I recognise that there’s little duller in life than hearing about other people’s Spotify habits, especially at this time of year… but it does make for a very easy blog post when one is trying to post daily.

And so, allow me to present my top five artists of 2024, according to how much time I’ve spent listening to them on Spotify:

1. Stacey Kent
2. Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox
3. Max Richter
4. Blossom Dearie
5. Armin van Buuren
   

This may be the only chart in history where Blossom Dearie, an American jazz singer and pianist born more than a century ago, is nestled between Max Richter, the French-British postminimalist classical composer born in the 1960s, and Armin van Buuren, the pioneering Dutch trance DJ born in the 1970s… though their music could make an incredible mash-up.

Kae Tempest wrote:

If you are moved by a rapper that you listen to on YouTube, it’s really not a big deal. You shouldn’t have to apologise for it in literary environments. The same is true if you love a classical poet. It isn’t the case that you need to approach lauded works on bended knee. The pool of influence you draw from does not have to meet the approval of an academy or an institution, or be bound by the parameters of a genre, sub-genre or ‘movement’. Listen to everything. Read as much as you can. Try to stay present and connected with whatever you’re engaging with when you’re engaging with it.

I think that’s right.

My Spotify algorithm often serves up the version of Smile sung by Judy Garland (partly because of this) and Morecambe and Wise’s Positive Thinking.

I have long assumed that the latter was riffing on the former, but when I’ve looked into it, I’ve been unable to find any evidence to substantiate that. Superficially, the lyrics of both are about projecting and sharing happiness in a vaguely mindless way. Yet, the minor key underscores the melancholy of life. The combination of the two, along with clever word choices, highlights the desperation and necessity of maintaining a positive outlook at the worst of times. They are songs which are desperately bleak yet necessarily uplifting, a combination that’s common to the work of Charlie Chaplain and Morecambe and Wise. These layered emotions are no less common in the modern world than they have been in the past, but they’re less visible in the modern world.

The emotion the songs portray isn’t quite melancholy: it’s something a bit more cutting and urgent. Nevertheless, given my long-standing theory about the under-appreciation of melancholy, hearing these songs often leads me to reflect on the emotional infantalisation of society. Human emotion is as complex as ever, yet it seems to be that we’re increasingly encouraged to express it in marketable primary colours: Christmas is ‘brilliant’, riots are ‘terrible’, and politicians are ‘useless’. Nuance is discouraged.

Wendy and I were reflecting on this while watching the Olympics: there is undoubtedly a profound sadness to winning a gold medal. That’s not hard to understand: heck, it’s the combination of emotions portrayed in Disney’s The Jungle Book, in the song I Wan’na Be Like You: ‘I’ve reached the top and had to stop and that’s what’s botherin’ me’. In 1967, the Sherman brothers could communicate that complex and layered motivation to young children: in 2024, we rarely entertain the idea that a gold medal win is anything other than a happy occasion. Medalists may only perform that single emotion. They face the wrath of the press if they don’t comply.

Yet, if we all lived with primary-coloured emotions, there would be no good novels and certainly no opera. Jukebox musicals might be okay, tabloid newspapers would thrive, and there’d be no visible change to Loose Women or Good Morning Britain, but wither art and poetry.

It strikes me that the world would be a better, more understanding place if we acknowledged that we are all bundles of strange and conflicting emotions. To pretend that we experience only one thing at a time misses the essence of what it is to be human.

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.

This film was very much Wendy’s streaming choice: a long-term fan of trance music, and of Armin van Buuren in particular, she was intrigued to see this 2023 release. It combines footage of one of van Buuren’s shows from Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome with documentary footage and interviews.

This confounded my expectations. I didn’t expect a trance concert to feature a live orchestra of classical musicians, live singers and live ballet. Wendy has always argued that trance has its roots in classical music, and that couldn’t have been made plainer than in this production.

I didn’t expect the interviews to focus on van Buuren’s recent struggle with depression. He talked about how his therapy had taught him to live mindfully in the moment. It isn’t hard to see the parallel between that advice and trance music—which perhaps explains why this slightly bizarre combination of content slotted together so seamlessly.

