Once a month or so I have a chat on RNZ on their Afternoons show with Jesse Mulligan. These things start – randomly and stop in much the same way. I hope to keep doing this. For a while at least. I think I started in December of 2015, so this most recent session probably marked five years. I’ll check and see if I got a bonus…

Anyway, for my final review-segment of 2020 I talked about Billie Holiday – twice. In a way. A bit odd perhaps, but she was one of my favourite and most listened to artists in this strange years.

First up I played M. Ward’s tribute album, Think of Spring – which is basically his cover-version of Billie Holiday’s Lady in Satin album.And I selected the song You Don’t Know What Love Is (even playing a tiny snippet of Billie’s version just after).

After that it was directly to the source to play something by Billie herself. There’s a brand new documentary out called BILLIE – it’s so new I’m yet to even see it but its soundtrack album has been on high rotate. So I talked about that and played the song I Only Have Eyes For You.

Click here to listen to the full chat and hear the songs

As always you can read some of my thoughts about the M. Ward album here and also read about the Billie Holiday doco soundtrack right here.

It’s the summer holiday programming right now but with any luck I’ll be back in 2021 to talk about music some more on RNZ. Happy holidays!
For previous RNZ reviews by me click here