At the moment, I'm listening to various programs on BBC Radio 2 - they did a whole Saturday of '80s songs so I'm on '80s overload!

Cool. Some of the 80s stuff was really excellent. Here's a remake of a Kate Bush song she did back in the 8os done by Meg Myers who does an awesome job:

https://youtu.be/N7iVWK2W48o

Never heard of Meg Myers before but that's a pretty faithful cover there... not too shabby. If we're talking covers of "Running Up That Hill", then I feel the need to share this one from Will Young - he recorded it live a month before my dog Molly (in my avatar) got sick and passed and I listened to his cover of this song so many times during that week just before and just after her passing. It felt gut-wrenchingly cathartic at the time...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uicVCPkNZRg

On to happier songs though that I've been loving of late, all great tunes to dance to -

Levitating - Dua Lipa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHuBW3qKm9g

Magic - Kylie Minogue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzZn31gd_Jc

What The Future Holds - Steps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5dMSAVaORY

Crying At The Discotheque - Sophie Ellis Bextor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdXecuVl7_4

Who would have guessed Kylie Minogue is still making pop music? Losing a pet is hard, but for those of us who love them, they're worth it all. I've never heard of those other artists. There's so much talent out there that never gets the recognition they're worthy of.

I ran across Meg Myers totally by accident. Here's a couple more you might like who aren't exactly obscure, but I'd never heard of either them before about 2015:

Marina And The Diamonds ( Now just "Marina" ) https://youtu.be/0H6vdQSXaR4

Marina is really quite something when you get looking at the range of her work.

Kelly Sweet: https://youtu.be/dOz7MBFdg8I

Oh yeah, Kylie's got a new album out called "DISCO" - it's gone to #1 in a couple of countries so clearly she's still got it...

I like to listen to BBC Radio 2 when I'm on the computer so I wind up getting into a lot of British artists and other European acts and Australian acts and even American acts that they play that don't get played in the US. Dua Lipa is the only one of the other three I mentioned that has gotten played in the US. Will Young was the first winner of "Pop Idol", the predecessor of "American Idol"; I first learned about him actually via AI because they had him on the finale and had him duet with Kelly Clarkson, and then they both competed in that one-off "World Idol" spinoff and his song "Leave Right Now" was used one year as the send off song. I love his stuff. Steps and Sophie Ellis Bextor I never knew about until I started listening to Radio 2 - great dance music from both. Steps are kind of ABBA-esque but a five piece (3 women, 2 men) and they've been around for like 20 years or so on and off. Sophie Ellis Bextor does a lot of dance music, collaborations and such.

I tend to find that in the US now, radio stations all sound the same, they all play the same stuff basically and it's hard to get exposed to new and different things here if you're just listening to the radio, compared to listening to a radio station from another country. I mean, even long established artists who put out new music can't get any traction for their new stuff because radio stations just don't play them. Like Kylie, for example. Granted, sometimes those older artists' new stuff is crap, but sometimes it's surprisingly good (like Kylie's new stuff) and yet still can't get anywhere here. And yet what does get played that is new here all seems to sound the same.

So true. BBC is good for exactly that sort of thing. I tend to do a lot of searches, sometimes specifically for artists in other parts of the world. That's how I ran across Marina. Here's another fun sort of piece by Christine & The Queens:

https://youtu.be/9RBzsjga73s