Grab hold of something and never let go, as used by Freddie Mercury in this Queen lyric:

You make me high when I talk on the phone You know I gotta ring up your number when I know you ain’t home Coz you gotta hold on me baby like a dog with a bone

Bizarrely, a US company called Petloverz manufactures a bone-shaped radio. As their website puts it: Put a bounce in your step when you walk your dog with a bone-shaped radio attached to a durable nylon leash, complete with blinking lights! Now you can walk Rocky without missing a moment of your favourite FM radio station talk show or music program. In addition to making your dog walks more fun, this leash makes them safer with highly-visible blinking LED lights that can be seen up to a half mile away at night! Considering that a car travelling at 60 mph requires over 260 ft. to stop, these lights are pivotal in helping to keep your pet safer at night. Be seen, be safe. Very commendable.

Defies all definition. This phrase comes from the song A Hymn to Him from the classic musical My Fair Lady, and goes on: Why can’t a woman be more like a man? Men are so honest, so thoroughly square; Eternally noble, historically fair; Who, when you win, will always give your back a pat.

Well, why can’t a woman be like that? Why does ev’ryone do what the others do? Can’t a woman learn to use her head? Why do they do ev’rything their mothers do? Why don’t they grow up well, like their father instead? Based on Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw’s scathing satire of the British upper class, My Fair Lady tells the story of master linguist Henry Higgins’s successful effort to transform Eliza Doolittle, an ordinary flower girl, into a lady by teaching her to speak proper.

Pygmalion itself is based on the classical Greek myth of the sculptor who prays to the gods to animate his beautiful sculpture, Galatea. In Shaw’s play, however, his Galatea, Eliza Doolittle, turns the tables on her creator, Higgins, and triumphs over him in the end.

Blub prodigiously. Babies like to cry. They do it when they’re hot, cold, hungry, full, tired, lively, bored, over stimulated and pretty much any other time as well. Babies develop a knack of crying at the most inconvenient moments - at the checkout in Sainsbury’s, at 4.30am, during the pregnant pauses of a tense Harold Pinter dialogue. It’s not only babies who cry though - here’s Dean Martin’s thoughts on the subject: I’d cry like a baby if you told me goodbye; I’d feel like a snowball on the 4th of July. If you ever said you were leaving for good, I’d weep like a weeping willow, honest I would.

This classic piece of pop camp cemented Madonna’s star status on its release in July 1984. It’s not hard to see why: Like a virgin Touched for the very first time Like a virgin When your heart beats Next to mine It spent six weeks at number 1 in the USA charts (her second-longest run at the top) and was also a number 1 in Japan and Australia.

It also inspired a fine piece of dialogue between Mr Brown and the rest of the gang in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, speculating on the meaning of the lyrics. Unfortunately we were too mean to get copyright clearance to include it here.

Go down badly, attract no support or interest. As usual Bob Dylan has something to say on the subject:

If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’


No idea what he’s on about but it probably made sense at the time.

Madonna’s March 1989 UK number 1 kicks off like so: Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone I hear you call my name And it feels like home When you call my name it’s like a little prayer I’m down on my knees, I wanna take you there In the midnight hour I can feel your power Just like a prayer you know I’ll take you there The eleventh-biggest record of its year, sandwiched tastefully between Kylie’s forgettable Hand on Your Heart and All Around the World by Lisa Stansfield.

In case you’ve been living in a cave for the last 35 years, here’s how it starts: Fellas, I’m ready to get up and do my thing I wanta get into it, man, you know... Like a, like a sex machine, man, Movin’... doin’ it, you know Can I count it off? (Go ahead) The self-styled “Godfather of Soul”, for over 40 years James Brown has written, produced and performed some of the most compelling R&B ever recorded. Arrested in January 2004 for alleged domestic violence, the 70-year-old Brown is no stranger to the slammer. He served a two-year prison term after a 1988 arrest on drug and assault charges and was convicted of a drug-related offence in 1998, although was later given a state pardon.

Dolly Parton lyric from the 1970s. As Dolly reminded us, love is like a butterfly, a rare and gentle thing. Now, Dolly is one talented lady, but even she should hang her head in shame at providing the theme song for Carla Lane’s Butterflies sitcom. For them as can’t (or won’t) remember it, this “comedy” revolved around the mid-life crisis of Ria Parkinson (played by Wendy Craig), a mother with two teenage sons (one played by a youthful Nicholas Lyndhurst) slowly going barmy in suburbia. Today she’d be on Prozac and we’d all be better for it.

This classic Bob Dylan track appeared on his 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited. It goes something like this: How does it feel To be without a home Like a complete unknown Like a rolling stone? This was the only song on the album produced by Tom Wilson, who produced Dylan’s second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Wilson invited keyboard player Al Kooper to the session, and Al produced the famous organ riff that drove the song. It was a big breakthrough when this got radio play and became a hit, since many stations refused to play songs much longer than 3 minutes. It was also rare for a song with so many lyrics to do well commercially - reaching number 2 in the US charts and number 4 in the UK charts.

There is nothin’ you can name, that is anythin’ like a dame. True indeed. This famous song is part of the smash hit 1949 Broadway musical South Pacific by Richard Rodgers (not the architect) and Oscar Hammerstein. Based on James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Pulitzer Prize-winning South Pacific is one of the most beloved musicals of all time. The appeal is simple: a collection of stunning compositions with an immense symphonic sound orchestrated by Rodgers’ collaborator Robert Russell Bennett. Other great songs from the show include Some Enchanted Evening, Happy Talk and I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair. They don’t write ‘em like that anymore.

Released in March 1975, LARC was Glen Campbell’s biggest hit, reaching number 1 in the US and number 4 in the UK. Written and recorded by Larry Weiss, Campbell first heard LARC while driving to his record company. When he arrived he started raving about this amazing song he’d just heard that he had to record ASAP. The bemused exec insisted on first playing him a song that seemed perfect for his next single - it was Rhinestone Cowboy. At least that’s the story Campbell likes to tell on talk shows.