Tunes of the Day stay in the right sidebar a few days. Then they’re laid to rest here, in reverse chronology of appearance, like yesterday’s hits on the jukebox. Please report broken links.
- John Winston Lennon’s piercing 1970 farewell to a Mother lost in childhood.
- From Officium, 1994, Jan Garbarek and Hilliard Ensemble: Parce Mihi Domine
- Blatant 1942 innuendo as Rudy Vallée bids Claudette Colbert Goodnight Sweetheart
- The Moody Blues arrangement was a direct steal from that of Bessie Banks’s Go Now
- Jimi’s soaringly repeated riff opens and sets the tone for House Burning Down
- Some say Henry VIII penned this for John Coltrane: Greensleeves
- Joan Baez with a cautionary tale about one Matty Groves
- A nobler cause than patriotism. Billy Bragg sings The Internationale
- Taste the whip, in love not given lightly. Velvet Underground/Nico – Venus in Furs
- Rossini and the Big Lucy demand we make way – that we Largo al factotum
- Sledge on, Percy! Here’s Michael Bolton on When a Man Loves a Woman
- Ella walks the wayward ways of a wayward town in Cole Porter’s Love for Sale
- Keith Jarrett’s legendary 1975 gig in Cologne’s Opera House: the Köln Concert
- Leeds shoppers ambushed by Ravel’s Bolero
- Gordon Lightfoot on the night Lake Superior claimed the Edmund Fitzgerald
- Springsteen’s Cautious Man was an honest man, who wanted to do what was right.
- Heartwarming: the love and respect between David and Tina on Tonight
- Guys, we’ve all been there. Dr Hook on gatekeeping matriarch, Sylvia’s Mother
- Stevie on the subject of Superstition
- Nottingham indie trio, London Grammar, with Chris Isaaks’ Wicked Game
- Who’d hang around as Danish National Symphony Orchestra do Good, Bad & Ugly?
- The Bangles urge us to Walk Like an Egyptian
- Ill starred but seriously good Mancunian indie outfit, James. This is Sound
- Like Macy G, Norah J and Ms D, David Grey never followed through: This year’s love
- What do they want? Cyndi lays it out for us: Girls just wanna have fun
- Beck, and something about a Broken Drum
- Lucinda, told she couldn’t dispose of her (dead) man in Lake Charles, did it anyway.
- Pink Floyd on the subject of Us and Them
- 1962, Cuba Missile Crisis and a Minnesota boy in NYC is Talking WW3 Blues
- Return of Cab Calloway? Lou Bega and Mambo No 5 (A little bit of)
- Florence and the Machine: What the Water Gave Me.
- Jeff Buckley on that dangerously seductive Lilac Wine
- Jane Birkin tells Serge Gainsbourg, je t’aime. Gallantly he replies, moi non plus.
- John Lennon’s sardonic ode to the Maharishi, covered by Paul Weller: Sexy Sadie
- “IZ” Kamakawiwoʻole’s troubles melt like lemon drops somewhere over the rainbow
- Sinatra says – and not in a shy way – “I did it My Way“
- Best song ever on sex dialectics? Carol King asks, Will you still love me tomorrow?
- RB Greaves covers barefoot Sandie’s first hit. Always something there to remind me
- Discovered in my mid teens, I still love Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture
- Undisputed king of the lutelike kora, Mali’s Toumani Diabaté live in Seville
- Dylan’s fifties Minnesota high school sweetheart, a Girl from the north country
- Etta James: she did powerful, tender – and raunchy. You can leave your hat on
- Who’s afraid of John Cage? He wasn’t all avant-garde for 1948’s In a Landscape
- Another sultan of swing, Oscar Peterson, plays the Bach Suite
- Set not before time to enter R & R’s Hall of Fame, 2018: Dire Straits, Sultans of Swing
- Hot Club D’Europe segue from d’Orange Juice into Joseph Joseph
- George Winston with The Holly and the Ivy
- Mike Oldfield and crew on the best known bit of Tubular Bells: The Bell
- Tine to tango. Tine Thing Helseth’s trumpet on Astor Piazzolla’s Libertango
- Julian Bream with his Memories of the Alhambra
- Bryan Ferry and a high octane crew, live in Lyon, suggest we Stick Together
- Joan Baez with a tale of woe from Olde England – Geordie
- Two of Canada’s finest. Diana Krall covers Joni Mitchell’s A Case of You
- Annie Lennox, live. She wants to know Why …
- After Astral Weeks, Van Morrison gave us Moondance to take us Into the Mystic
- Last word in serene minimalism? That’ll be Arvo Pärt with Spiegel im Spiegel
- Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord! Big Youth + Proverbs 12:22 = Natty Dread
- Guys, you want your cake and eat it? Better fix that Lipstick on your collar
- Unsurprisingly, given rooftop venue, John Lennon pleads: Don’t Let Me Down
- Chamber jazz at its ECM finest. Tord Gustavson Trio with some Deep Love
- Grand Pianola from American minimalist, John Adams: On the Dominant Divide.
- Terry meets Julie … What’s that you say? Greatest pop song of the 60s? Agreed
- Inverted snob? False consciousness? John meant the latter in Working Class Hero
- Cocteau Twins: nonsense lyrics that always sounded classy. This is Iceblink Luck
- Throaty staccato from Gene Pitney in life changing motel just 24 Hours from Tulsa
- UK Election 2017. It’s Captain SKA wot (nearly) done it, with Liar Liar
- From banal domesticity, Ms Mercury and the girls just Want to Break Free
- Creedence Clearwater Revival coming home soon – Long As I Can See the Light
- Lisa Hannigan, like her compatriot Sinead, does Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U
- Jimmy Dean’s 1961 tale of a man you didn’t give no lip to: Big Bad John
- Marvin Gaye, live at Montreux. on how he Heard it through the Grapevine
- Robert Ridley, Grandpa Elliott and musicians across the world: Dock of the Bay
- Bugger Orff! Here’s Philip Pickett et al with their take on Carmina Burana
- Mozart’s Turkish March meets electronica with the Tribal version
- Barnsley oldsters tell Pretenders they can’t go to the gig: No brass in us pockets
- Tenor Jussi Björling, baritone Robert Merrill and Bizet’s Pearl Fishers’ Duet
- Glittering word play, dark misogyny. Eminem (with Dido) does Stan
- Adele’s question is as old as love forgotten: Don’t you remember?
- Trippy surrealism in the visuals for the fab four’s Strawberry Fields
- Uganda’s Geoffrey Oryema is joined by Peter Gabriel for Land of Anaka
- Malvina Reynolds, not Pete Seeger, penned this ode on bourgeois Little Boxes
- How could someone this good not follow through? Macy Gray, 2000: I Try
- Incontestably the greatest ever Dylan cover. Jimi’s All along the Watchtower
- A taste of Cambodia, this: Khmer Surin
- Lucinda Williams showing how classy Country can be. This is Greenville
- From the eighties and Philip Glass’s sumptuous Songs from the Trilogy: Protest
- Jake Thackray on unspeakable pagan rites at the Castleford Ladies Magical Circle
- One of the lighter moments in the film Deliverance was Dueling Banjos
- If Sutherland’s take is too mannered for you, try Enya’s Marble Halls
- Mozart’s Figaro: Barenboim glides East-West Divan through its blazing Overture
- Trane knew how to strip the syrup from melodic gems: My Favourite Things
- Another old factory Mahogany Session. Colouring: Everything has Grown
- High octane duo The Proclaimers can do poignant too: Act of Remembrance
- We love this! Christine and the Queens dance on a block to Tilted
- Strand of Oaks with Radio Kids
- From sound/venue specialists Mahogany Sessions: Rag’n Bone Man, Bitter End
- David’s cover of John’s Across the Universe
- Janis Joplin, whose own Summertime burned brief but bright .
- People bowed and prayed to the neon gods they’d made. S & G: Sound of Silence
- Men at arms: the late great Leonard Cohen mines a familiar theme in The Partisan
- Irish songbird Lisa Hannigan in an East London factory: Prayer for the Dying
- First aired on BBC’s Peaky Blinders: Cohen’s 2016 title track, You Want it Darker
- AIDS benefit, Red Hot & Blue. Debbie and Iggy do Cole Porter’s Did You Evah
- John McLaughlin & Zakir Hussain with an unnamed piece from Shakti
- Happened on while travelling in Rajasthan in 2016: Kalibelia folk
- Wynton Marsalis pays homage to Jelly Roll Morton: New Orleans Bump
- Gertrude Lawrence cuts glass on Cole Porter’s lyric genius: The Physician
- George Winston’s arrangement of JS Bach’s sublime Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring
- Brit soulster Michael Kiwanuka with the title song of 2016 release, Love and Hate
- New York based Peurto Ricans, Balún, with Camila
- “We’d all play like Stan Getz if we could”, said Trane. This is Samba Triste
- Too didactic by half but Dory Previn had her moments: Lady with the Braid
- Poetic licence in Shaffer’s take on what inspired Mozart’s Queen of the Night aria
- 40 years on, live in Rome, Bruce Springsteen revisits NYC Serenade
- Maura O’Connell & Karen Matheson follow WB Yeats down by the Sally Gardens
- Cohen rasps eloquent on the Johnny Walker wisdom running high at Closing Time
- Some like it hot – not Curtis, Lemon & Monroe but 70s dubster, Big Youth
- National anthem? Here’s Edith Piaf with a real one from the Paris Commune
- Sonny wrote it for Cher. Nancy sang it too. Lady Gaga: Bang Bang My Baby shot ..
