Here is this week’s playlist of songs picked by a reader from your suggestions, after last week’s callout. Read more about how our weekly Readers recommend series works at the end of the piece.
Here in the American south, it’s been said that proper welcomes come only in the form of a smile or a shotgun. To the contrary, our playlist suggests, welcoming can come in many forms.
Welcoming can be flirtatious, as Fats Domino’s Be My Guest demonstrates. The way to a guest’s heart is through music and dancing, and it sounds like lots of fun. Alan Cumming agrees that welcoming may be about performance and enticement, but, in Willkommen, this is ominous.
Björk wants us to forget all of that and shoos away the crowd. Come to Me is intimate and sensual, and yet it’s also a message of nurturing: “Come to me / I’ll take care of you / Protect you / Calm calm down.”
The Har-You Percussion Group know something about nurturing – in its more wholesome form. A children’s group put together after the Harlem riots, they embrace not just an individual but an entire community in Welcome to the Party.
Billy Paul makes a demand of us to welcome the heroes of his community – both civil rights leaders and musical pioneers: “Open the door and Let ’Em In.”
Robert Johnson, himself a pioneering black musician, says that welcoming can be pragmatic. It’s going to be raining outdoors. You’ve got nowhere else to go. Come on in My Kitchen.
Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft, by Klaatu, tosses that pragmatism to the wind and sings a hopeful welcome to telepathic alien life. While we wait on the reply, let’s listen to the Shirelles. Welcome Home Baby is also cheerful but shows the needy side of welcoming.
Welcoming becomes treacherous and manipulative in Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’s When I First Came to Town, and yet there is something even more objectionable: the compulsory welcome. Vatican Broadside tells of a religious leader compelled by the nature of his job to welcome an unpleasant and talentless American celebrity. Half Man Half Biscuit paint a sympathetic picture.
The ultimate compulsory welcome is, of course, that of Death, as in Franz Schubert’s Der Tod und das Mädchen. But never fear – Bob Dylan’s Shelter From the Storm reassures us that welcoming will be resurrected, albeit “in another lifetime”.
New theme: how to join in
The new theme will be announced at 8pm (BST) on Thursday 1 June. You have until 11pm on Monday 5 June to submit nominations.
Here is a reminder of some of the guidelines for readers recommend:
- If you have a good theme idea, or you would like to volunteer to compile a playlist from readers’ suggestions and write a blog about it, please email matthew.holmes@theguardian.com.
- There is a wealth of data on RR, including the songs that are “zedded”, at the Marconium. It also tells you the meaning of “zedded”, “donds” and other strange words used by RR regulars.
- Many RR regulars also congregate at the ’Spill blog.
