My New Year resolution in 2018 (I haven’t made any this year!) was to listen to more music that was ‘new’ to me. Some of it was new to me but not to most of the rest of the world and usually involved artists that everyone has heard of but I had never really listened to. Having said that, I did find in all but one case that I knew more songs by these artists than I had previously thought. Billy Idol, Tom Petty and Glen Campbell fall into this category.

Eleven artists later (the resolution failed at the last hurdle, being too busy in December…then it was January and…oops!) and I’m taking the opportunity to look back at some of my favourites.

My first favourite is Billy Idol, who worked with Alfie in Classic Quadrophenia and whom Alfie himself recommended to me in an interview in 2015. Although I knew of Billy Idol, I hadn’t really listened to the music that much and was consequently surprised when I knew quite a lot of it. This was the song that caught my ear:

I enjoyed all the other ten artists and it was difficult to choose the ones I like best, but, as I regularly ask you to choose your favourite Alfie Boe songs, I thought I’d go for Tom Petty and Glen Campbell. But it was really hard! All these three were inspired by Alfie’s recent choice of music so maybe that’s why I like them so much??!!

I love bluegrass sounds and rhythms so it’s no surprise that I chose this in the Glen Campbell piece:

I decided on Tom Petty for this series after hearing Alfie sing Wildflowers at Scarborough last summer:

But, the Tom Petty that I remembered and found I loved belongs to Won’t Back Down:

Thanks for taking this journey with me – suggestions welcome for ideas you want to see on thoughtsofjustafan in future!

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