RUN by SNOW PATROL Reflection by Lucia Nardo
At home and still in my funereal black, I do the obligatory YouTube search for the track. The internet soon shepherds me away from The King’s back-catalogue to a tear-invoking power-ballad from a band I’d followed since the 1990s.
RUNNING by RYAN DOWNEY Story by David Oke
For the first time in years, after hearing a song for the first time I had to listen to it again, and again, and yet again.
Russians by Sting
Nathan Johnson South-Eastern Australia, 1985Sometimes we travel far away and I feel like we’ve reached the end of the world. Wagga Wagga, Yass, Goulburn. I trace our route excitedly with a highlighter on my fold-out map of Australia.
SAILING TO PHILADELPHIA by MARK KNOPFLER. Essay by Ann Banham.
I am intrigued with the lyrics sung by the distinctive gravelly vocals of Knopfler. Who is this Jeremiah Dixon?
SAME ROOM. Song and story by Stephen Andrew.
It was only when I listened back to my song that I realised what it was about.
SAN FRANCISCO DAYS by CHRIS ISAAK. Story by Virginia Muzik
Later, it’s six of us at a workmate’s one-room apartment, watching videos, drinking, talking. He and I sit on the bed, a purring cat between us. Kitty’s tail flicks against my thighs as he strokes one end, I stroke the other, our hands sometimes touching: poor kitty a conduit for the swollen energy between us.