A year of Spotify Sundays
Peter Hoskin
As the name suggests, our Spotify Sunday posts normally run on a Sunday. But let's make an exception for this round-up of all the Spotify Sundays that have featured on the Arts Blog in 2011.
You're probably familiar with them already — but if you're not, then they're the Spectator website's equivalent of Desert Island Discs. One of our writers or friends selects ten songs, often with a unifying theme, and writes a sentence or two about each. Provided you've downloaded Spotify (for free!) onto your computer then you can listen to those songs (for free!) by following the link at the end of each Spotify Sunday post. The selection will automatically start playing within your own Spotify program.
We're particularly pleased with our Spotify Sunday series. And full credit for it must go to the co-editors of the Arts Blog, Simon Mason and Scott Jordan Harris, along with the creators of Spotify itself. About a year-and-a-half ago, Fraser wrote a post in praise of the service, calling it ‘the most lifestyle-chaging innovation since Sky Plus.’ Many more exhaltations have been, and will be, flung in its direction too.
So, anyway, here's a chronological index of the Spotify Sunday posts from this year. There aren't 52 of them, but there's still enough variety — from string quartets to modern electronica — that you'll surely find something to tune into as 2012 wafts into being:
Salvation song — Archbishop Cranmer
Legal downloads — David Allen Green
From Savile Row — Rohan Daft
A very political playlist — Harry Cole
Middle-class dub — Sly and Reggie
Fill your ears — Alex Massie
When guitars get fuzzy — David Arnold
Talkin' 'bout a revolution — Omar Khairy
As covered by goths — Rob Manuel
Calmly magnificent — Nik Darlington
By another name — Sebastian Scotney
Democracy is overrated — Crispian Jago
The Stones in the Sixties — Will Mount
Shuffle... — Ian Birrell
Music to birth babies by — Christina Hopkinson
Live free or die — Sam Bowman
The Fallen — Dave Simpson
Made in Chelsea — Mina Zaher
Some pieces of a man — DJ Wrongtom
I love this, what is it? — Oliver Coates
Happy Birthday, David Rodigan — Count Skylarkin
Don't make me write a track list — Betty Herbert
Murdochalypse — Simon Mason
The folk heard 'round the world — Katie Caroll
Spotify's top ten strange recordings — Jonny Trunk
Commemorating September 11th — Salvatore
Bono
Celebrating 50 years of Songs of Praise — Caroline
Farrow
Cambodian rock, Part 1 — The Cambodian Space Project
Cambodian rock, Part 2 — The Cambodian Space Project
Going underground with the Jam — Patrick O'Flynn
Our inspirations — The Belcea Quartet
Cover Stars — Fraser Nelson
My personal soundtrack — Giles Dilnot
The new Christmas classics — Peter Hoskin
Joy to the World — Adrian Hilton
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Comments
December 31st, 2011 4:32pm
Jeremy
Pete,
Unless it was your intention to use the deliberately mutilated and dumbed-down form of the language practised on the other side of the Atlantic, then programme is not spelt as 'program'.
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December 31st, 2011 4:36pm
Archbishop Cranmer
It started well. Pity the end wasn't as good as the beginning.
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December 31st, 2011 4:36pm
Pete Hoskin
Jeremy: But a computer program is spelt 'program', in both American and British English, as far as I'm aware:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program
And Spotify is, of course, a computer program.
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December 31st, 2011 6:43pm
Jeremy
@Pete:
Ah, Wikipedia! That unfailing mouth-organ of American state propaganda. In which regard, it bears a close resemblance to the Hollywood film industry...
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December 31st, 2011 7:24pm
Pete Hoskin
Jeremy: I was just giving you the first Google result at hand. The OED, by my copy, also uses 'program' for a computer program. I've never seen "computer programme" used, whether in the US or here. See here for more:
http://www.monissa.com/writing/spellingnotes.html
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December 31st, 2011 8:24pm
Noa.
Music to birth babies by, Pete?
That brings tears to my eyes!
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January 1st, 2012 12:50am
Jeremy
@Pete:
According to your site:
"Programme is the preferred British spelling, says the OED, but program is used in the context of computers."
This would appear to be the current state of affairs. In which case, I stand corrected and apologise for so rudely interrupting your thread. But has this current state of affairs always been the case? Didn't the British build the first computer - Colossus, at Bletchley Park? And was 'program' then (or earlier) spelt programme?
I should like to know, if you do.
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January 2nd, 2012 7:50pm
Hamish Mitchell
Getting back to the topic .... I'd just like to thank you wholeheartedly for Spotify Sundays :) I'm a latecomer to it but have had a superb month playing catchup and broadening my musical tastes. Have a cracking 2012 and look forward to more musical inspiration to come.
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