- Unnamed Azerbaijani orchestra with catchy take on Floyd’s Brick in the Wall
- Dave Brubeck Quartet with one of jazz’s best loved tunes: Take Five
- Larry Williams on the legendary Chess label with My Baby’s Got Soul
- The Beach Boys with – what else? – Good Vibrations
- Mick & John do fun intro to a Lennon song with unusual line-up: Yer Blues
- Garbarek, Metheny et al pay tribute to a bass ace: Hommage à Eberhard Weber
- 1960 footage of the Shadows in terrific form with Apache
- In Japan it’s a recognised illness. So tell us, Zola Jesus, about Hikikomori
- From Gerry Mulligan’s 1971 classic, Age of Steam: K-4 Pacific
- Lemonade pies & living bra? Gotta be John Fred with Judy in Disguise
- John Renbourne with Donne’s metaphysical conceits on fickle womanhood: Song
- You couldn’t call it soul, you have to call it heart. Sinead says Thank you
- Art Pepper, from Intensity 1960: I can’t believe you’re in love with me
- Mancunian indie band James, vocalist Tim Booth hitting the high notes in Laid
- Ravi Shankar’s love child, Norah J, with her seductive waltz, Come Away With Me
- Amy: she told you she was trouble, you know that she’s No Good
- 60’s icon Julie Driscoll works wonders with Donovan’s Season of the Witch
- Tepidity in love damned by Ismael Lo & Marianne Faithful: Without Blame
- Penguin Cafe with Helen Lieberman’s soul-stirring cello: Prelude & Yodel
- Its spit venom was the rock shock of ’65. Bob Dylan: Positively 4th Street
- South Koreans Sumi Jo and Ah-Kyung with Léo Delibes’ exquisite Flower Duet
- Ethiopian star Gigi sings Balewashintu
- Charles Mingus, jazzman with a sense of drama. This is Pithecanthropus Erectus
- Leonard Cohen is caught in the grip of an Undertow
- The Animals did this better than Nina: Please Don’t Let Me be Misunderstood
- Get verse 2. I don’t think the censors did! Cab Calloway and Minnie the Moocher
- Alabama Shakes, led by Brittany Howard, do Hold on
- Late great Eva Cassidy: secular gospel on Pete Seeger’s Had I a Golden Thread
- Johnny Thunder & his ladies kick wellie into an old nursery rhyme: Loop De Loop
- Alpine scene from Cabaret. 1933: a Hitler Youth sings Tomorrow Belongs to Me
- Heavy metal men Disturbed with another cover of Paul Simon’s Sound of Silence
- 1967 saw rock masterpieces like Forever Changes. Arthur Lee: You Set the Scene
- “I can hold a note longer than Caruso”. Boy Bob Dylan and Freight Train Blues
- The late great David Bowie in Tokyo: Rock ‘n Roll Suicide
- From The Rising, Springsteen’s album on 9/11: You’re Missing
- G.G. Yunupingnu – so good he got two slots running: History (I Was Born Blind)
- The incredible sound of Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu: Wiyatha and Bapa
- Bags of Rock ditch lyrics in barnstorming Hootenanny take on Whisky in the Jar
- Thanks to Richard of Wakefield for this: Bon Iver at Air Studios
- God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen? When MJQ do it, it’s England’s Carol
- Beyoncé does to Sex on Fire what Jimi did to All Along the Watchtower
- Kings of Leon on Jools Holland Show do Sex on Fire
- Garbarek, McLaughlin, Hari Prasad Chaurasia & Zakir Hussain Making Music
- Steve Earl’s tale of one family defying two Prohibitions: Copperhead Road
- Faure’s Requiem: lighter than Wolfie’s but, well, to die for: Sanctus, Pie Jesu ..
- Hyde Park, 2012. McCartney joins Springsteen for two of the Beatles’ earliest.
- Susheela Raman with a fine cover of Joan Armatrading’s Save Me
- Inspired by Sholokhov, Joan Baez asks Where have all the Flowers Gone?
- Miles was so fond of this putdown he made it the opener to Kind of Blue: So What
- BBC Panorama pinched the Karelia by Sibelius. This is the intermezzo.
- Afroman’s morality tale is steeped in remorse, and all because he got high
- Brassed off? Striking miners do the Lone Ranger.
- Sonny’s Lettah from Brixton Jail brings bad news to a mother in Jamaica.
- Scandi-noir fans know this one. Choir of Young Believers and their Hollow Talk
- If I love you, watch out! Elina Garanca as sex terrorist Carmen does Habanera
- Tunisian oud player Anouar Brahem, La Pas du Chat Noir
- Greatest rock’n roll band in the world? Gimme shelter!
- Jennifer Warnes duels with Leonard Cohen on Joan of Arc
- La Fiesta: Stan Getz blows for Spain as Chick Corea smokes the keyboard.