songs to busk
before and during my spanish adventuretm years ago I learnt a load of songs to sing and play on the acoustic guitar, initially just for camp-fire entertainment but ultimately so I had songs to busk. The idea of busking was one of overcoming the confidence barrier I needed to sing in public, rather than to make money, although the latter proved very useful vital as time went on and funds ran out, in fact the trip was probably extended by a couple of months using money earned whilst busking.
I didn’t choose the best set of songs for either campfire entertainment or busking as they were mostly fairly slow melancolic songs. The list was something like the following (i’ll probably add to this list as I remember others I knew):-
radiohead - high and dry
radiohead - green plastic trees
radiohead - creep
U2 - staring at the sun
Smashing Pumpkins - Disarm
Lemonheads - Into your Arms
Lemonheads - Being Around
Oasis - Wonderwall
Oasis - Champagne supernova
The La’s - There she goes
+ a load of my own stuff
Of that list, wonderwall is the only one I can remember how to play from beginning to end (and I play that wrong apparently, according to mrs rick). Apart from being an easy song, the reason I can remember wonderwall is it is the one of the only upbeat songs, and generally got a good reaction.
I want to learn stuff again, so will probably relearn the forgotten/ half forgotten ones (i’m terrible with remembering lyrics) above as "low hanging fruit" but want to increase my repertoire.
I’ve already half learnt a couple of new ones over the last year or so:-
Verve - Lucky Mann
Aimee Mann - Save me
But have my eye on the following more upbeat stuff (once again i’ll likely keep adding to this, so dont be surprised if this post keeps popping back to the top of my RSS feed):-
Britney Spears - Hit me baby one more time (i’ve heard some fantastic acoustic covers of this)
Green Day - err American Idiot maybe (or is that just the name of the album?) one of the recent upbeat ones anyway
Doves - bounding
Verve - bitter sweet symphony
I’m open to suggestions - what would you like to hear me murder?
The main reason for me learning these is that I still seem to be in a songwriting rutt and having some new and "classic" pop tune stuff to play helps replenish the melody making part of my brain. hopefully 
Mainly it’s just because I like to sing and play