Groundhogs.
And as they stood behind Hooker, I stood in front of them. In a pub. In Camden.
This doesn't mean that I witnessed greatness, but it means I witnessed those who witnessed greatness!
The incarnation of the Groundhogs I saw in the 2000s contained Tony McPhee. It was he who renamed the band after a John Lee Hooker song. They backed him in his 1964 tour of England. The band was originally called the Dollar Bills and were formed in New Cross, London, in 1962 by brothers John and Peter Cruickshank.
While the lineup shifted and evolved through various iterations over the decades with McPhee keeping a steady grip on the steering wheel, I have gone for their most well-known single: Cherry Red from 1971.
It's a great song in its own right. A proper kind of early 1970s rock song, complete with that raw, fuzz-driven guitar crunch and a massive chorus. For me, it's a particular niche of sound that I don't often turn to, but I do enjoy it in bursts. Which is why I have included this particular burst!
L'Rain (not Lorraine, I don't really cover ITV mid-morning TV shows) is the moniker for Taja Cheek, an experimental artist from Brooklyn, New York.
I am a little late to the party as she has been producing music since 2017, following her self-titled debut with acclaimed records like "Fatigue" and "I Killed Your Dog". She use layers of looped vocals, pitch-shifted field recordings, and percussion to achieve her sound, described as a neo-psychedelic and avant-garde.
I heard it first on Jamz Supernova's show on 6 Music. I am a big fan of the contrast within a song. It uses a very repetitive, dense guitar and drums breakdown, which achieves a that push-pull, build-crash "wave" sound I like. But it also works well with drifting vocals.
It's a little more experimental than I have leaned into for 1000 Songs. But it's good to hear something like this in 2026.
She has an album out this year "Fata Morgana", via Mexican Summer records. It is the final piece of her ongoing four-album cycle.
The Cardinals were an American R&B and doo-wop group from Baltimore. They originally formed in 1946 under the name The Mellotones, cutting their teeth by singing harmonies on the corner of Gay Street and Forest. Heavily influenced by groups like The Ink Spots, The Fortunes, and The Ames Brothers, they ground their way through local bars and nightclubs.
Eventually they signed to Atlantic Records in 1951 and had mixed fortunes.
But I have gone for this specific version for the 1000 Songs project because I love its smoothness, especially when contrasted against the famous surf-rock recording.
But I also think it stands in its own right.
This version still utilises that traditional rebetiko scale. It gives the track that Eastern edge, creating a beautiful contrast when wrapped up in the harmonies of the band.
This marks the first appearance of the song on the blog. But don't worry, I will, of course, be putting Dick Dale’s definitive version in the project later down the line too!
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, public mask-wearing was pretty rare.
Not for Clinic, though.
They proudly wore their surgical masks. Fully committing to their aesthetic and proving they were way ahead of the rest of us, in many ways!
(Fun fact: they also used to queue outside their local supermarket for half an hour too!*)
They were from Crosby, Liverpool, and never quite got the mainstream recognition other bands got. Which was a shame.
But again, for me proving some great stuff was released around that awkward late 90s early 2000s time.
The two tracks I’ve included in the archive are "The Second Line" and "The Return of Evil Bill" from their 2000 debut album, "Internal Wrangler".
"The Second Line" was famously featured in a Levi's jeans commercial back in the era of Mr. Oizo and his head-banging puppet Flat Eric, when those ads were practically charting singles on their own. The song has a chilled urgency(?), with vocalisations that I still don't get over a quarter-century later. I don't know exactly what Ade Blackburn is singing, and I still don't care!
I don't like cake. It's just not worth it. It’s a combination of sugar, salt, and fat engineered in a way that allows you to consume copious amounts of it without even realising it.
I do, however, love Cake the band.
In particular, I love "The Distance", which I am officially adding to the 1000 Songs Archive.
Released in 1996 on the band's album "Fashion Nugget", the song is from my pivot year. As I’ve explained earlier in the blog, 1996 contained all the right ingredients for me to endlessly consume copious amounts of music from both the past and the present.
Cake were kind of outsiders. But they had a confidently distinct sound, leaning heavily into frontman John McCrea’s deadpan, spoken-word vocal delivery.
Interestingly, rather than sapping the energy out of the room, they combine this monotone style with Vince DiFiore’s driving mariachi-style trumpet lines and a heavy, rhythmic bass to create brilliant, escalating drama. And I absolutely need drama in a song.
Director Edgar Wright chose this track as his 'Heartracer' on the Nick Grimshaw breakfast show on BBC 6 Music. Edgar has ridiculously good taste, so I thought it was fantastic that he went for this specific track.
I am including a remix, which is something I have purposely avoided for most of my selections.
I’m not against remixing, but I’ve always thought it’s a bit like squirting ketchup on a decent restaurant meal. Yes, it tastes nice... but did you really do the heavy lifting? Maybe.
But today, I’m making an exception for Pilooski (the moniker of French DJ and producer Cédric Marszewski). The song I am including is his version of "Beggin'" by Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons.
I initially tried to include the Frankie Valli original, but he was competing in a key musical era for me. I hate to say it, but his music just feels a bit behind the times for that period. When you had The Velvet Underground and Captain Beefheart releasing music, Valli just didn't quite cut it for me!
What changes things here is the simple, one-note repetition of the guitar hook. Pilooski’s version gives me something to latch onto. It has a slightly harder, pacier edge to it. By providing that drive, it means I can finally just enjoy the vocals, which, ultimately, is exactly what Valli brings to the table.
There is a specific, kind of rhythmic strumming on an acoustic guitar that always gets me.
Put that in a song, and I'm there.
Every single time. I'm that simple!
For 1000 songs project, I decided I finally needed to find out what that noise was actually called.
Turns out, it’s the "Roll and Tumble" riff.
My next step was to find an early recording of it. That search led me straight to a legend named Garfield Akers and a track called "Dough Roller Blues."
He and his longtime collaborator, Mississippi Joe Callicott were from.Hernando, Mississippi.
Akers wasn't some touring rockstar. He lived his life as a sharecropper, caught in a brutal system of debt bondage.
They deliberately avoided the true heartland of the Mississippi Delta because they couldn't, because of that system.
Akers only left behind a tiny, four-track footprint of recorded sides. "Dough Roller Blues" was cut during his second session in February 1930.
Technically, it is a variation of Hambone Willie Newbern's "Roll and Tumble." But Akers injects it with his own energy.
It is actually debated whether Callicott was playing second guitar on this specific track because the instrumentation is so tightly intertwined. Callicott, for what it's worth, later claimed he was there in the room.
But Garfield Akers is in. I'm not sure if he lit the blues explosion but he was definitely there prodding it and gently blowing into it.
I have declared "Nearly Daffodils" the greatest indie song ever written, and I absolutely stand by that.
English Teacher are a Leeds-based quartet made up of vocalist Lily Fontaine, guitarist Lewis Whiting, drummer Douglas Frost, and bassist Nicholas Eden. They originally met at Leeds Conservatoire, starting out as a dream pop outfit called 'Frank' in 2018 before rebranding as English Teacher in 2020.
On Nearly Daffodils I love the way the interlocking guitar lines shift from clean, stuttering math-rock riffs into dynamic explosions. It twists and turns through unexpected rhythm changes without ever descending into self-indulgence, keeping it commercial enough to stick in your head. By the time it came out in 2023, a track this accessible and inventive felt long overdue.
While "Nearly Daffodils" takes my top spot, I also have to shout out "This Could Be Texas," the title track from their debut album. It builds from a delicate, shimmering guitar motif into a sweeping finale.
The album rightfully took home the 2024 Mercury Prize, breaking a nine-year winning streak for London-based acts and proving that Northern guitar music is...the best?
English Teacher have achieved a massive amount in a short time, and while I’m fascinated to see what they do next, they’ve comfortably bagged spots on both my 2023 and 2024 lists.
(They also once stole a Drenge poster from a venue, which earns them instant bonus points, petty rock 'n' roll theft is a lost art form.)
Yesterday, I witnessed Dutch-Turkish psych-folk band Altın Gün join conductor Jules Buckley and the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms.
