Recently in Song of the Day Category

Far be it for me to write too many more words to the millions that have already been written about Michael Jackson, but he did have some nice tunes.

That doesn't make him the King of Pop, not least because I don't think pop music is a monarchy. I can't listen to much of his music without separating it from the bombast he brought to it from the mid '80s onwards (the statue of himself floated down the Thames, the god-awful Brits routine so well disrupted by Jarvis Cocker) but his early stuff at least had a real joie de vivre.

Apart from some of the early Jacksons hits, I really like Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough, though it is telling that it comes his last really great album (Off the Wall) and that's 30 years old.

Image of the weekend at Glastonbury had to be the steam coming off Bruce Springsteen as he sweated buckets under the bright lights of the main stage.

My love of Bruce is no secret to regular readers of GP's Song of the Day, either of them. Today I'll go for Glory Days, which manages to be nostalgic and celebratory at the same time as pointing out the shortcomings of living in the past, which is a clever little trick.

Regina Spektor is almost definitely my favourite Russian-born Jewish-American singer-songwriter and pianist.

Fidelity is from her 2006 album Begin to Hope and was written after Spektor watched the John Cusack film High Fidelity (which was itself based on the Nick Hornby novel of the same name). I do like the chorus and the strange English accent she adopts for no apparent reason during the bridge.

The song was used this year in an ad campaign by a Californian group campaigning against a ban on gay marriage.

You Were Right by Badly Drawn Boy - a single from his 2002 album Have You Fed the Fish? - is a cracking little tune and it has also some really touching lyrics I think.

I particularly like: "And I just had a dream the other night, I was married to the Queen/And Madonna lived next door/I think she took a shine to me/And the kids were all grown up/But I had to turn her down/'Cos I was still in love with you."

Don't Let Me Down Gently by the Wonderstuff could easily have made it into our 1989 week and it is still a great little pop song.

From the band's second album Hup, this got to number 19 in the charts. I listened to it at the weekend as I went to a curry and found it rather splendid.

A couple of years ago I went to see Suzanne Vega at the Tyne Theatre...oh, I've already told you that: the thing is, she was excellent.

I've always quite liked her without getting that carried away, but her set - with unlikely accompaniment from solely a bass player, who turned out to be something of a virtuoso - reminded me how many great songs she's written.

My favourite of hers is Gypsy, which was written in the late 1970s (I think) and recorded for her 1986 album Solitude Standing.

A couple of years ago I went to see Suzanne Vega at the Tyne Theatre and made what seemed at the time to be the mistake of turning up much too early.

But within 30 minutes I was really glad I had done as I got to see the support act, Nerina Pallot, for the first time and she was fantastic.

She opened with her single Everybody's Gone to War, which is probably still her best known song.

I'm always fairly pleased when I pick a song that is actually from 2009 for Song of the Day as it makes me feel a little bit less middle-aged.

Never Forget You by the Noisettes has feel good song of the summer written all over it, I tend to feel. I have been humming it all weekend.

For no other reason that it's a great song for a sunny Friday afternoon, today's Song of the Day is Back in the High Life by Steve Winwood.

The title track of his 1986 album, Back in the High Life was a big hit in America and marked something of a comeback for the former Spencer Davis Group, Traffic and Blind Faith singer.

I can't quite believe that we've got to Number 108 in GP's Song of the Day without anything by one of England's greatest pop bands, the Kinks.

I could rectify that by choosing Waterloo Sunset, Days or the Village Green Appreciation Society but I've gone instead for their 1982 comeback hit Come Dancing.

I first heard Come Dancing when our Kinks-obsessed history teacher, Mr Henry, played it to our class some time in the mid-1980s because he reckoned it showed a keen eye for social commentary.