Those of you who know me well will also know why this is appropriate for today.

Altered Images: Happy Birthday

I saw in the Guardian that Steve Bronski has died, subsequently revealed tragically to have been by smoke inhalation in a fire.

He was a founder member of Bronski Beat, who were I believe the first openly gay band to have a big success in the UK when the song below reached no 3 in the charts.

Bronski Beat: Smalltown Boy

Steven William Forrest (Steve Bronski,) 7/2/1960 – 7/12/2021. So it goes.

Musical theatre isn’t really my thing but I knew that Stephen Sondheim who died in late November was a giant in the field. I’d been aware of him as a lyricist from West Side Story and knew he had subsequently written many musicals on his own.

Send in the Clowns (from A Little Night Music) is perhaps a masterpiece but I like this 1989 Pet Shop Boys influenced version of Losing My Mind, a song which first appeared in Sondheim’s musical Follies in 1971.

Liza Minelli: Losing My Mind

Stephen Joshua Sondheim: 22/3/1930 –26/11/2021. So it goes.

A couple of months or so ago I heard Liza Minelli’s version of this song on the radio and was surprised I hadn’t heard it before. It’s a very Minelli interpretation but was nevertheless produced by the Pet Shop Boys, who had had a hit with it two years earlier.

Liza Minelli: Rent

For comparison purposes here is the original:-

Pet Shop Boys: Rent
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Despite the 1970s being Bowie’s break-through decade (his first No. 1 Space Oddity in 1969 was something of a false dawn and for a time he had looked to be a one-hit wonder) he didn’t have a No. 1 in that decade, having to wait till 1980 for this song to be his second to top the UK charts, helped by a distinctly weird video, which was made to look like it had been filmed on another planet and whose lyric referred back to Space Oddity and gave a fresh angle on that earlier song

For myself I think it was the sound of a mellotron in the mix that made it.

David Bowie: Ashes to Ashes

I mentioned this song when I posted the same singer’s Leningrad in this category last year.

The lyrics are a reminder that the Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times” might have resonance for many people who lived in the second half of the twentieth century. And indeed, now.

They are also redolent of Harold Macmillan’s second most important warning. When asked what would he say was most likely to knock governments off-course he reputedly said, “Events, dear boy. Events,” a phrase I use for my posts on happenings (usually, it has to be said, deaths) in the wider world. It seems though that documentary evidence of Macmillan using these words is elusive.

That other warning of his? “Never invade Afghanistan.”

Joel has apparently said he doesn’t particularly like the song as the melody is, “terrible. Like a dentist’s drill.”

He’s doing himself an injustice. OK the melody’s nothing to write home about, but it matches the lyrics. And the lyrics are beautifully constructed.

Billy Joel: We Didn’t Start the Fire

It wasn’t till I started researching this that I realised this distinctive song (particularly the cracked vocal) was part written by Jackie DeShannon. See here and here. It is Kim Carnes’s version that is most familiar to people in the UK, though. The song remains Carnes’s only hit here.

Kim Carnes: Bette Davis Eyes

Jackie DeShannon’s version is, by comparison, much more conventional.

Jackie DeShannon: Bette Davis Eyes

The man who wrote Bat out of Hell and so was partly responsible for thrusting Meatloaf onto the world has died.

Despite not having much success on his own account Steinman had a few strings to his bow. As well as composing he was also a record producer and contributed not only to Meatloaf’s career but also to Bonnie Tyler’s, producing her two highest charting UK albums and writing her two biggest hits in the UK, Total Eclipse of the Heart and this one, Holding out for a Hero.

Bonnie Tyler: Holding out for a Hero

James Richard (Jim) Steinman: November 1/11/1947 –19/4/2021. So it goes.

Mr Mister’s first UK hit.

Mr Mister: Broken Wings

A nice piece of 1983 jauntiness from The Cure.

Their first top ten hit.

The Cure: The Love Cats