This has got Regina Spektor's On the Radio on it. That song has everything you want in a radio hit: distinctively catchy, light, a lyric that hints at meaningfulness without actually meaning anything when you look more closely. And it mentions the radio and a DJ, which guarantees it airplay.
<tangent>It was a staple on 6 Music in 2006, when I was chained to my desk writing The Book, with the radio (live, iPlayer or Last.fm) on all the time. Of course, I don't want to see 6 Music shut down. Andrew Collins wonders whether it might be in its prime right now. I couldn't say, because, from around 2006 on, I started abandoning more and more of its programming to the point where the Freak Zone is my only essential listening, and Gideon Coe the only other show I drop into. In my little world, 6 Music was in its prime when Collins himself had a regular three-hour afternoon slot, Coe presided over the morning, and Tom Robinson in early evening. Marc Riley had just joined the station and the Freak Zone experimented with guest presenters like Tony Wilson and Paul Morley, before settling on Stuart Maconie. This was Spring/Summer 2004, and Mark Radcliffe's evening show on Radio 2 was still fresh. Mixing It and Andy Kershaw were thriving on Radio 3, and Late Junction was on four times a week, not yet relegated to a red-eye shift. On Radio 1, John Peel was alive and, as far as we could tell, well! This was the high-water mark for music radio in the UK — and therefore, to be jingoistic for a moment, the high-water mark for music radio in the history of the world. </tangent>
On the Radio doesn't sound so good on CD as… on the radio. But then I confess I've got a bit of a downer on these Word cover CDs. Love the magazine, love the podcast, but the CDs come over like aural cholestorol, clogging up my desire for new music. So it is that the other tracks that I anticipated listening to end up disappointing. Babybird answer the "blimey, are they still going?" question with another question: "why bother?" Robyn Hitchcock's songwriting fails to live up to the promise of his magnificent hair and between-song patter. The Be Good Tanyas cover an old Neil Young song without imparting much personality on it. Konono No.1 briefly seemed like their amplified thumb-pianos could be the start of something electrifying, but turned out to be just a louder and slightly distorted version of something we'd heard before. And I recently re-evaluated James Yorkston after he made a wonderful album — sadly his track on this CD predates that renaissance.
I should be grateful to Word: without this sampler, I might have bought one of the albums those tracks came from, so I've saved myself a few bob. Meanwhile I had lower expectations of the other tracks, and they were not confounded.
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