You may not have been expecting this one.

Here  we are at the halfway stage of My Music Lexicon and so far, by and large, it’s been a litany of guitar-heavy rock, with a dash of folk/protest. Well, it’s what I like.

But I have a softer side too, especially for well-crafted songs with lyrics that actually mean something. You can mock George Michael all you like, whether it be for Wham! (absolutely nothing wrong with Wham! of its genre) or his later…well, shall we just leave it at ‘indiscretions’?… but he wrote and performed some beautiful songs, from ‘Careless Whisper’ (“guilty feet ain’t got no rhythm’ – well that’s my excuse) through ‘Jesus To a Child’ and many others.

He also had a very good line in self-deprecating humour and that always plays well with me.

For fairly obvious reasons, however, the title – if not the sentiments – of this song particularly strike a chord with me:

Honourable Mention

But for this instalment’s Honourable Mention, I’m right back to my roots with Mott The Hopple. Chances are that you would never have heard of them if David Bowie hadn’t gifted them the song (and production of) ‘All The Young Dudes’. That’s a good song, no question, and they had a few decent hits after that but to me they never really convinced in their glam-rock incarnation.

I hadn’t heard of Mott The Hoople either, until I went to University and a friend of mine raved about them. I went to see them in Liverpool (it would have been 1971 I guess, so a year before they hit the big time, so to speak) and I absolutely loved their hard-driving boogy.

It’s about as subtle as a ram-raid, but my word, this takes me back: