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Some electronic music vastly exceeds its space-you-out-and-dance remit. Underworld were a rock band before they ventured into their celebrated and highly individual take on the genre and they remain (alongside Orbital) my favourite of the post-rave electronic artists. Their compositional sense elevates dance music to a sophisticated level, but their rave roots touch upon worlds beyond this one.
Don’t quite know what it is about this that makes me feel so very emotional.. I’ve yet to work it out. It’s something to do with the uplifting optimism of the music with the intimacy and banal delivery of the vocal, and the “found” collaged speech.. it opens up a crack in reality, into which I fall.

I’ve loved Warren Zevon since Werewolves of London first came out of the radio in the 1970s. Much later in his life, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and wrote this reflective, self-aware, poignant masterpiece, My Shit’s Fucked Up. Warren manages to deal with the subject of his imminent death – remarkable in itself – with great diginity and using simple language which anyone can acknowledge. It’s emotional without being sentimental. This is a truly great performance.
If I can be as sanguine about my own fate, should it come to that, I will have achieved something of great merit.
A striking and consistently brilliant feature of Family Guy, a superb popular animation which breaks taboos and flies in the face of American conservatism as it pokes fun in all directions, is the music. Seth MacFarlane the writer / producer is musically very gifted and it’s no surprise this emerges.
In this episode, impossibly precocious child, Stewie, meets another baby and writes her a love song. In the event it turns into a screamingly funny version of “Everything I Do, I Do It For You” which totally sends up the hit. But at first, he strums away and sings about the music he is writing. It’s the most wonderful self-awareness, and in the middle of this hilarious comedy, manages to be genuinely educational.
Take it away, Stewie: