Unhappy endings ... Nick Cave's album Murder
Ballads featured songs about crimes of
passion. Photograph: Markus Shreiber/AP
Aren't there a lot of songs with "song" in the title? Tonnes of them. I counted 425 recommendations last week and I'm sure we only scratched the surface. Apologies to Sparks, REM, Bob Marley and DJ Shadow, among others. The playlist could have been equally strong at twice the length.
This week's theme, storytelling songs, was suggested by a reader a while back. Like they tell you at school, a story needs a beginning, a middle and an end, preferably in that order. I'm looking for songs that fit the bill, whether it's Tom Waits or Slick Rick, character studies or murder mysteries, fables or travelogues. Obviously, many songs have a narrative element but only a few tell the kind of tale that would do justice to a short story or film. You know the kind of thing I mean.
Deadline for recommendations is Monday 1pm. The archive of previous columns is accessible here, and you can also see an A-Z of every single song that has appeared in the weekly playlists.
- New to Readers recommend? Here's how it works.
