You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night) - Meat Loaf

I have been listening to Bat Out of Hell in preparation for Meat Loaf's Guilty Pleasures tour next week. Listening to an artist's music over and over before a concert is something I always do and really helps me enjoy the show more. I'm hoping for a show featuring lots of theatrics but am especially looking forward to my absolute favourite Meat Loaf song: You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night).

The song starts with one hell of a bang and scales up even further into a full blown attack on the senses in the best possible way. I love the piano lines, the rock guitar runs punctuating each third line and the in-your-face female backing vocals during the verses. The second verse goes on longer than expected but just prolongs the experience. The dynamics in the bridge and vocal ending contrast the intensity of the rest of the song, completing this celebration of sound.

Turn it up and sing it loud. I do.

Murder on the Dancefloor - Sophie Ellis Bextor

Here's an earworm that has followed me around for years: Murder on the Dancefloor by Sophie Ellis Bextor. When I was backpacking around Italy back during 2002, there was a café that offered everyone staying at our hostel a daily breakfast deal. It was quite a trendy place and I'd start each morning in Rome with a strong coffee (standing up!) and pastry, contemplating the day ahead. Only a few of the staff spoke English so I was pretty much immersed in standard Italian each morning. It was a great way to rekindle the little Italian I remembered from my childhood.

I was always amused to hear English speaking songs dubbed into different languages. In nightclubs, the guys  singing along in English thought that made them god's gift to you. This song was playing on high rotate (in English) throughout Europe at the time and I could guarantee it would be playing every single morning in that trendy café. Just hearing it now instantly transports me back there - good times when I'd plan my day of sightseeing before setting off through the streets of Rome, assured that the very next morning, Sophie Ellis Bextor would be ready to greet me with a coffee once again.

Reckless - Australian Crawl

I might say this a lot, but I really mean it when I say that Reckless by Australian Crawl is one of my favourite songs of all time. The lyrics left me always wanting to catch the Manly Ferry to Circular Quay the next time I was in Sydney, something which is not as glamorous as this song makes it sound.

From its simple start featuring nothing but fretless bass, kick drum and a gated snare, the magic of this song is largely in the gaps between notes ; teasers, if you like, or pregnant pauses filled with anticipation. (Gosh, that's poetic for a Friday!) The bowed cello parts are complemented beautifully by a lightly plucked nylon acoustic guitar, which comes to the fore and steals the scene during the classical style solo and outro. Pure magic.

Mary Had A Little Lamb - Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble

I was taught to enjoy Stevie Ray Vaughan by my musician father, who has every one of SRV's albums, copies of which have made it onto both of my iPods over the years. There is almost too much to say about Stevie Ray Vaughan, the roller coaster lifestyle he led and his massive contribution to modern blues guitar playing. Like many, I vividly remember being touched by the news that SRV had met an untimely death in 1990.

The guitarist in my former band was the ultimate SRV fan and it showed in his playing. On the tragic day of SRV's death, his wife set up his guitar in the lounge, arranged candles, flowers and all his SRV albums around it, creating a little shrine for the man. Apparently that was going a step or two too far (the emotions were pretty raw) but it's a story we've all dined out on for years. However, thanks to him and my father, I have an ongoing love of all his music today.

There's another story in our musical circles about the time that SRV played a concert in Wellington several years ago (still the loudest concert my father has ever been to). Another guitarist from our band insists he was jamming in The Rock Shop, or whatever it was called in those days, alongside an American guitarist who had wandered in. It turned out to be SRV himself. How cool is that!

Mary Had A Little Lamb, released in 1983, is not my favourite Stevie Ray Vaughan song but is incredibly memorable for me, my family and our bands. We played this version of Buddy Guy's arrangement as part of our fourth bracket for years for purely indulgent reasons; it was our excuse to play long and loud, with each of us enjoying a solo or two on a simple bed of twelve bar blues. Hearing it again today takes me right back to those late nights and good times. Once again, listen to this one loudly.

Nightswimming - R.E.M.

I went through a stage of really liking R.E.M. back in the 90s before I reached saturation point with their music a few years ago. I still occasionally enjoy spinning the odd R.E.M. album but listen to them a lot less these days. Nightswimming was released in 1993 and is so very different to the usual R.E.M. sound, which is what first caught my attention.

As a pianist, I love how this entire song is built around a single, circular piano line (and a few of its variations) played repeatedly. The string arrangement was done by the legendary John Paul Jones and Songfacts tells me that it was written and played on the same piano featured in Derek and the Dominos' Layla; that's a pretty cool.To be honest, I've barely ever listened to the lyrics or much beyond the piano part and orchestration, but I'm allowed to be biased. ;-)