Totally On Track Podcast

A beautiful, wistful song about fading love, growing older and looking back at the person you used to be.

A gloriously upbeat slice of 1979 takes Thea back to roller skating, Casey Kasem and the final stretch of childhood before the 80s arrived. This episode is all about the songs we reach for when we need an instant mood lift, a burst of confidence and a reminder that sometimes music really can change the whole feel of a day.

A song from the late 2000s takes Thea back to a solo trip to Spain, a time of heartbreak and a reminder to appreciate what we have. From personal relationships to the wider world, this episode explores gratitude, perspective and finding the good in life, even when things aren't going quite to plan.

What happens when a song follows you through decades of love, friendship, heartbreak and change?

In this episode of Totally On Track, let’s travel back to 1990 and explores the strange emotional power of photographs, the beauty that can live inside sadness, and the way certain songs gather new meanings as we move through life.

From university memories and old relationships to a friendship that has lasted nearly four decades, this is an episode about the people, places and versions of ourselves that music can bring rushing back.

This episode is about the kind of love that feels steady, safe and quietly life-saving.

A song from 2003 that never needed to be a massive hit to mean something. For me, it’s about having that one person who can pick you up, brush you off, and make the day feel survivable again.

It’s a short episode about lyrics as love language, being seen at your weakest, and the rare gift of someone you know you can believe in.

In this episode of Totally On Track, I’m choosing a new song for the first time in the series, from a Scottish band I first saw in San Francisco more than thirty years ago.

It’s a story that travels from early 90s radio conference memories to Glasgow gigs, Q96 sessions, birthday vinyl, and the strange sadness of hearing a beautiful new record just as the band loses one of its own.

A short episode about long musical relationships, archive hunting, and the way some bands quietly stay with you across decades.

In this episode of Totally On Track, I’m heading back to early teens in Northern California, local rock radio, CBs, and the days before I became a new waver and occasional music snob.

Today’s song came out in 1980, only reached number 72 on the Billboard singles chart, and still somehow became one of my all-time favourites. From the opening guitar riff to the handclaps, the late-night longing, that voice, and one cheeky final line, it still makes me smile four decades later.

A short episode about early music memories, romantic rock songs, and the tracks that get into your system for no grand intellectual reason. They just do.

Totally On Track Episode 13: The Aerial View

In this episode of Totally On Track, I’m talking about a song that’s now nearly a quarter of a century old, but still captures something painfully familiar: wanting to be wanted, longing to be loved, and standing close to connection without quite feeling inside it.

It’s a beautifully melancholic track about love, distance, and the strange comfort of hindsight. Because sometimes we don’t understand the experience of what we’re living through until years later, when life finally gives us the aerial view.

In this episode of Totally On Track, I’m heading back to 1981, from the jukebox at The Garret in Campbell to my first stadium gig at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

It’s a song that starts with one of rock’s most recognisable riffs, but for me it also means root beer, pepperoni pizza, Tower Records, teenage nerves, and my dad Ralph somehow pulling four concert tickets out of thin air on the morning of the show.

A Father’s Day episode about live music, early music memories, and the people who give us songs that stay with us for life.

In this episode of Totally On Track, I’m talking about a late 90s track that found its way through Dawson’s Creek, turn-of-the-century listening habits, Glasgow gig memories, and one of my favourite female vocalists of all time.

It is a song about longing, return, and that feeling of coming home to a person, not just a place.

Some songs become huge chart hits. Others settle in somewhere more personal and stay there. This one has always felt like shelter in rainy weather for me.