My prior experience with the band was stumbling into a late-night festival set before an intimate crowd. This was a whole different scale. As someone whose preferred venue is a basement or the back room of a pub, walking into that awe-inspiring hall to find a massive orchestra about the same size of that festival crowd was amazing.
I’ve always been skeptical of orchestrating grassroots alternative music, but witnessing this crossover was a privilege. The live orchestral texturing added immense power, depth, and character to their sound, making the hall vibrate with energy.
When watching orchestral collaborations on TV, I often spot classical players drifting off into a Rachmaninoff-inspired "happy place," visibly underwhelmed by simple pop arrangements. But watching Jules Buckley knit the two worlds together was a joy, he clearly loved the band, having followed them for nearly a decade. While a few classical players still had that distant look, the band was beaming. During the encore of "Şeker Oğlan", lead singer Erdinç Ecevit Yıldız even stood just to the side of the orchestra, seemingly to absorb the experience.
As much as I enjoyed Erdinç's performance, I still miss the original female lead vocals of former singer Merve Daşdemir. (Though also really enjoyed Derya Yıldırım's contribution to the evening.) Studio recordings rarely capture the raw magic of their live show. I suppose that’s why true believers buy top-tier speaker rigs, or, in Queen Victoria’s case, build a huge massive great big hall!
I’m enjoying their 2026 releases but will see if they make the end-of-year list!
I already had it in my head to write a piece about Shocking Blue for the blog today.
Then, on the "6 Of The Best" segment of Lauren Laverne's show on BBC Radio 6 Music. She played "Aşk Çiçeği" (Love Flower) by the 70s Anatolian rock band Mavi Işıklar.
"Send Me a Postcard" was released in late 1968, but I didn't actually come across it until many decades later. I was sitting in a pub when it suddenly came on over the speakers.
There is something deeply fascinating about that moment. Think about the creative spark of art: a band goes into a studio half a century ago, writes a driving, psychedelic pop-rock riff, and puts it out into the world. Fast forward nearly 50 years, and that exact same recording is played to a room full of strangers in a pub. The majority of that room is perfectly happy to hear it, or at the very least, they don't object to it.
That right there is the magic of communal listening. It's the enduring, time-traveling power of a brilliant song.
This kind of shared musical experience feels particularly interesting to me now, because so many establishments simply don't focus on music anymore. I think this is largely down to how our listening habits have changed. We live in an era of individually tailored streaming feeds and hyper-personalized playlists. We are siloed in our own sonic bubbles.
Which brings me right back to why I am such a massive fan of BBC 6 Music, and why there is such a big crossover for music lovers there.
When you listen to a show like Lauren Laverne's, you are participating in a massive, nationwide communal listening session. There is a real, tangible sense of human curation. It makes me believe I'm not just passively absorbing a series of vague algorithmic associations dictated by a computer, but rather sharing a curated musical journey with thousands of others. It’s just like a great pub jukebox, but on a grander scale.
Phenomenal songs require phenomenal songwriters, and phenomenal melodies and recording them requires phenomenal performers. Dolly Parton was all, in abundance.
She was born in Tennessee's Smoky Mountains. She began performing at age six in church, made her Grand Ole Opry debut at 13, and moved to Nashville the day after high school.
She spent years on The Porter Wagoner Show before launching her solo career with self-penned classics like "Coat of Many Colors."
Beyond the stage, she rewrote the playbook for navigating power imbalances and gender inequality. In a male-dominated country music industry, she maintained total control over her creative assets.
When she famously refused to give half her publishing rights to Elvis Presley’s management for "I Will Always Love You," she established a standard for artist ownership that inspired generations.
That shrewd business mind fueled a distinctly compassionate model of philanthropy. Through her Imagination Library, she distributed hundreds of millions of free books to young children worldwide to combat illiteracy, a mission inspired by her father’s inability to read. From building economic stability in her home region with Dollywood to funding global medical research, she proved that corporate success could be channeled directly into community uplift.
Selecting a single track for the 1000 Songs is always difficult. I would have been happy to pick another 10, but "Jolene" stands out for me personally.
It's built on a brilliant, driving guitar riff that mimics a racing pulse. Lyrically it's great—on the surface, it's a desperate plea to another woman for her own happiness. But it's smarter than that, as I am sure it's addressing multiple audiences.
She was country, but more than country. She took that expertly global and merged it with various other cultural movements. She wrote brilliant songs apparently effortlessly, but it was always clear how hard she worked. A talented, unique artist.
Power Lunches was a great venue, and I saw some fantastic bands there before it closed down in 2015.
One of the best was Shopping, a post-punk trio made up of Ray Aggs, Billy Easter, and Andrew Milk.
Their sound was influenced by Delta 5, Talking Heads, and Gang of Four.
They had something different, though, because Aggs's guitar was also influenced by West African highlife music, giving them these brilliant off-kilter rhythms.
The brilliant thing about the venue and the band was that the band members actually worked there, too.
You'd watch this amazing set down in the basement and then go straight to the bar and buy a drink from them afterwards!
There were also big overlaps with the scene around DIY Space for London.
I’ve gone for three Shopping songs for the blog, alongside tracks by Trash Kit, which means Ray Aggs is heavily featured across my 1,000 songs!
Their 2013 debut single "In Other Words" was actually recorded at Power Lunches.
I’ve heard Lime Garden touted for a few years now, but I never quite understood the fuss, until now. (Granted, I’m probably not their core target audience!)
For a bit of context, they are a Brighton-based indie rock quartet who blend disco, pop, and surf into a self-described "wonk pop" sound. The four members met at college in Guildford, originally playing under the name LIME before rebranding. (No idea if it has anything to do with the bikes. Or 1990s colours)
That’s where our crossover happens, they draw heavy inspiration from post-punk and indie-dance heavyweights like Metronomy, LCD Soundsystem, and Working Men's Club, a sound that comes through on their 2026 album, "Maybe Not Tonight".
"Cross My Heart" is exactly what I’ve been waiting for from them. Driven by a funky guitar riff, effortlessly cool verses, and a massive chorus, it captures the exact kind of alt (or wonk) pop I’m always looking for.
I read today that Les Paul's house was destroyed. His son, Gene, released a statement that really put into perspective what that space represented:
"That house wasn't just where Les Paul lived. It was his workshop. It was his laboratory. It was his journey of dreams. So much happened there.
This was where my father experimented endlessly with his guitars and electronics. It was where the first 8-track multitrack recorder that fundamentally changed modern recording was put to work, along with the first console used with it. It was a place where ideas were tried, rejected, rebuilt and tried again."
That statement shows just how important all these elements were for his genius to come together. It highlights how incremental technology developments, combined with sheer hard work and persistence, paved the way for the bands of the 1960s to develop rock music.
Most people know Les Paul from the Gibson guitar. But that instrument essentially came about through a frustration in sound, his search to eliminate feedback and create solid sustain. It ultimately produced those iconic images of bands playing their "cherry red" Gibsons. You really can't imagine the classic rock pose without it.
When I was going through the 1940s for this blog, I found a track by him from 1948 called "Lover."
For me, you can hear him desperately trying to innovate with sound, but you can also hear the technology holding him back. Because tape recorders weren't standard yet, he had to overlay eight separate electric guitar parts onto fragile acetate discs. He even recorded parts at half-speed so they would play back at a dizzying, fast pace. He went through nearly 500 ruined discs before he got it right, prompting comedian W.C. Fields to famously tell him, "My boy, you sound like an octopus."
In terms of innovation, his contribution desperately needs to be celebrated. I think for 1948 as well, "Lover" is a brilliant track. Les Paul remains the only person inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
His relentless studio tinkering changed the trajectory of modern music forever.
I knew I liked 1960s music. I knew 60s bands would often wear their 20s and 30s blues influences on their sleeves. It's kind of like how bands today declare their love for Oasis.
So, my 1930s choices have often been guided by that. Find 1960s songs I liked, then find their ancestors.
Washboard Sam is truly the great grandfather of a lot of music I love.
Washboard Sam was born Robert Clifford Brown. His exact origins are a bit of a blues mystery, many sources cite his birth in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas in 1910, though some researchers point to Jackson, Tennessee as early as 1903.
Before recording himself, he cut his teeth in the 1920s as a Memphis street musician. He eventually moved to Chicago in 1932, where he became a fixture of the scene playing alongside his reputed half-brother, blues legend Big Bill Broonzy (who also features in 1000 Songs).
The tunes I have gone for are "Don't Tear My Clothes," released in 1936, and "Let Me Play Your Vendor." from '42.
"Don't Tear My Clothes" is a great piece of acoustic Chicago blues. It's driven by Washboard Sam's strong voice and it sounds big despite the recording limitations of the era.
Washboard Sam was a revered musician. He died in 1966 and was buried in an unmarked grave. However, in 2009 Steve Salter organised a concert in order to raise money for a headstone to be erected. Thankfully so!
My early music buying experience was shaped by a slightly toxic relationship with the Britannia Music Club.
They operated on the classic gateway model. Get a few free CDs or tapes then spend the next few years trying to figure out how to cancel while unwanted albums continuously arrived.
"Free Peace Sweet" by Dodgy was one such album I obtained via this method (coincidentally, Dodgy was also the legal status of every Britannia Music Club subscription contract ever signed.)
Dodgy were from Hounslow (someone has to be). They were bright sunny unashamed Britpop. They released singles like "Good Enough" and "Staying Out for the Summer."
"Free Peace Sweet" was an album that was ridiculously easy to listen to. A bit too easy, maybe.
But I have taken the plunge and gone with "In a Room."
If music didn't exist. If there were no songs. If there was only one substantial form of song that could be produced like a car or aeroplane I'd be quite happy if it was Lenny Valentino by The Auteurs.
The Auteurs were essentially a vehicle for Luke Haines. Haines was an uncompromising, sharp-tongued songwriter who formed the group in 1991 after leaving The Servants. Even after their 1993 debut "New Wave" picked up a Mercury Prize nomination, Haines preferred throwing barbs at the rising Britpop elite over joining their parade, keeping the band firmly on the margins.
Technically, the single was released '93, but moving it into '94 meant I could fit two PJ Harvey tracks into 1993!
1994 fits because it is the opening track to their second album, "Now I'm a Cowboy".
I think thing I like most about Lenny Valentino is the changes and the variation. It is a wave song.
Build. Through dead pan vocals.
Crash. Guitar and James Banbury's cello.
Interestingly, in Luke Haines' biography he never mentions James Banbury by name. He just calls him the cellist. Guess they didn't particularly get on.
But tension and release is why it's in 1000 songs. Absolute template for it.
So this band just Squeezed on to my list. Squeeze.
I don't like most of their music. I think sometimes you have to "be there" with certain bands or artists, and I wasn't. It always feels like they are trying too hard. I think they often feel like they are perhaps pretending to be something they are not.
But I don't doubt their influence. They were once hailed as the "heirs to Lennon and McCartney's throne" and basically laid the groundwork for Britpop. Guitar legends like Blur's Graham Coxon idolised them, and massive stadium acts like U2, R.E.M., and Dire Straits actually got their start opening for Squeeze back in the day.
Also Jools Holland was part of the original line-up.
But "Take Me I'm Yours" is one of my favourite songs.
They made it around the time they were working with John Cale. BUT although Cale produced most of their debut album, the record label thought his recording of "Take Me I'm Yours" was completely uncommercial. So, the band scrapped it and ended up producing the hit version of the track entirely by themselves. Which you have got to give them huge credit for.
What I love about the song is how entirely different it feels from their usual pub-rock pop. It has a synth hook. It's gritty, cynical and effortless in a way that their other tracks sometimes miss.
Interestingly, and I only found this out recently, John Leyton was actually an actor. He was starring in the ITV drama series Harpers West One, where he played a pop singer named Johnny Saint-Cyr. He sung it on an episode, this caused sales of the song and it went to number 1.
The song actually came about because songwriter Geoff Goddard woke up inspired in the middle of the night, rushed to a tape recorder he kept by his bed, and hummed the whole thing into existence. It then produced by Joe Meek, who did what Joe Meek did best and turned the drum track into that galloping rhythm.*
The high pitched backing vocals are then sung by session singer Lissa Gray.
At the time, on the TV show Juke Box Jury, (the brilliant comic) Spike Milligan criticised it as the son of Ghost Riders of the Storm. As someone who has included versions of that song 3 times in a 1000 song list, I celebrate this!
Unbelievably, as I write this in 2026, John is now 90 and still going strong.
But it's in. It was covered by Jimmy Somerville, it's a bit weird, it's atmospheric, it's dark and it was pop.
* (John Leyton actually appeared as a cameo in the 2009 film about Joe Meek. I haven't included Joe Meeks most famous song Telstar. I find it too annoying unfortunately.)
Noodle Doodles were a canned pasta snack made by Heinz. In 1987 they had promotion which you could send off for a free music cassette tape.
So, if this journal was about what I was listening to in the years selected I'd have to include Party Time with Noodle Doodles for the late 80s and early 90s.
That tape contained some very bad music, by Black Lace.
However, I did have an antidote. "Don't Leave Me This Way" by The Communards. Which I listened to in equal amounts.
The magic of "Don't Leave Me This Way", a cover, relies heavily on guest vocalist Sarah Jane Morris. The track perfectly contrasted Morris's deep, rich contralto voice with Somerville's soaring, trademark falsetto.
And the fact it goes ahhhhh baby. Not just ah baby. Ahhhhhhhn baby. Also a key changed ahhhhhh baby.
During a Top of the Pops performance, the band decided to have a bit of fun with the mandatory miming. Somerville and Morris swapped roles on stage, so Jimmy mimed the booming deep notes while Sarah Jane lip-synced to Jimmy's bit.
But Jimmy is a truly great vocalist. As probably the more high profile partner in the Communards Richard Coles attests to.
I also included "Never Can Say Goodbye" on the list, which is a cover of the Jackson 5 classic.
That 1987 album also features "For a Friend". Written in memory of their close friend Mark Ashton, a prominent gay rights activist whose story was later immortalized in the film Pride. The soundtrack of that film has overlaps with 1000 Songs.
The Communards were a brilliant alt pop band and probably don't get the recognition they deserve. Even if some of us did discover them while consuming tins of pasta full of dangerously high preservative!
The band weaponizes the saxophone. It doesn't swing or soar.
It cuts.
Like a rhythmic saw, locking into the bassline and propelling the track forward.
Although we are only two-thirds of the way through the year, this is already a surefire pick for me for the ten songs for 2026.
The band initially started in Yorkshire before relocating to London. They released their album Existence Is Bliss in early 2026, which is a brilliant follow-up to their critically acclaimed 2024 debut, Hysterical Strength.
Lead vocalist Zac Lawrence can do no wrong in my eyes. I saw them at a BBC Introducing show a few years back, and he is a classic frontman in every sense. I would honestly watch him perform "Mary Had a Little Lamb," and it would still be a brilliant show. There is genuine belief and intensity in every single word and action during his performance.
This authenticity is exactly why I'm including "Fit for Work" in the archive. Despite being "small-p" political, you can tell they spotted an issue they cared about and wrote a song. You just know it comes from a totally authentic place.
I have also gone for "Pop Culture Connoisseur," which I just find funny. I am not from Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, but I feel like I am being slightly poked fun at with this song, which I love.
Further, I will never forget them playing at The Hundred cricket tournament. The broadcast camera cut to unexpected fan Phil Tufnell, who then waxed lyrical on live television about how much he enjoyed the band.
Long before the internet, let alone annoying broadband companies, there was Talk Talk.
They initially started as a synth-pop act; in fact, their first self-titled song was actually a reworking of an earlier track by frontman Mark Hollis's former punk-era band, The Reaction.
"All you do is talk to me / Talk, talk, talk, talk."
Thankfully, Mark Hollis despised the commercialization of his music, and actively fought his record label to prevent them from using Talk Talk's catalog in commercials. Phew.
I like those lyrics, though. Repetition is comforting, if nothing else.
