Jonathan Richman, on-the-road songs and the best-known solo ever recorded

Jonathan Richman, on-the-road songs and the best-known solo ever recorded

Author: Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold July 27, 2026 Duration: 42:43

This week’s news in a conversational cocktail-shaker and served with ice and a little paper parasol. Those Happy Hour highlights include …

 

… six musicians who keep getting better looking

 

… Plas Johnson RIP, a part of everyone’s life for 60 years  

 

… the Odyssey and how Hollywood thinks the rest of the world has a foreign accent

 

… why you couldn’t make Bugsy Malone today

 

… Jonathan Richman’s genuine wide-eyed love of the modern world

 

… Clare Torry’s Pink Floyd payday

 

… “Styrofoam ice buckets full of ice”: the greatest song ever written about life on the road

 

… Mick Jagger, the art of evasion and the exquisite boredom of Stones’ B-sides about America

 

… the four rock stars who played the Artful Dodger

 

… and what John Wayne said to ‘Jesus’.

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There’s a particular kind of conversation about music that happens between friends who’ve spent a lifetime immersed in it-not as distant critics, but as participants in the culture. That’s the atmosphere you’ll find in Word In Your Ear, a podcast from Mark Ellen, David Hepworth, and Alex Gold. With a collective eighty years of writing and broadcasting for titles like Smash Hits and Mojo, and shows from "The Old Grey Whistle Test" to VH-1, they don’t just recount history; they unpack the stories behind it with the ease of a shared laugh. This podcast grew naturally from their work on the late, great magazine The Word, where they began recording over thirteen years ago, building a dedicated following who found something genuinely special in the mix. Each episode weaves together music, commentary, history, and interviews, moving seamlessly from deep-dive analysis of a seminal album to a frank chat with a surprising guest, all delivered with the warmth and wit of a late-night chat. It feels less like a formal show and more like you’ve been invited to pull up a chair in a room where the anecdotes are plentiful and the expertise is worn lightly. The result is a consistently engaging listen that treats music not as a museum piece but as a living, breathing part of our lives.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

Word In Your Ear
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