This is a rather ridiculous but super–catchy take on this theme to the 1967 spoof Bond movie. Performed by German session musicians, it ends up being a rather groovy mix, with viola d’amore, flute, female wordless vocals, harpsichord, and that other staple of the Baroque era, funky drums. It’s short and sweet and really very cool. The late sixties were cool for many reasons, but one of them is that they could accomodate TWO albums called 'Bacharach Baroque' - this one, and the other great Snuff Garrett-produced one by 'The Renaissance'. Both are superb.

This is ABBA's best song. The syncopated drum-track in the verse is smart and the general feel of the song is cool. But the best part is the harmonised singing in the chorus. The background harmony which drops down a tone or two (imagine Jonny Marr shifting his guitar down two bars in a chord progression and you're there) is total class.

I love the sweeping introduction of this track so much that I would almost recommend it based on that alone. A brass flourish leads into a really cool, jerky beat. It continues with nice multitracked guitars that produce a harpsichord-like effect. Very cool.

A smart, funny rant -- half talking, half singing. Political as any of her music, but less angry and more mocking. Very cool. Even if you don't like Ani, this one deserves a listen.



"...all the radios agree with all the tvs, and the magazines agree with all the radios and I keep hearing that same damn song everywhere I go! Maybe I should put a bucket over my head and a marshmallow in each ear, and stumble around for another dumb, numb week for another humdrum hit song to appear."

Back with yet another Ashley Park number. This one is bit more Floyd-ish, but of course the Beatles sound is a bit of an influence. Used on Felicity. Very cool.

An amazingly warm and funky cover of the Chicago song 'feelings'. I know that doesn't sound like a recipe for success, but it really is very cool. The song degenerates into a huge jamming session at the end and carries on for 9 minutes. But it's storming stuff!

This Neo-Swing Song from the American Pie soundtrack. Kinda blues, kinda rock... Pretty cool. And John Bunkley's voice!! Wow it's really something. This song cheers me up a lot.

This song of this crazy girl's is really cool. She's like playing during the whole song. Very soft song but at the same time full of energy. Very eclectic, very original, very surreal, very Björk!!

The best version of My Way I ever heard. Unfortunately I haven't heard it for thirty years or more. Never been able to find it since I had it as a single when I was a teenager.

It's in waltz time, with a strummed electric guitar intro followed by female vocals, bass & drums. There's a short female vocal counterpoint part, then the louder chorus. Towards the end the song changes key with a solo guitar figure, joined then by bass, then the the synth & drums enter in a musical explosion that's really cool.
I did'nt like this song at first, liking the rest of the album("Winds Take No Shape") better but the song has grown into one of my favorites on this record.
The full album is one of my favorites of the decade, second only to "Flying Saucer" by Astronaut Wife.

this song is probably one of the best songs eminem has written, although everything he writes is amazing :) its more emotional and serious than his other songs which is cool. plus, i really like the beat, backround music,and of course, the lyrics

One of a few especially jazzy and hip tracks by France Gall, I enjoy this one even more than I enjoy her more sugary pop tracks like 'Christansen'. The arrangement is quite spare - basically just France singing with a groovy small jazz combo. She also gets into some very cool scat vocals. Very, very cool.

Interpol are a great band... This track stands out for me because it's fairly uptempo. It's angry and sad and menacing all at once. That's kinda cool.

A beautiful, lush masterpiece with a bossa nova beat (hmm, is there a pattern to the songs I'm submitting?), 'how to open...' is one of my top tracks ever. It opens quietly with a slightly cheesy flute sound over a gentle guitar. A great wordless vocal then comes in coupled with strings. Superb. If you never listen to music like this, what I'm saying probably doesn't exactly make it sound cool. But it really is cool, very very cool indeed.

I'm surprised this hasn't been recommended already! "Hot Wind" is a breakbeat classic that's been sampled by the likes of DJ Shadow. Unlike a lot of breakbeat sources, however, this is a great little number in itself. It begins with a desolate harmonica, then those killer drums, fuzz guitar and quasi-Blaxploitation horns kick in. I could picture it backing a raunchy scene with some biker dude peeling out into the desert, spreading dust everywhere. Cool.

In my opinoin this song eptitomizes cool.

Like all perfect Mogwai's tracks, Tracy is quiet and then loud. However, the track is particularly spine-tingling. Mogwai use sustained reverb guitar and xylaphone to stunning effect. The taped argument between the band, that is added to the fade out of the song, is also cool.

