Vier Bonussongs

Wednesday's blog was all about music in foreign languages, specifically German. I spoke MIA.'s Zirkus, an album that my mum bought me during a visit to Germany some years ago, and I mentioned that, as much as I like the music on that CD, the fact that I can't understand the lyrics is a pretty major stumbling block for me.

Well, for whatever reason, this confession prompted several people to send me their own favourite Deutschesongs on Twitter. Perhaps they thought that MIA. simply weren't the right band for the job, and that their own favourites would be enough to break the language barrier and claim a permanent spot in my heart.

My Sad Songs

Last Monday, my good friend Josh blogged a list of his Top 10 Sad Songs. Today, I'm doing the same - here are my favourite nuggets of lachrymose musical loveliness, roughly arranged from least to most upsetting:

Mistakes by Tindersticks (from The Bloomsbury Theatre 12.3.95)

Stuart Staples' stunning song of regret first appeared on Tindersticks II, but this live performance, recorded at London's Bloomsbury Theatre, is the version to seek out - the lush orchestral arrangement is brought even further to the fore, significantly upping the songs 'curl up in a ball and weep' credentials.

Music to Play Risk By

Image stolen from John Rostron because I couldn't bothered to take a photo of my own.

I've always enjoyed the occasional game of Risk but it seems like I'm playing it an awful lot recently. This is largely down to Risk Legacy, a sort of epic, serialised version of Risk in which each game affects the next. I've played several games with the same group of people, and it's sort of addictive - it's like someone took this already-moreish world domination game and turned it into the board game equivalent of a Dexter boxset.

I Bought it for a Song

Some might say that buying an album because you really like one of its songs is a little excessive - why not just download that song? Or at least listen to a couple of others before you commit to the whole thing?

Still, this is something I've done often, and while purchasing an album with only one track that's definitely any good can occasionally lead to disappointment, I find more often than not that the other stuff is pretty good too. Heck, half the time, the song I paid for isn't even the best one on there!

Here, then, are five albums that I bought for a song but ended up loving all over:

Playing My Game by Lene Marlin

I'll start with Playing My Game, since it's the album that triggered this blog post. I first heard Sitting Down Here a very long time ago; Radio 2 gave it quite a few plays when it came out in April '99 (I'd have been seven years old, just for reference - my mum would put Radio 2 on in the car on the way home from school).