Mark Hollis later evolved into the more profound with tracks like Life's What You Make It.
But repetition is comforting. (Did I say that before?)
After commercial success they meticulously recorded hours of experimental, improvised jazz to invent(?) post-rock with the album Spirit of Eden.
I think everyone in life should follow this pattern in whatever field they are in. Do something commercially successful, and then turn it completely on its head. After all, as a wise man once wrote:
"dum dum dum dum dum dum... life's what you make it."
The Cure and Stock Aitken Waterman are not names you often hear grouped together. In a list of 1,000 songs, you’d rarely find both side by side (er Josh check 1000songs.co.uk)
I was intrigued to hear how that crossover would look in a sonic Venn diagram. So it was fascinating to hear Martyrs' lead track, 'Drowning Days', off their new release, The Last Summer EP.
Martyrs are Jon Howells and Michael Hall, from Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales. Writing and producing out of an attic studio inside a faded Victorian hotel overlooking the coast, they make whatever they want, whenever they want. Like me, they are completely unbothered by genre constraints or modern streaming algorithms. It's quite easy to avoid them, just don't stream music!
And I can hear it!
On 'Drowning Days', it sounds like something Mark Hollis (of Talk Talk) might have made after spending a couple of weeks in the Balearics. It’s as if Gruff Rhys from Super Furry Animals teamed up with a Detroit techno pioneer like Derrick May to lay down an '80s New Wave dance floor anthem.
The song is about revisiting the cities, streets, clubs, and hotel foyers where their most magical memories were formed, only to realise those places were only ever special because of the people they shared them with.
All in all, it's a great listen, especially if you want to put the last 40 years of music into a cement mixer and use that mix to construct a sad but catchy summer banger!
The Last Summer EP by Martyrs was out August 12, 2026, on all streaming platforms (okay, stream this!).
I initially started 1000 Songs as a way of marking time in songs rather than years. The plan was to divide every year of my life into ten tracks, meaning by the time I hit 40, I was exactly 400 songs old. As I have said before on here, the conventional measurement of time is vastly overrated. It’s dry, boring, and misses the joy, fun, and hope in life!
Today’s artist is inspired by the exact same milestone in a beautifully positive way.
On Saturday Berlin-based Zora Kirin released her debut solo EP, The Bones Are Beautiful, exactly on her 40th birthday.
To mark the occasion, she hosted a "four for forty" release and birthday party at Speakeazy in Kreuzberg, alongside Gözde Berberoğlu and Hibana.
If you were dealing in Berlin clichés, you’d probably assume a 40th birthday release would be a punishing four to the floor forty techno marathon, but Zora has gone back to her folk roots for the ocassion.
I don't feature a lot of folk in the archive, but there is something very special about writing a genuinely good, profound and unpretentious folk record. Zora achieves exactly this, defining the EP as "hopecore". A realistic hope rooted in the belief that while life is fleeting, there is always beauty to be found.
Lyrically and conceptually, it is a very strong EP that charts the four seasons of a lifetime, with stripped back production that lets the vocal and guitar do the talking.
The EP begins in the spring of life with the bursting "Fly On," driven by a bold, confident guitar and vocal reminiscent of Odetta or a stripped-back PJ Harvey. Summer dawns with "Let's Play Pretend," a song with a great guitar motif and celebrating the joy of discovery. Then it's on to the autumn inspired "Step Forth," passing wisdom to your younger self. The vocal delivery on this one is a bit more vulnerable reminiscent of Dolores O'Riordan. Finally, winter falls with the subtle "Mulberry Tree," a love song from the grave.
Zora encourages us to live broadly, in all directions, for as long as you can. And I certainly agree!
The Bones Are Beautiful is a perfect sonic testament to that ethos. It's well worth taking the time to listen, reflect, and celebrate the seasons of your own life!
The Bones Are Beautiful by Zora Kirin was out on 15th August 2026.
Bob Dylan famously said he traded his electric guitar for an acoustic the moment he heard Odetta. (He might have had June Ritchie and the others he was ripping off in mind too!)
Janis Joplin imitated her. Considered the voice of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. crowned her "The Queen of American Folk Music".
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, she moved to Los Angeles as a child and actually began formal operatic training at the age of thirteen.
So she had this, classically trained vocal power. She channeled that vocal control directly into her work folk, spirituals, and blues.
Was really great going through her back catalogue. For the archive, I went with "Wade in the Water" and "Gallows Pole".
The first is about liberation and is widely believed to have served as a coded message on the Underground Railroad, instructing escaping slaves to step into the water to throw tracking bloodhounds off their scent.
Then there is "Gallows Pole,". I also have Lead Belly's version in the archive. It is a tense, driving folk-blues narrative about a condemned woman frantically pleading with her family to bring enough silver or gold to bribe the hangman. It is gritty, urgent, and exactly what I want!
Cillian Murphy did a brilliant series for BBC 6 music called Limited Edition. He went for Every Night when featuring Odetta which shows another side. She had such amazing versatility there is definitely not one song that can capture her.
For a fairly brief, surreal period of my life, I felt like I was living in an episode of Stella Street. For those who don't know, Stella Street was a brilliant BBC sitcom where musicians and celebrities lived on the same suburban street, going about their mundane, everyday business.
I'd walk into Sainsbury's in the morning and see Amy Winehouse still on a night out, or I'd be standing directly behind Bill Nighy while I was buying my broccoli. Or sitting in an, otherwise completely empty internet cafe that was occupied by no one except Rhys Ifans. Or going to the local pub and seeing Pete Doherty, Kelly Osbourne, Noel Fielding and Amy Winehouse (again).
But out of all these surreal encounters, the one that stands out the most was walking into the corner shop and bumping into Graham Coxon. Whenever I saw Graham, he always looked absolutely terrified to me.
He had the distinct look of a man who constantly feared I was going to corner him by the biscuits and start singing Parklife right into his face.
There was no need to be fearful, though.
If I had a bit more confidence back then, I wouldn't have sung Parklife, I would have sung Freakin' Out into his face instead.
Graham is responsible for some of my favourite guitar riffs of all time, Popscene, Song 2, or Freakin Out.
It was a strange privilege occupying the same geographic area as him for a while, and I was even lucky enough to see him perform just down the road.
He wrote these riffs like he didn't really want to, or wasn't that bothered that he could do it. It is incredibly annoying when someone is so effortlessly good that they barely seem to break a sweat while churning out pure genius.
His solo career is nothing short of prolific, releasing a mountain of music since 1998, playing almost all the instruments himself, designing his own album art, and scoring soundtracks. He has never really stopped, right up to his 2026 album release, Castle Park. But I will be honest, a lot of his solo stuff mainly didn't sit right with me. I am a sucker for something catchy, and his solo discography often leans a bit too heavily into the experimental for my personal taste.
Freakin' Out is the exception to that rule. It bridges the gap between his noisy, indie-rock sensibilities and a proper riff.
Saying all this. As much as I respect their individual side projects and undeniable talents, I prefer Blur to just be Blur. I don't want cartoon based music from Damon. I don't want artisanal cheese or champagne lifestyles from Alex. And as much as I respect Graham's solo artistry, I prefer his guitar work. They are at their absolute best when the four of them are in a room together, making proper, brilliant guitar music.
And if I ever see him in the corner shop again, I will definitely continue to just let him buy his milk in peace.
I think it made me literally hate music as a child. 80s pop was oppressive weird and scary for me.
In hindsight, though, I think that childhood hatred ended up being a good thing. You need to know what’s bad to find out what’s good. I am thankful now that SAW were such great and prolific purveyors of garbage (and yes, I’ve deliberately used the Americanism there).
The catalyst that turned their fabricated sewer system on, however, was actually just a good song.
It came from Dead or Alive. "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)".
You know when you spin round like a record? Yeah that. Spinning round like a record. Right round. Not half way round. Right round.
Anyway...
It was SAW’s first UK Number 1, arguably kicking off their entire chart deluge.
Frontman Pete Burns was unique. Back when he worked at Probe Records in Liverpool, he used to terrify customers from behind the counter, famously refusing to sell records to shoppers if he didn't like their clothes or deemed them unworthy of the music.
