Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue #9

There were so many gorgeously sad, atmospheric, occasionally maudlin songs to emerge from the feverish sixties girl group period. So many classics, so little time...

The Pussycat's version of 'Dressed in black' is dripping with melodrama, and it's not often heard. Time for a revisit.

Florence + The Machine's 'Delilah' is part six, seemingly the concluding part, of the Odyssey series of videos made to accompany How big, how blue, how beautiful. Watching all six videos is a vaguely gruelling, but gripping, experience that definitely puts you through the emotional ringer, but it is worth it. If you want to do so, start with 'What kind of man', follow with 'St Jude', then continue with 'Ship to wreck', 'Queen of peace' and 'Long and Lost' before concluding with 'Delilah'

As to 'Delilah' itself, I described the song as being a marriage of the Dusty Springfield version of 'Can I get a witness?' and Siouxsie and the Banshees 'Halloween': It really shouldn't work, and yet somehow, it does... Harmonies, drama, atmosphere, urgency... it's all there.

The Vanilla Fudge version of the Supreme's classic 'You Keep Me Hangin' On' is from 1968, so not that long after the original, but way, way before the suitably overblown pop rock Kim Wilde version. It has much more in common with Jimi Hendrix than it does with Motown, and the slowed down rawk of it all gives it a swaggering overwrought glamour.

We conclude todays selection of sixties tinged charm and excess with Amy Winehouse and 'Back to Black', a song which takes us full circle, acknowledging as it does a clear debt to the sixties girl groups, particularly the Shangri-Las and 'I can never go home anymore'

Image of tiara by Cazz Blase, copyright Cazz Blase, all rights reserved