A song from my favourite artist: I’ve had a few favourite bands/artists over the years, but now I’m not sure who to go for. Pulp? From just before His’n'Hers through to Common People, they could do no wrong, and they’ve done plenty of stuff I loved either side of that. Magnetic Fields, for the magnificent 69 Love Songs and a lot of other fine stuff (amongst a selection of dross too)? Tindersticks, for their incredible first four albums, even though they’ve kind of treaded water since then? Four Tops for being amazing performers of some of the best pop songs in history? I could have chosen any of them and made a strong case. But I’m going to go with Townes van Zandt. Steve Earle once said Townes was “the best songwriter in the whole world and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that” (to which Townes responded that he’d met Dylan’s bodyguards, and Earle was sadly mistaken if he thought he was going to stand on his coffee table). Bleak ballads, leavened with glorious poetic imagery, were his stock in trade. Here’s a selection:
St John the Gambler, Kathleen, Our Mother The Mountain, None But The Rain. I’m actually going to go with a cover song, though I don’t really know the Rolling Stones original all that well.
