The five best songs about Sunday
The dawn chorus of a Sunday represents something vastly different at every age of your life. During your childhood, it’s that impending sense of dread that comes with the early bedtime before school. You get a little bit older, and the chirpy Sunday morning birdsong is a frightening indicator that it’s time to end your night. When you finally get through those growing pains, you make peace with the day, basking in all of its slow-paced glory with a carefully brewed morning coffee or, better yet, a crisp afternoon pint. You are in a Nick Drake song.
Amidst the humdrum of daily life, it’s rare you get a chance to sit and acknowledge a feeling or experience without some form of overriding distraction. That’s where Sunday’s come in. While that was traditionally steeped in religion, modern societies have found places outside the church to wrestle their Sunday woes, but, regardless of where, it’s all in the name of reflection.
Between the flat white clutching millennials and Lucozade-clutching Gen Z-ers – assuming Lucozade is still the hungover beverage of choice these days – are just people getting by, using the week’s final day to make sense of a life lived within societal confines and tapping into something a little more existential, which is ultimately why so many great songs dedicate their title to Sunday.
From Nick Drake and Etta James all the way up to contemporary artists like Courtney Barnett and Ethel Cain, it’s the moment in which existential questions are answered and romances are propositioned. But of all the references to this sacred day, which are the best?
<strong>’Sunday Shining</strong>’ – Finley Quaye
‘Channel like a lion / Channel like a lion’ is an apt line for that Sunday morning sink splash and mirror gaze. Whether you’re heavy-headed or well-rested, there’s something about Quaye’s optimism, melody and chugging rhythm section that makes the pavement a dangerous place to be for a newly revitalised listener is on the horizon.
There’s little in the way of smoke and mirrors with this track; the lyrics are as forthright as you interpret them but that’s the essence at the very bed of this musical tonic. The Edinburgh-born musician blended reggae and indie sensibilities seamlessly throughout his album Maverick A Strike, that brimming with metropolitan swagger and a subtle sense of hedonistic enthusiasm.
‘A Sunday Kind Of Love’ – Etta James
Some Sunday’s, you just need a tender voice to guide you through. There’s no doubting that behind Etta James’ rasping power and soaring soul, is a delicacy beyond measure. While on ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’ she bears herself open on front of stage with the sort of rasping vocal that knocks you off your feet, on ‘A Sunday Kind Of Love’ she delivers a relatable sermon with a warm smile and effortless vocal.
If you’ve ever found yourself musing on the very sentiment James sings about on this track – a yearning for a sense of Sunday companionship – to then quickly shudder at your own sense of self-embarrassment as you defiantly push on with unwavering independence, play the track again. The floating string sections and tip-toed piano playing bring weight to every syllable James utters and, without any cornyness, bring a lot of meaning to the idea of a love-filled Sunday.
‘Sunday’ – Nick Drake
The sentimental platform provided by the week’s most delicate day is showcased no finer than on this Nick Drake track. With no lyrics, the song’s title can only be determined by the emotions conjured up by this whimsical flute melody.
As the flute pulls back the curtains on the crisp spring morning of Drake’s track, the lightly touched melody follows in on its tiptoes to sonically depict the introspective tenderness of a lightly sunlit Sunday. In many ways this song speaks to so little about Sunday but so much at the same time, existing in between the lines of emotion that a lot of us feel on the day. It’s also what ultimately serves as one of Drake’s best tracks, for were never designed for anybody but himself – which, if anything, is a fitting mantra to take into your coming Sunday.
‘Sunday’ – Iggy Pop
Okay, so not all Sundays need to be downtrodden. In fact, for Iggy Pop the start and end of any given day would have been nothing but an illusion for the most part of his life, bouncing from one drug-addled excursion to the next. So, if he was ever to enjoy the calm sense of opportunity provided by a Sunday, he’d have most likely done it the way he does on this song.
Carried by Josh Homme’s incredible guitar line and Matt Helders’ relentless drums, Iggy lambasts the grind of modern life and longs for the open arms of a warm Sunday. But while he sings about crawling towards the week’s final day so that he doesn’t ‘have to move’, the track inspires quite the opposite. A fitting soundtrack for hip-shaking hoovering and a defiant Sunday reset, ‘Sunday’ is one of Iggy’s gloriously groovy moments.
‘Sunday Morning’ – Velvet Underground, Nico
It’s somewhat fitting that this was the last song recorded for the Velvet Underground‘s debut record, just missing the deadline and with it the scrap heap. While the 1960s may have sought to eternally avoid the dreaded comedown of a Sunday morning, there was something about this song that called the band back into the studio once more to lay it down and forever soundtrack the heavy-headed woes of Sunday’s dawn chorus.
While the band tease you into thinking your hangover is so bad you want to return to infantile innocence with the opening celesta riff, they soon ease the torment with Reed’s gentle vocals describing subtle, almost twisted signs of Sunday optimism. So if you’re crawling out of an hangxiety-ridden hole this coming Sunday, the trick is to lean into the song’s masterful and idyllic melody and embrace that sense of heavy-headed vulnerability. But if you’re absolutely intent on listening to the rest of the record after, grab your Lucozade and hold on tight.
