My end of the year list goes live today with 100 songs by UK and Irish artists. It’s full of amazing music, and enough variety to suit all tastes, so click the link and get stuck in.
Irish artist CMAT makes a debut appearance at #1 with a track from an album that’s taken the music industry by storm in recent weeks.
“It’s easy to fall in love” sings the always wonderful Ego Ella May, who follows her #3 slot in 2022 with a #2 slot this year.
At #3 is an epic track from Lisa O’Neill, which opens with a quote from Patrick Kavanagh’s poem The Great Hunger – “Clay is the word and clay is the flesh, where the potato-gatherers like mechanized scarecrows move, along the side-fall of the hill.”
Jamie Webster (#3 in 2020, #10 in 2021 and #11 in 2022) is at #4 this time with a protest anthem for all to sing along to.
And at #5 is a song from Essex band Bilk’s first full length album. Sol Abrahams tells the story of how the band got its name – “My dad’s a London cab driver, and one day he came home from work and told me he had been bilked by a customer. I didn’t know what bilk meant so I asked him and he said it means when you run off from a taxi without paying the fare. I just thought it sounded cool, so we went with Bilk.”