He talked, too, about his struggle with social media and people’s criticism of him and his work online. I often read or hear of famous people simply ignoring this sort of content, and was struck by his different approach. He talked of recognising that everyone sees the world differently, but understanding that there may be a kernel of useful and usable feedback in even unjust criticism. He noted that he can’t control others’ opinions, but he can strive to be better by his own judgment. It seemed like a grounded and reflective approach.

I also found myself enjoying the music, perhaps all the more for understanding some of the thought processes which informed it.

This was not at all the film I expected it to be, and I very much enjoyed it.

My sister sometimes tells a story about sitting down to a General Studies exam and facing a question about how pianos work. ‘How am I supposed to know?’, she wondered, despite having had piano lessons.

This was in my mind as I read this fascinating FT article by Rhodri Marsden about a UK-based piano manufacturer. The pianos pictured in the article couldn’t be further from my personal taste, but never before had I thought about issues like the sound projection versus string tension:

Pianos are generally built to project sound rather forcefully (I’ve played a Steinway on the Barbican stage but it’s very different from what you want in a home piano), and that’s an issue Edelweiss has tackled head-on. “Concert grands in particular have high-tension strings and a very stiff, rigid soundboard, so the whole thing roars,” says Norman. “And of course that can give you a buzz when you’re playing, but if you aren’t a die-hard pianist you don’t really want that in your home, with the sound overpowering the room. You want something that’s beautiful to listen to. I don’t know any other manufacturer with this approach.”

The Sonos speakers we have dotted around the house have a function that ‘tunes’ them to the space, and yet I’ve never before considered that different environments might warrant different piano constructions. Marsden’s article shone a light on a world I didn’t know existed.

General Studies was apparently discontinued as an exam subject in 2020, so sadly no more will teenagers be stumped by questions about piano mechanisms… and nor, like me, will they have to bluff their way through essays on the Elgin marbles, Dadaism or the International Monetary Fund. It seems a shame, really: when I try to recall sitting my A-Levels, it’s the General Studies papers that come most prominently to mind, precisely because they were so unpredictable. But I suppose times change.

A year on from watching the Royal Northern Sinfonia accompany Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights, Wendy and I returned to see them repeat the trick with Chaplin’s 1936 follow-up, Modern Times.

I don’t think I’ve seen Modern Times before. The programme for this performance leaned into a narrative around automation and drew a comparison with the current debate about the future of work in the context of artificial intelligence. I found this a bit reaching: I saw the film more as a commentary on capitalism and the Great Depression.

You may already know the plot: Chaplin’s Tramp is sacked from his job at a steel mill after the pace and repetitive nature of the work produces a nervous breakdown. He meets a girl, they plan a life together, but he bounces in and out of employment and prison. It’s a mostly-silent comedy romance, scored by Chaplin.

Not knowing the film, I was disappointed by the score, which seemed to draw heavily on the jazz standard Smile. You may chuckle knowingly: as I’ve since discovered, the score came first, and combined with lyrics inspired by the film, it became Smile only two decades or so later.

Modern Times was brilliant, particularly in its physical comedy, but I thought it lacked a bit of the warm innocence of City Lights. It also had less emotional range: Modern Times didn’t have the profound melancholy and longing of City Lights: it was an altogether lighter affair, despite its political message.

But the film was only half the experience. The Royal Northern Sinfonia performed as brilliantly as always, and as with last year’s example, really brought the film to life.

We had a great time.

Judging by the sheer quantity of ‘think pieces’ that have been written on the subject, it seems that it is now mandatory for every living being to share their opinion on Beyoncé’s cover of Dolly Parton’s Joelene.

Mine is best summarised as: ‘meh’.

Beyoncé’s revised lyrics change the tone of the song from plaintive to combative, and it’s therefore a bit discordant to keep the same plaintive melody. It’s the Wonka / Pure Imagination problem all over again.

But, then again, perhaps the discordance is an intentional commentary on how plaintive feelings often find expression in combative language, particularly among those who are reluctant to admit vulnerability.

I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt… but neither version is really up my musical street and I have no immediate plans to listen to either version again.

I can’t remember when I first read a Kazuo Ishiguro novel, but I can remember when he became one of my favourite novelists: I was blown away by The Remains of the Day in 2016.

I can’t remember when I first heard Stacey Kent’s singing. I suspect I’d have first heard her on Monocle Radio, and I know for sure that she’s been on my playlists for about a decade.

I can remember when I first learned of a connection between the two: it was six months ago, when Faber announced the publication of this book. It is a collection of sixteen songs Ishiguro has written for Kent since 2007, several of which are still to be recorded. Some of my favourite Stacey Kent songs are in here: how did I miss that they were written by one of my favourite novelists?

Reading the lyrics of familiar songs on the page is a strange experience, and it is most definitely not the best way to experience these pieces of writing. They are made to be sung.

And yet, seeing them written down in the book, alongside beautiful cartoons by Bianca Bagnarelli, gave me a different appreciation for the work.

As astoundingly obvious as it may be, I’ve never before noticed that many of Kent’s songs are rooted in the present day, unlike jazz standards. No matter how many times I’ve heard The Ice Hotel or Bullet Train, it’s never previously occurred to me to think, ‘Gosh, that’s an unusually modern setting for a jazz song.’

I was also surprised by how short many of the lyrics are: the songs tell complete stories in my mind, and I’ve never before realised the linguistic brevity with which they’re told—or, perhaps, how much of the story-telling relies on Kent’s performance.

This book therefore gave me a renewed appreciation for the talents of both Ishiguro and Kent—but if you haven’t already heard the music, then it might not do much for you.

According to BBC News:

To the jazzy sounds of Nancy Wilson’s 1960s tune I Wish You Love, the Duchess of Sussex emerges from the kitchen of her Californian mansion in a teaser unveiling her new lifestyle brand.

Although little was revealed in the 16-second long video, an Instagram account for Meghan’s new brand has already amassed hundreds of thousands of online followers.

For the past week or so, I’ve had Blossom Dearie’s 1964 cover of the same song stuck in my head after Spotify kept serving it to me. It seems that I’ve more in common with the Duchess of Sussex than I could ever have guessed, though I’m not certain I’d have chosen a break-up song to launch an aspirational lifestyle brand. I defer to the Duchess’s much greater knowledge and experience in this area!

On Friday night, Wendy and I returned to the Glasshouse International Centre for Music to hear the Royal Northern Sinfonia play works by Beethoven and Schumann, plus a Clara Schumann piano concerto featuring Isata Kanneh-Mason. We saw Isata’s cellist brother several times last year, including in this very hall. The talent in the Kanneh-Mason family is astonishing.

The RNS now stream most of their home performances on YouTube, as they did with this one. It’s both fascinating and discombobulating to see the same concert I’ve witnessed in person streamed online, with all of the televisual close-ups and changes of angles that medium provides. I guess it’s a uniquely twenty-first-century experience.

I almost booked the seats behind the stage, and given how prominent they are in the streamed production, I’m glad I didn’t!

On Friday, Wendy and I were fortunate enough to visit the recently re-christened Glasshouse to hear Erland Cooper and a string quartet from the Scottish Ensemble, supported by Midori Jaeger. We had a brilliant time.

Neither of us had previously heard Jaeger, but her set of original songs performed solo with her pizzicato cello demonstrated remarkable talent. It was Wendy’s favourite part of the night. Jaeger also joined the Cooper and the quartet in the main set.

And what a main set it was, with remarkable performances. I’ve listened to all of Cooper’s albums repeatedly, but my favourite is still the original Solan Goose, and a fair proportion of the set was drawn from that album. There were a couple of moments of real imagination: the title song of that album accompanied by a ‘gannet choir’ made up of the audience streaming gannet calls from Cooper’s website; one song played entirely in the dark.

Cooper’s music isn’t entirely up Wendy’s street: the melodies are quite simple and repetitive (I would say ‘meditative’) but we were both nevertheless entranced by the skill of the musicians. Cooper himself also proved to be an endearing character, bringing real warmth and humour to the evening.

Basically: we had a great night out.