Burns was never going to let the machine control him.
His authenticity directly countered their clean production. The result is high-energy synth-pop perfection. From the dramatic, operatic synth intro to the galloping hi-hats and Pete’s booming, theatrical vocal delivery, it bridges the fierce, menacing edge of post-punk with unadulterated joy.
More importantly, it has an edge that SAW simply couldn't polish away.
So, it’s included in 1000 Songs because it proves that even within the ultra-manufactured pop machine of the 1980s, genuine eccentricity and an undeniable hook is all you need.
Forget politely knocking on the door of the 2026 selections for 1000 Songs. Opus Kink has just blown it off its hinges.
Not with dynamite, but with horns... dynamic, door-disrespecting horns.
I have absolutely loved hearing the single "Come Over, Do Me Wrong" pop up on the radio this year. Driven relentlessly by its brass section, the track doesn't let you off the hook, while Angus Rogers' vocals keep you locked in. It doesn't pause. It gnaws away at you, like they are determined to demonstrate this is a band doing something genuinely different.
Frontman Angus Rogers noted that the song explores the hallucinogenic qualities and toxic allure of a doomed love affair, a wild dive into the mad philosophical leap of not caring what someone does, as long as they do it to you.
For me, it feels as though the spirit of Jimmie Lunceford has rocked up in Brighton, nursing a hangover but ready to take on the world with his Jazznocracy. (I have said it before and will say it again: the best kind of 'nocracy.)
The sextet originally formed back in 2017. Like the finest album growers of ancient Greece, they correctly decided to wait nearly ten years to release their debut full-length. I think it has something to do with fermentation. Distillation. Brassmentation.
Produced alongside Grammy Award winner Craig Silvey, their debut 10-track LP, The Sweet Goodbye, arrived on 31 July 2026 via SO Recordings, and it is well worth the wait.
This is easily one of my top picks for 2026. The Sweet Goodbye is out now and they are touring!
On 1000songs.co.uk, I occasionally come across a band in the archive that doesn't yet have a Wikipedia page.
pôt-pot were one such band.
so I created a page for them.
The quintet features musicians from the Cork DIY music scene, though they are currently based out of Lisbon, Portugal. They craft an expansive space-rock sound. As a massive fan of Can, Neu!, Faust, and the Krautrock motorik rhythm, it was fantastic to find a band doing this in 2025 and doing it so well!
It's often tricky to source enough material for a new band's Wikipedia page, but pôt-pot were well worth digging into (helped along by the fact that they were nominated for the Choice Music Prize Irish Album of the Year in 2025!).
I was initially turned on to them by BBC Radio 6 Music's Deb Grant (who I also created the Wikipedia page for!). Their debut, Warsaw 480km, was released on the LA-based label Felte Records (guess who wrote their Wikipedia page!).
Near the opening of the album, the track has a hypnotic momentum, perfectly blending that relentless, driving motorik rhythm with swirling harmonium drones and dark, male-female vocal harmonies.
If Warsaw 480km is what they can achieve on a debut record, they are a band you absolutely need to keep on your radar. I'll definitely keep my ears out for more for the archive as we near 2030!
It's great when I hear a song, enjoy it for its atmosphere, and then read how the artist came to it from a different angle.
"Paranoid" by Geoffrey Lewis is just that. It grabbed me this week. Although I can certainly hear the DNA of Sunny Day Real Estate or American Football in the song, the feel of the track is what drew me in.
"Paranoid" tackles heavy subject matter, it is inspired by the anxiety of growing up in a world where public violence has become normalised.
That rawness, directness and authenticity of the song are reflected in how the track was made. Entirely written, performed, recorded, and produced in his Nashville home studio, the song is built around an analog set up, a Korg drum machine, tube amplifiers, and live instruments. I think for me, this is where the feel comes from. Because of this direct artist led production style, the track reminds me of the proto-electronic acts like Suicide or Silver Apples. Similarly, although sonically different, it has the same kind of clash between guitars and electronics of Liars.
Geoffrey's college friends provide the bass and backing vocals, and I really love how the song builds from the initial guitar riff, layered with those understated but highly effective vocal backings. The custom Korg beat drives the song, while the guitar motif responds with a rhythmic edge.
Lewis sings with a measured, understated, quality that makes the paranoia feel even more intense. He keeps the emotion just below the surface, and that restraint is exactly what makes it engaging.
This song sounds exactly like its title. The song does, indeed, sound paranoid, in a good way!
They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top has still got to be one of the greatest album titles of all time.
It was by Liars, I am not sure about their propensity for the truth but they were an amazing band.
Formed in Brooklyn at the turn of the millennium but fronted by Australian lead singer Angus Andrew, they were a vital band of that era. They were part of a set of bands to bring post punk back but mix it with electronic production to create a dance punk sound. Which was a much needed antidote to the polished sounds of the late 90's.
My first pick for the archive is the equally brilliantly named "Mr You're On Fire Mr".
A year after that release, I saw them play an unbelievable set at the "I'll Be Your Mirror" festival at London's Alexandra Palace. Curated by Portishead and put together by All Tomorrow's Parties, it was a legendary gig. ATP might have eventually gone bust amid accusations of profiteering, but the line-ups they pulled together were outstanding. I'll likely keep referring back to that festival on this blog, but Liars were absolutely a highlight of the weekend!
I have been very lucky to attend some memorable gigs over the years. One surreal, brilliant experience was watching The Strokes while stood right in front of a massive dinosaur skeleton at the Natural History Museum in London.
Now, I don't have The Strokes in the 1000 Songs archive, but they were undeniably pivotal. They heralded a massive explosion of brilliant guitar music throughout the early to mid 2000s, freeing bands just to be bands and make catchy, guitar driven tunes without overthinking it.
So, in that tradition of simply making joyful, infectious guitar music, I was delighted to receive the latest single from The Cuts, titled "Fire with Fire".
The Cuts hail from Paisley, Scotland. The core trio of Neil Walker, Kieran Docherty, and James Robertson first joined forces years ago before drifting down separate paths, only to reunite in 2025 and enlist drummer Craig Brown to complete the lineup. Refreshingly, the band embraces a playful, tongue-in-cheek irreverence while keeping their songwriting genuinely sharp.
"Fire with Fire" was written by Neil Walker late last year and recorded on analogue equipment at Glasgow’s intimate Green Door Studio. That was a fantastic call. It captures all the raw excitement and energy of seeing a band live in a small room, so you aren't left trying to pick out a brilliant song through dense layers of over production.
Musically, the song rolls along with effortless momentum. For me, it kicks off with a sharp, punchy Buzzcocks type vibe to begin with, but quickly builds with the energy and attitude of Bloc Party before launching into a brilliant, peak Franz Ferdinand strength of a chorus.
That chorus is so relentlessly catchy it will lodge itself in your brain until you can't help singing it aloud. In fact, I wager, you’ll find yourself standing in a queue, singing, "I've got to fight fire with fire." A stranger will look at you confused and say, "Excuse me?" To which you'll have to reply deadpan, "Oh, sorry, it's just a song stuck in my head. You should check it out, it's by a band called The Cuts."
Fire with Fire by The Cuts is out on 28th August 2026.
Bessie Smith was Blues. Bessie Smith was folk. Bessie Smith was Jazz. Bessie Smith was Punk.
She also released a lot of records prior to 1930. Which is not particularly useful when your archive starts in 1930.
She was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, she survived her childhood by busking on street corners.
She eventually rose to become the highest-paid Black entertainer of her day. She even had her own custom rail carriage.
She championed the African-American working class. She was a true pioneer who helped invent the market for "race records" and female blues singers in the 1920s.
She incorporated biting commentary on poverty, the convict lease system, capital punishment, and female empowerment into her songs.
To represent her in the archive, I’ve chosen "Blue Blue." from 1931.
But I'd also recommend reading about her amazing life and listening to some of those brilliant 1920s records. Just proving to me genre never really existed!