A great track, sung in spanish by Nancy Ames. It opens with pulsating horns, a wall of strings and an insistent latin beat. Everything quietens down in the middle, and Nancy sings accapella before the song explodes into action again. The way the brass, strings, flute, bossa guitar and fiery pop vocals are all crammed into two minutes is pretty cool. The whole thing is extremely catchy and intoxicating.

In 2004 this album, along with Spiced with Brasil, finally made it onto CD.

my favourite tune on the newest issue of dusty fingers. the dusty fingers series is a compilation of rare and obscure tunes mostly from the 60s and 70s. the styles cover funk, jazz, krautrock and tunes like this one. it's a bombastic pop song with strings and a huge brasssection, which i come to admire more and more in the last time.
the intro is sooo cool. bitter spoken words by nancy about love and pain.
well, take a listen yourself.
last words: check out the dusty fingers series, there are a lot of true gems on them...like this one!

A superbly catchy mood music piece, with a gentle bossa rhythm and Claus Ogerman-arranged strings. Very cool, and from the same album which featured strongly on the superb 'Snowflakes' CD compilation of the best mood music from the German MPS label. This track arrived in my head after I woke up this morning and demanded to be played. Very sleek and cool.

Good track. Quite catchy actually.

A truly incredible vocal/jazz pop track which really has everything. Os Tres Morais were (are?) a mysterious Brazilian vocal trio. Here they tackle a great Marcos Valle song, and do such a storming job of it that this may be one my very favorite tracks EVER in the whole world ever! Honestly. Until I put a sound sample up, please accept these measly words of explanation:
1. It's bouncy and smooth and has warm strings
2. It's actually quite funky as well
3. The vocal harmonies are fantastic. I don't think there are any actual words - it's all just beautiful interwoven sound
4. Someone starts playing a scratchy electric guitar rebelliously at end of the song, completely out of context with the rest of it. It sounds cool.

Piero sings in a soothing, breath-y tenor... More italian in tone than latin, although,the best comparison i've found is Luiz Henrique.His phrasing reminds me of Luiz as well,but there is no real relation.The backing has a nice spaghetti -western kind of vibe ala' Moriccone,which gives the whole thing a kind of high planes drifter setting,with plucked electric bass, strummed acoustic guitar,and occasional female chorus with a light string arrangement,Very cool.The whole record is really good,and a lot of the songs have a distinctly latin ballad feel.

An emerging Palmer covers a song from the fully emerged Gary Numan ,who also plays on this ,a great time capsule instance of what was once considered cool.The droning single not synth line occasionally errupts into a somewhat clumsy chorus which dates the track beyond belief ,but if you can recommend a track on the premise of interesting then this would qualify.

There's an instrument in the background (harp? xylophone?) that really appeals to me. The song is pretty mellow which is cool. Corgan's voice tends to be screechy at times but the magic instrument (in the background) along with some nice (well timed) bass evens it out.

One of two astounding percussive cuts on the soundtrack 'No way to Treat a Lady'. The film is apparently a light-hearted look at murder. This cut has a solid beat, which sits behind a church organ sound. This is soon joined by a dirty-sounding guitar. The effect is trashy, but very cool. This track reminds me of the John Schroeder cut 'Soul Trek' (aka 'Astra Nova Orchestra's 'Soul Sleeper'), with a feel that is slightly 'rock'.

I really love Slowdive. I guess it's fair to say they're the most under-rated band of all time (yeah, I know you all have your own opinions but you're wrong and I'm right - okay? ).

So imagine my surprise when electronica masters Morr Music decided to compile a Slowdive tribute record last year, featuring luminraies such as Icelandic beauties Mum.

The album is a sheer joy - and highlights the quality of Halstead's original song-writing (before the layers of reverb and delay were added).
The stand-out track is Altogether, taken from Slowdive's second Creation release 'Souvlaki'. An astonishingly pretty but achingly mournful track is turned, by Morr's Styrofoam, into a trippy work of blissed-out happiness. Cool.

"Mrs. Bluebird" by Eternity's Children is one of the great songs I carried away from the now-defunct LuxuriaMusic. This version is from a "children's record" produced by Richard Preston & Louis Philippe. The arrangement is pretty faithful to the original, maybe a little longer with subtle but important differences. Philippe's singular vocal style compliments the song suprisingly well. Very cool.

To be honest, I have little idea of what this song is about, but it certainly sets an intoxicating mood - rather intense and dramatic, but very cool. It's a sprawling, majestic pop song, opening gently with a faint trumpet solo and a picked guitar, and then building up nicely with strings soon after the vocals come in. The chorus is simple and catchy, and the orchestration is lush and beautiful, and the vocals are tender. There is a nice cinematic instrumental section in the middle, with some nods to Burt Bacharach. I don't get the impression this is the most coherent song ever, but there are poignant moments lyrically, such as 'You know that when we met, there were fireworks in the sky...sparkling like dragonflies', set against the moody chorus. It feels kind of nice to be really enjoying a new, 2001 song for once. The new album is really quite good. There are some duff songs, but overall I'd say it deserved better reviews than it received.

