Another song where hearing the original changes your perspective on it: as a Bananarama album track, “Young At Heart” is fizzy but unusually thoughtful, a vignette of a kid growing to understand her parents’ choices and compromises. Even at three minutes it runs out of ideas, but it’s a lovely, wise little song and – like all early Bananarama material – it brims with can-do enthusiasm. more »
Tom in Popular • 76 Comments
Shaggy’s take on “Oh Carolina” acknowledges its debt to the past right away – sampling the intro from the Folkes Brothers’ 1960 original. Not just a nod of respect, it’s a canny move, as the crackling, wheezing shanty-town piano sounded like nothing else on 1993 radio, giving “Oh Carolina” instant cut-through. more »
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It’s the end – but the moment has been prepared for! The last fifteen Poptimist columns with notes, because I can. Includes my favourite one. more »
Tom in FT • 2 Comments
Continuing the narcissistic behind-the-scenes chronicle of a monthly column on a popular music website! It’s Poptimist 16-30! more »
Tom in FT • 2 Comments
Today’s Poptimist column – up now at Pitchfork – is the last one: a decision entirely taken by me, quite a while ago. Being able to give up a paying gig is an outrageous privilege, but so was the whole column – I filed copy on whatever took my fancy and I can’t think of a single time when I was editorially interfered with (1 of the 45 columns – numerological significance ahoy – came about from a Scott Plagenhoef suggestion, and a very good suggestion it was too.) I was handed the largest audience of music fans I will ever write for on a platter and I hope I occasionally served up something interesting in return.
So to celebrate five years of indulgence here is one last monstrous one: links and brief annotations for all 45 columns, spread over three posts. more »
Tom in FT • No Comments
Christmas is a time for the children, which means it’s also a time for endless kids’ TV specials. More than ever, in the age of the “DVD movie” stocking-stuffer. But this special has a little more to offer than just beloved “character brands” going through the tinselly motions. For a start – the SECRET ORIGIN OF ELTON JOHN!
On the “No Limits” thread I was reminded that it’s been almost 20 years since first comedy and then computer games were the new rock’n'roll. Are they still, I wondered? Surely the meme has spread, mutated and diversified since then? BOY WAS I RIGHT.
In the poll below you will see the first-page results of a Google search for “the new rock n roll”, in order. Hats off to the magical SEO monkeys of theosophy! Comedy is still flying the new r’n'r flag, thanks to Jimmy Carr: everything else is testament to the enduring (albeit tongue-in-cheek) pull of one of the great bullshit phrases of the 90s. All you have to do is vote for which of these pretenders is the real thing.
Which of these is actually the new rock n roll?
Total Voters: 95
Poll closes: 2 December 2011 @ 3:23 pm
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Tom in FT • 20 Comments
Delicious pop memory: Tony Parsons casting this song as an outrider of apocalypse on some late night culture or news show. He read out the lyrics slowly, in a tone of profound regret – how far had we fallen when this.. this thing could stand in for pop? more »
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I give a mark out of 10 to every track – this poll is for you to tick all the songs you’d have given 6 or more to, and you can discuss the year in general in the comments box.
Loading ...A year of few number ones, though it took me an age to finish. My highest marks were 8 for Shakespear’s Sister and Charles And Eddie; lowest was a 2 for Wet Wet Wet. Onwards!
Tom in Popular • 86 Comments
If there’s a single technique which – however unfairly – defines 90s and 00s soul music for the British public, it’s melisma, and if there’s a single record that cemented that link, it’s “I Will Always Love You”, at number one for a whole winter, by the end of which it was fixed as either one of pop’s all-time great love songs or one of its most reviled dirges.
Certainly it took me a very long time to scrape away that reflexive distaste and try and listen to the record fresh. There’s no denying that Whitney Houston uses the song as a vocal gymnasium, but the repertoire she shows off isn’t just note-bending and belting. She goes hushed too, clips syllables when she needs to, and lets words drain out into sadness as often as she sets them spinning. As a rule she sustains the “I”s – an unwavering blast of strength – and goes to polysyllabic bits at the end of each “you”, which seems fair enough since the you is the lover she can’t hold onto and must walk away from. Like most songs damned as melismatic showboating there’s plenty of thought involved: technique is hardly ever ‘just’ technique. more »
Tom in Popular • 122 Comments
