So easy to love, and so easy to listen to. This month is going to be an unadulterated joy. There hasn't been a song yet I haven't been able to sing along to, to one degree or another. Unmistakable. Unforgettable. Music from a different age, a more elegant age. Music from an imperfect time. Music from torment, music from ecstasy.

[A quick note on formatting. I'll follow the Clef LP releases for ease, which I think will cover off all the tracks.]

This is music which is everywhere. You can't watch a Woody Allen film, or a perfume advert, or a Paull Rudd comedy, or an old episode of a BBC2 costume drama, without being familiar with this music. It's almost impossible to know how to approach this. I mean, it feels bit off to imagine I'll be saying "didn't really like this one" at any point. These are standards. Elvis. Frank. Billie.

Instead, I have to try to peer behind the wondrous curtain and work out what was happening in the context, the peripheral vision. We're starting in 1952, almost 70 years ago. My dad was 17 when this record was released, the war had ended 7 years prior, and we're over a decade away from Kennedy in Dallas. The story here will be behind the music, I think. But man, what music.