Hans Zimmer (he of the Going for Gold theme fame) is taking over the BBC Maida Vale studios. It's the end of an era. One of my favourite albums, Hatful of Hollow by The Smiths, features tracks recorded there, and it's the site of Delia Derbyshire's electronic triumphs. It's also famously where Bing Crosby made his last ever recording in 1977, just days before he died. Fontaines DCs final session there was broadcast today on 6 Music.
However, for me, it was where I saw Gomez (with Chilly Gonzales playing, and Colin Murray booking us in on the door). Gomez were such an important band for me. In this 1000 Songs project, I have engaged in a bit of late-1990s revisionism. For me, as someone who likes British guitar music, the era at the time wasn't particularly good for it, especially just after 1997.
Gomez were important because they decided to look way back and do something different with it when others tried to let Britpop limp on. Hailing from Southport, Merseyside, they were a unique outfit comprising Ian Ball, Paul Blackburn, Tom Gray, Ben Ottewell, and Olly Peacock. They brilliantly juggled three different singers and four songwriters. Their sound was a complete anomaly at the time, effortlessly blending blues, folk, and psychedelic experimental rock.
Bring It On felt very different. Looking back on it nearly 30 years later, for me personally, it hasn't dated too well. But it was authentic, raw, and much-needed, especially compared to what was on TV. It was actually won the Mercury Music Prize in 1998.
For the archive, I had a choice to make. I was considering "Whippin' Piccadilly" or even the later "Shot Shot".
But for me, it was the opening track to Bring It On,"Get Miles", which told me they were trying to do something that others just weren't doing at the time.
Up next is Walt Disco. Firstly, the name is great. Secondly, they sound great. Thirdly, they put on a great live show, and that's enough for me!
Walt Disco are an art-pop-alt-rock band based in Glasgow. They are releasing their new self-titled album, Walt Disco (as I said, great name!), on 2nd October 2026. Apparently, the band recorded the album live together as a full unit for the first time.
But I am looking back. I first came across them during lockdown as part of the SXSW British Council showcase. We had just seen Porridge Radio right before lockdown hit, and it was still a possibility that that group of bands were going to make it across the pond, but alas, no. But all that crop made up for lost time.
Anyway, when I heard Walt Disco's "Cut Your Hair," a standout track from their 2022 debut album Unlearning, it completely grabbed my attention. It’s tongue-in-cheek and perfectly blends glam-rock with new-wave. Its message rallies against passing judgment on people for how they look or who they are, and who can argue with that? Unless you
like passing judgment on how people look or who they are. But that wouldn't make you very nice, would it?
An actual couple of decades ago, I bore witness to the wonderful Electric Six. Dick Valentine, co-founder, frontman, and singular survivor of the band (formerly known as The Wildbunch), is perhaps the nicest man...ever? Post-show, he did not merely pose he conducted a bespoke wave for our camera (one with film in it!). Prior to this he had been executing choreography I had not seen the likes of before...or since!
The songs that have endured for me seem to be the ones I first heard when they achieved widespread recognition in 2003. Again, like a few of my other picks, they sit just on the right side of novelty, combining elements of rock, disco, garage rock, metal, new wave, and punk rock.
Dick just seems to be someone who loves being in a band who have now released 20 albums. The current lineup features incredible monikers like Johnny Na$hinal, Tait Nucleus?, Herb S. Flavourings, Dr. Jay, and Mr. Poison.
When I first heard "Danger! High Voltage" I could hardly believe Jack White got in board with absurdity. But he did. "Gay Bar" endures too, but a favourite at the time was "Dance Commander."
Back around 2008, I was at The Windmill in Brixton waiting to see The Brakes.
The support act wandered to the front, Joseph Mount. He had originally started Metronomy as a bedroom project down in Devon.
Now some would say a guy standing alone in a South London pub could look like a bloke desperately trying to steal the pub's Wi-Fi. Not for me. This is exactly where I want to be. The amplification of happiness in large venues is too much for me.
Anyway, Metronomy did eventually evolve into a brilliant live act featuring synchronized dance routines and wearing pound-shop push lights, which made a lot of people happy en-masse at the same time.
If we are talking about songs that capture a specific indie-electronic crossover moment, "The Bay" is a mandatory addition to the 1000 Songs archive. It's got that perfect, infectious rhythm that immediately locks you in.
The Fireballs embody a bit of raw 1950s for me. Formed in Raton, New Mexico in 1957, they started as an instrumental group driven by George Tomsco's lead guitar.
They had some great early instrumental releases, most notably 1959's "Torquay".
I also find it highly amusing that that Torquay is also a town in Devon.
A view...you say madam how about ...a bunch of New Mexico teenagers playing some twang!
Yes, absolutely nothing screams rock and roll rebellion quite like the English Riviera! (Although it didn't stop Metronomy literally calling an album that.)
Anyway...Norman Petty, who ran the Clovis studio where The Fireballs recorded, was also Buddy Holly’s producer. After Holly died, Petty obtained the rights to Holly's early acoustic demos and had The Fireballs overdub them throughout the 1960s. 1960s DIY remix culture at its finest!
Now, you might notice Buddy Holly himself isn't in the 1000 Songs archive. The Fireballs are. For me they kind of represent the pioneers who actually built a sound, and that is why they fully deserve this spot.
The date was 17 September 2002, a night "etched in my memory" as the debut gig of Razorlight (I googled it). I was at Dingwalls in Camden, watching them get introduced simply as "Johnny Borrell and the somethings." At London venues back then you kind of stood at least two meters back from the stage for the earlier bands (you'd basically paid good money to pretend you weren't interested). So I was "at the front".
However, this is about The Greenhornes. Hailing from Cincinnati, Ohio, the garage-rock outfit was heavily championed by Jack White (who would later go on to form The Dead Weather with their bassist, Jack Lawrence).
As The Greenhornes took the stage, the crowd grew, and suddenly I found myself shoulder-to-shoulder with Jack White himself, alongside his then-girlfriend, Marcie Bolen of The Von Bondies. Over by the side of the stage, Meg White stood quietly, facing out toward the crowd, soaking in the atmosphere.
Once The Greenhornes got going me and my illustrious company were just enjoying the gig. I was already heavily invested in their 2002 album Dual Mono, so to see it live was brilliant. It is well worth a listen if you have any affection for gritty, blues-rock revivalism. The first four tracks alone are great.
For today's pick, however, I have to go with their collaboration with British singer-songwriter Holly Golightly. The track later found wider fame on the soundtrack for Jim Jarmusch’s film Broken Flowers, giving it a well-deserved cultural longevity. Beyond being a brilliant tune, it serves as a perfect time capsule of an era when bands would seamlessly cross-pollinate, casually name-drop each other, and still retain an aura of untouchable mystique.
As part of the 1000 Songs project, I'm doing one review a week of new releases from emerging artists. Following up on my recent piece about the band untitled, this week I am spotlighting Massey's Cross.
Hailing from Calgary, Alberta, this duo brews a potent blend of classic rock and blues, laced with jazz and folk sensibilities. Their upcoming EP, "Unbroken After the Storm" (dropping this September), delivers absolutely everything you crave from a classic rock record: heavy grooves, brilliant guitar work, and deeply personal storytelling.
1000 Songs is all about tracks that immediately grab you by the collar, and their opener, "Donner Party and Sadly Forgotten," does exactly that. What I love most is how it captures a massive, Zeppelin-esque swagger while maintaining the gritty, authentic production I obsessed over during my early-2000s blues-rock phase. The energy channels the early days of The Black Keys, that raw, unpolished magic where a duo locks in and conjures an absolute wall of sound.
While the opener might be my personal favorite, you need to stick around for the whole ride. The EP naturally swells into the kind of epic, sprawling soundscapes found on the very best classic rock records, so look no further than the track "Never Odd or Even" for proof.
Whenever I listen to a new release, I want to understand the engine driving it. The band explained to me that, at its core, the EP explores the psychological terrain that follows a life-altering event. It’s not about the event itself, it’s about the aftermath, the trauma, the upheaval, the loss, the reinvention, and the brutal confrontation with the truth, events that, unfortunately, seem to happen more frequently as we get older. The main idea behind the record is that you emerge from the storm neither triumphant nor defeated, but simply changed.
The EP traces this slow, cinematic process of coming to terms with that change. Massey's Cross describes the project not just as a collection of songs, but as a single, dramatic gesture. After listening to it, I wholeheartedly agree.
If we are talking about songs that capture a specific moment in time, which is basically the entire point of this 1000 Songs project, it is genuinely impossible to ignore Aldwyn Roberts, better known to the world as Lord Kitchener, or simply "Kitch."
He wasn't just a musician; he was the undisputed Grand Master of Calypso.
There are three key things you really need to understand about him to get why he's so vital to this archive.
Firstly, the man literally soundtracked history. In 1948, he bought a ticket on the HMT Empire Windrush. When the ship pulled into Tilbury Docks, bringing some of the first post-war West Indian immigrants to the UK, a reporter for Pathé News shoved a microphone in his face. Right there, on the spot, Kitchener sang a specially written song into the camera. No studio, no auto-tune, just a man and a heavy dose of optimism stepping into the freezing English breeze. That song was "London Is the Place for Me."
Secondly, he became the absolute voice of those first 5,000 West Indian migrants. Imagine leaving the Caribbean for a grey, post-war Britain. His music was a vital lifeline. It spoke of a home they desperately missed, but also documented the reality of the life they were trying to build.
Thirdly, he was a relentless innovator. He didn't just have a brief stint in the UK and fade away. He eventually moved back to Trinidad and completely dominated the calypso scene. We're talking winning the Road March competition 10 times. He ran his own calypso tent, nurtured a whole new generation of artists, and basically helped pioneer the transition into Soca music in the 70s.
Many of the artists featured in this archive have appeared on the BBC TV show Later... with Jools Holland. Like everything, it has its critics, but I have very much enjoyed the show over the years, and most series it either uncovers or highlights a band I love.
I have been lucky enough to be at a couple of recordings of the show. The first of which was in 2003 and featured Jane's Addiction. (Also on the bill that night was John Cale, who performed a tremendous version of "Venus in Furs.")
Jane's Addiction are, of course, from Los Angeles, pioneering that distinct collision of heavy alternative rock, punk, and funk. On the show, they performed newly released "Just Because" alongside "Been Caught Stealing," a track released 13 years earlier. Now, 36 years after its original release, I have added it to the 1000 Songs archive.
I know others will say they prefer Three Days or Jane Says or specific deep cuts, and "Been Caught Stealing", especially coupled with its iconic music video, could be considered a bit of a novelty. But it grabs your attention immediately. It tells you they are a great band and are well worth listening to and exploring their back catalogue! So it's in...and.. live it was amazing!
Moondog was one of the artists I only found out about after starting 1000 Songs.
Firstly, you can't go wrong with referencing the moon. Surely. It's like the cooler sun. While we are all projecting our happy vibes onto the sun, I swear it is instead looking at itself in the moon, thinking it's fronting Echo and the Bunnymen.
Anyway...
Moondog (born Louis Thomas Hardin) was a blind composer and musician who famously "lived" on the streets of New York dressed as a Viking! I think this is a bit of lore. But he wasn't just an eccentric street performer. He made brilliant, complex music, and not only that, he was the inventor of his own instruments, most notably a triangular percussion instrument called the "trimba."
Truly innovative, he was the inspiration for legendary minimalist artists such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich, who actually championed his work and viewed him as a peer.
I absolutely love the looping, repetitive phrases in his work, and the production quality is just unbelievable for the 1950s. It sounds so far ahead of its time.
For the archive, I have gone with "Theme", "Dog Trot", and "Oboe Round".
I loved Ormside Street. It had this brilliant industrial estate aesthetic. The buildings literally went: church, church, food warehouse, property management company, church.... amazing creative space. That amazing creative space was DIY Space for London. It was the site of the first Decolonise Fest, which was put on by the next band on my list: Big Joanie. Big Joanie were formed by singer and guitarist Stephanie Phillips. She posted online looking for bandmates to start a Black feminist punk band, eventually joining forces with drummer Chardine Taylor-Stone and original bassist Kiera Coward-Deyell.
They actually played their very first set at First Timers. First Timers also happened to feature at one of my other favourite venues, Power Lunches. But that is another story for another day.
Their music is wonderfully stripped back,a brilliant mix of DIY post-punk and riot grrrl energy. I went with tracks like "Used to Be Friends" and "Fall Asleep".
I didn't actually see Big Joanie back then, but I did see Charmpit and Witching Waves, who shared members (like Estella Adeyeri, who would later join Big Joanie on bass), as was the way in the scene at the time.
Stephanie Phillips also soon has a book out called We Were Here, which is all about reclaiming the history of Black artists in alternative music and rock 'n' roll. It's out in August, but can be pre-ordered.
My first thought. Brave. To call a band untitled. A search nightmare. But then they have 40 million streams so what do I know.
I recently came across the LA-based four-piece called... untitled ...on BBC news music fix.
Apparently towards the end of 2025, their debut single "Restless" basically became the fastest streaming rock song on the planet.
Restless by untitled.
They grew up listening to the grunge. Didn't a lot of us? So why can't I write "restless" or their 2026 release "Say It Again".
Like with brilliance in any field. I think they are just doing the basics really really well. They want to make garage rock. So they made rock in their garage. They are good at it. They get streamed. Easy?!
We're midway through the year so still a long way to go for the 10 again the end of the year. But I missed out last year so thinking they have got to be in contention this year.
I caught Man/Woman/Chainsaw live at MOTH the end of 2023, and I am writing this just before the release of their debut album, Cannonball.
Man/Woman/Chainsaw are a six-piece art-punk collective from London., they have a highly collaborative, orchestral approach to their songwriting, allowing them to cram elements of avant-garde noise, punk, and classical instrumentation into a single track.
I hadn't seen a band before be able to create a pop song, absolutely destroy it, and then build it back up again within the same song. I think they are able to do this because they have grown up together and genuinely appreciate and play to all the distinct strengths within the band.
They are a truly brilliant live act. I think inevitably, the songs they have been putting out to promote the album lean slightly more into their pop tendencies. These tracks are brilliant in their own right, but to truly appreciate them, you need to see how they blend it all together on stage.
For the archive, I have gone with "The Boss" and "What Lucy Found There." When I first heard "What Lucy Found There," I was thinking they were leaning more toward a Black Country, New Road style. However, I think they are a more cohesive band and collectively know exactly where they want to go.
So, I set an "Elbow rule" and how if a track is soundtracking a shopping trip, I won't put it on the list.
Well, it doesn't apply all the time.
I included "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)". Yes, it is played absolutely everywhere. Yes, it will follow me around for the rest of my life. But I don't get bored of it. It's catchy. I try and avoid it. It's in.
When I hear a piece of recorded music, I always think of the effort it must have taken to reach my ears. To think that someone, or a group of people, had to learn how to do it, record it, not be self-conscious about sharing it with other people, and those people then investing a degree of marketing and plugging. I think my main point is that there has to be a degree of skill involved in making it. The rest of the stuff probably has a set of mechanisms that can be enacted. So, taking the skill of making something away in the first place removes the quality control, which means my neighbour's music makes my ears bleed.
Elbow aren't that. So, Elbow. Elbow. Elbow. There is skill in what they do. Every week I used to go to Koko in Camden (formerly Camden Palace) to watch bands being filmed for a TV show (I can't remember what it was called), and to my great pleasure, there was Guy Garvey and the lads. To my greater pleasure, this was the first time I heard "One Day Like This" and "Grounds for Divorce". Both good songs. Both songs I liked. I thought to myself oh Elbow. I like them.
But I won't put them on the list.
I have heard the songs too many times.
The songs will follow me around.
Their lead singer has a radio show. He plays music I don't like.
They are also a bit calculated, formulaic, and predictable.
But I think, most importantly, it is because everyone else likes them and that is enough.
This list is about personal discovery, not public consensus. If a track is already soundtracking every stadium montage and weekend supermarket trip in the country, it certainly doesn't need my help. I want music that still feels like it belongs to me, rather than just serving as the polite background noise to everyone else's lives.
