Song

2022 marked the UK’s first hit in the Eurovision Song Contest for decades so this is probably an appropriate time to start a blog about song…

Sam Ryder’s brilliant performance of Space Man, which he co-wrote with Amy Wadge and Max Wolfgang over Zoom during the Covid-19 pandemic, attracted many more than the customary nil point the UK has been used to in the last how many years and rightly so.

Space Man by Sam Ryder – Songfacts

It was easy to like it, to identify with it and to see its validity.

And maybe that is the measure of a song.

Speaking (or writing) as one who has tried to write a good song and only very occasionally managed to come close, it is a profound thing to discover a good song. Songs have been the soundtrack to my life and, I’m sure, many others’ lives.

There are those that love an orchestral piece or are mesmerised by a beautiful piano sonata or struck dumb (as many are) by an organ recital; inspired by a Sousa brass band march or just plain overwhelmed by Wagner, but the three to four minute song can be just as much a heart warmer.

Billy Joel’s Lullaby, written after one of those awkward questions that babies and children ask (‘What happens when we die?’), has roots in Sibelius’s Finlandia, I think, and his So it Goes in the folk song Barbara Allen.

The fusion and cadence of lyrics inhabiting melody and harmony so as to move and uplift the listener is a rare thing. More anon.