Richard Ashcroft used to be in a band called Verve, as you possibly know. The thing about Verve was that the word – with its connotations of lightness, cheek and speed – was the last thing you’d have flashed on when you heard the bandâ€[…]

“Love will get you like a case of anthrax”: the Gang of Four’s cheery advice sets the tone for twenty-plus years of on-off punky alternative disdain for love songs. Andy Gill and company took a hardline leftist tone – songs ab[…]

I was a pop widow!
When Freaky Trigger‘s editor commissioned this piece, he was no doubt thinking of (or guiltily hoping for) some kind of gender-neutral meditation on the mystery, beauty and sadness of record-rack romance. And believe me, I tried,[…]

For the past two days I have at points been totally stopped in my tracks with grief. I literally have been on the verge of losing it entirely more than once now. I just can’t accept that this has happened.
Almost a decade ago, Jim Henson and Dr[…]

England is DIFFERENT (or SPECIAL if you want to be polite) to everywhere else for many reasons, but one is because our music “industry” (it’s not an industry – making baked beans is an industry, and nobody does THAT in their s[…]