I think the moral of this story is that supermarkets need to play more Radiohead.
Drenge are one of the best live bands I have ever seen. They are two brothers, Eoin and Rory Loveless. Their name literally means "boys" in Danish. I saw them at an XFM gig that DJ John Kennedy put on at the Camden Barfly. They were on the same bill as Nadine Shah and Wolf Alice (who!?).
They were originally from Castleton, Derbyshire, and they play a kind of raw, grunge-infused garage rock.
They wrote brilliant tunes, and what made them so great was that they seemed like they genuinely didn't care. They always seemed to be trying to outdo each other, so those brilliant songs rattled along live seamlessly.
I saw them around the same time Tom Watson stepped down from the Labour Party's Shadow Cabinet and told the leader at the time, Ed Miliband, that they were a great band.
Watson widely received ridicule for this; however, I totally got it! I would have done the exact same had I been in his position, having watched Drenge!
Unfortunately, although this got them a lot of attention, it kind of took away the edge from them, and their stuff immediately after wasn't quite as good.
But they were a truly great band at their peak.
I have gone with a couple of their more friendly-on-the-ear, work-friendly songs for the archive, but that first self-titled album was a masterpiece.
On 1000songs.co.uk I am going to have well over 600 artists. So I have said to myself I will write the blogs as and when.
Today it is Foals. Foals are an indie rock band from Oxford, England.
They actually met at the same school that Radiohead met.
When I first came across them, I think it was on Later... with Jools Holland. I really didn't get them at first. However, once I started hearing "Cassius", and I think seeing it in terms of the video, it began to make a bit more sense.
Then again, I saw them again on Jools Holland and felt they took it up a level later with "Mountain at My Gates" and the one that goes "When I see a man, I see a lion" ("What Went Down").
I was lucky enough to see them live much later into their career at a big festival show. It ended with "Two Steps, Twice". Just a brilliant ending to a festival set.
The reason why I am writing about them today is because every time I have to do a two-step verification for a website, I sing that song in my head. Makes it a much less frustrating process!
On 1000songs I also included "Spanish Sahara", again, I think with this I am more kind of trying to sketch my mood out at the time. I was losing connection with what I enjoyed about music around then. What I was hearing was not what I liked, and I couldn't particularly find what I liked, but Foals were there as a constant seeing me through.
So, these 1000 songs are mainly just what I have heard over the years. However, I think there was a natural starting point for my taste prior to embarking on this project. I think that starting point was Howlin' Wolf. Specifically, "Smokestack Lightnin'" 1956.
When I had gone backwards through my 90s bands to the 60s, and then forward to the 70s, "Smokestack Lightnin'" was where it started.
Now... little did I know that Mr. Wolf, born Chester Arthur Burnett, cut his teeth with a certain Charley Patton and was discovered by Ike Turner (yes, Tina's husband, who turned out not to be such a nice man).
Howlin' Wolf was also came to the attention of Sam Phillips, who then went on to launch Elvis's career.
He was a pioneer of turning Delta blues into Chicago blues, of course, with the help of electrification. Add to that the fact that he stood at an imposing 6 foot 3 and weighed close to 300 pounds; his massive physical presence perfectly matched his booming, gravelly voice.
But I am picking these on sound. And "Wang Dang Doodle" is right up there, and of course,
"Time is a thing like a bird on a wing, coming or going away."
I have gone with: time = songs.
Time has always been measured in different ways, whether it was the ancient Egyptians who measured time by tracking the stars and inventing the first sundials, or the French revolutionaries who completely changed the calendar and tried to force everyone to use ten-hour decimal clocks.
Speaking of clocks, we have Chris Martin's great-great-grandfather, William Willett, who decided to mess up our sleep patterns forever more with daylight saving time. (Which is ironic, considering how many hours of sleep we've all lost just trying to figure out how to change the time on the oven.) And yes, no Coldplay in my thousand, by the way, but I did like it when they used to completely rip Radiohead off—they were good then.
(I actually bought this . Then sold it. Last time I checked it was worth a bit!)
But yes, I have gone with the idea that time is 10 songs a year. If you are 1, you are 10 songs; if you are 10, you are 100 songs. It's a nice way of recording the years. A bit like an audio journal. You could think of those songs as a way of conjuring up a special memory of a special time, or you might just want to spin around. I think spinning around can happen at all ages. You might need a padded room, but it's possible.
I don't like genrefying things for this reason, because like all art or communication, you have what is spoken and what is received. Art is created, and art is interpreted.
So the feeling you may associate with a song is potentially completely separate from the intention and inspiration of the original artist.
So this is not about an algorithm feeding you something because a bunch of artists were inspired by a similar set of ideas or used a similar set of technology.
This is about how you or I feel and experience music, and therefore those 10 songs can mean anything. The fact that they are collected together and selected by an individual is what makes that collection meaningful to them. (Even if it just is Monkey Magic)
"So, I've decided to take my work back underground to stop it falling into the wrong hands"
Actually quite the opposite. I am making it very publicly available. The idea is to try and not have everything behind logins and paywalls. By making a list and being to just able to download that list easily feels like you are in control. Like sharing a mixtape. Without having to sign your life away to a subscription!
The Prodigy
While we're on the subject. Weren't the Prodigy great. I have only included one track in my list but they were a formative band. I think music for the jilted generation has to be my favourite album. Fat of the land then came along and was much more polished and chart hit ensued. But gilted generation felt like something genuinely new and exciting. This is again something I want to try and get this list to represent the songs have to excite someone somewhere at sometime!
Ten songs is a harsh constraint, but a necessary one. Depending on the year you're looking at, hitting that exact number was either easy or a brutal exercise in "kill your darlings." Some years I genuinely struggled to find ten tracks, while others there were far too many!
The mid-to-late 1960s were particularly difficult for me to narrow down. This was the music I listened to growing up. Furthermore, it's the specific era that a lot of the bands I subsequently listened to during the 1990s were referencing, sampling, and pulling inspiration from. Whittling a momentous year like 1966 down was just rude. anyway!
But yeah, without the limit, an archive just becomes a playlist. It becomes passive. Forcing a ten-song cap means you have to make hard decisions about the narrative of that specific year. I have also tried to mold the 1000 songs as a narrative as a whole, so adding blue boy in 1997 looks back to Marlena Shaw's "Woman of the Ghetto" and that's on purpose!
10 Songs a Year
So yeah, I am trying to create an interesting, cohesive audio story spanning exactly 100 years, from 1930 to 2030. With heaters. That are a bit catchy.
Resonance: Does it actually mean something. Does it bring to mind physical spaces, late-night radios, and specific human context over simple passive background listening?
Me: Is the catalog a true reflection of personal, ear-crafted taste rather than an algorithmically optimized collection?
When building a 100-year archive, you need a place to stand. A vantage point. It came about by trying to truly reconnect with music, searching for historical connection points. This is why I often suggest people start their journey through the archive in 1996.
1996 was a pivotal year for me personally, but more importantly, it serves as the perfect starting point for the entire project. Standing in the mid-90s allows you to look deep into the past, while simultaneously casting an eye forward into the digital future. Well, a little forward, anyway. Then we stop. We stop at 2030 because this archive is not an open-ended projection of the future; it is about encapsulating a highly specific, relatively short era: 1930 to 2030.
The anchor year is 1996. Consider how Your Woman by White Town sounds so intrinsically of its era—a bedroom-produced electronic hit—yet it relies entirely on a muffled, crackling trumpet sample.
That sample is ripped straight from the 1932 track My Woman by Lew Stone (featuring Al Bowlly). By placing these two tracks in the same overarching archive, suddenly 1996 and 1932 are inextricably linked. The archive isn't a straight, boring chronological line; it's a web of influences, much like how Bronski Beat laid the groundwork for the synth-pop that would follow them.
This is why understanding the lineage matters. A hundred years is enough time to watch these cultural echoes bounce back and forth.
References & Further Reading
1996 in British Music on Wikipedia - Details of the wider scene surrounding this pivotal year.
Comments
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