Update, ok, I've now figured out this is about the Clinton/Lewinsky furore. I guess I'm just not primarily a lyrics person...

This song helped turn me on to Alt-Rock. There was a homemade-looking video that MTV aired a few times. It was kinda grainy and unfocused, which suited this song well as it sounds like it's coming from far away. Still rocking, though. There are moments of shimmery clean guitar that compliment the grunge perfectly. The intro is also shimmery & cool. It takes it's time washing over you before the drums come in. A classic. This whole album is a classic. Only one misfire on it, Bandwagonesque was Spin Magazines record of the year for 1991, eclipsing Nevermind and a host of others in that magical year.

When my musical tastes changed nearly 20 years ago, it was a drastic shift. This track, and the album it's from, was definitely significant in this change. It was a completely new sound for me and even now, all this time later, I still love it. Don Ellis was a trumpet player and band leader. He was renowned for composing and arranging tunes in really unusual time signatures (this track, in 7/8, is an example). In fact, it's said that the only song he played in 4/4 was Take Five (a little joke for the musos out there ;)...). It was 1968 that this was recorded, so at the peak of experimentation Western/Eastern music fusion. This track starts off with sitar providing the rhythm which is then picked up by the rhythm section. Ellis comes in with his personally created quarter-tone trumpet. For some, the sound is dissonant and unpleasant. Stick with it - you get used to it. From then on in, it's an energy roller-coaster, as hip as it is cool. After numerous solos, the track subsides and seems to end as the lone sitar returns. But then it picks up the riff again and *BAM* - back into the track with even more energy than before. I'm spent!

I don't know why I like this track so much. I'll admit that Do You Realize? is the better track from the album. But this song just always makes me stop in my tracks and listen. It's an interesting song, about a man meeting himself from the future. It's really cool.

This song was first released on their limited edition debut single "Breaking America" which is where I first heard it. Incidentally, I think it's the best song on this 3-track single as opposed to the title track. The lyrics and concept are uber-funky, and the guitar riffs are really really cool. This is a song that points to a band with lots of spunkiness and talent. ^_^

Tom Waits is so cool. All of his songs do a really good job of making you feel like you remember a time and place you've never seen... his world is one of boxcars, whiskey, and five o'clock shadow. This song is much less bizarre than some of his others; it's more mournful. But it's just... nice to hear. He is a sad old man.

I'd actually never heard of this band, but after having heard the song over the speakers in a bookstore I was in I went to one of the cashiers and asked her the name of it. She passed me the CD case...now it is one of my favourite tunes (to listen to and to sing!).

Very catchy reggae, simple but meaningful lyrics. And though Willie Nelson has never been tops on my favourite singers/bands list, I veyr much like the way he sings this song...and surprisingly he doesn't sound so out-of-place doing reggae. I'd like to know what other recordings of this song exist. In the meantime, listen to this version!

The percussion is VERY cool.

"Still Is Still Moving To Me"

Still is still moving to me
And I swim like a fish in the sea all the time
But if that's what it takes to be free I don't mind
Still is still moving to me
Still is still moving to me

And it's hard to explain how I feel
It won't go in words but I know that it's real
I can be moving or I can be still
But still is still moving me
Still is still moving to me

(Repeat)

This is an R&B song that I first heard on BET. It begins with the hand claps from the song "Car Wash" and then goes into a typically groovy R&B dance song. I like it so much because it is very easy to dance to and the lyrics are about a girl going to a club and wanting to get her groove on while the guy she came with just stands there "like he's much too cool." This is typically how I feel when I go out. Hand claps continue throughout the song.

A very cool track, but not in the way I normally find Walter Wanderley's quick-draw hammond organ technique cool. This is a simple, bluesey number on which he is joined by the Brazilian singer Luiz Henrique. Luiz doesn't sing though, he just contributes some nice scat vocals, rather like the work Marcos Valle does on 'Garra'. In my experience, this is about as close as Walter gets to 'funky', and this version from the 'Popcorn' album is a great improvement from the 1967 'Kee-ka-roo' LP version.

Basically any song off his album Dragonfly is good...but I especially liked this one. Upbeat and mellow, like any Ziggy Marley song. Very cool.


"We're on a ride that never stops..."