WELL DONE EVERYONE! We’ve made it through 1988. But the 80s still have more to throw at us. Let’s regroup and take stock of the year – use the poll to indicate which tracks YOU would have given 6 or more out of 10 to.
And use the comments to discuss the year in general – which, as has often been mentioned in the regular comments boxes, was actually pretty damn good.
Loading ...Tom in Popular • 99 Comments
Squeaking into the Christmas canon just as the gates were closing, “Mistletoe And Wine” is a hard song to listen to charitably in late July. Mind you, it was a hard song to listen to charitably in late December 1988. Good Christmas songs since Slade’s 1973 breakthrough have been an extension of pop – aimed at the same buyers, performed in the same style, with only the seasonal trimmings and sleigh bell presets to mark them out from what else was going on. “Mistletoe And Wine”, on the other hand, is in the tradition of “When A Child Is Born” – it has nothing to do with any of the currents of pop in 1988. It’s the first Christmas hit since “There’s No One Quite Like Grandma” to be aimed squarely at people who only buy singles at this time of year. more »
Tom in Popular • 57 Comments
Last week a question occurred to me: what interesting things can you find out by playing around with Last.FM listening data? Last.FM themselves offer a fair bit of extra analysis to users in their “Playground” section, but it’s all to do with individual listeners or their networks (or “neighbourhoods”). I wanted to see how much LFM data could tell us about specific artists, and how people listen to them.
So using the most topline, publically available data possible – the artist pages and charts of most-played tracks – what can we find out? I created a few metrics which I could generate (by hand! no programmer I!) in 20 seconds or so for each artist and set to work populating a mini database out of the artists on the overall LFM charts, then the ones on my personal charts, then anyone I thought might be interesting. The results are this series of three – somewhat wonkish – posts: the conclusions will be in Part III so if you don’t fancy seeing me crunch numbers (albeit very EASY numbers) wait around for that.
Here’s what I came up with! more »
Tom in FT • 3 Comments
Minor Popular milestone alert! This is the very latest song that I had no recollection of whatsoever before starting this project. Never saw the advert, never heard the record. So I’d have been really happy if this had been an unexpected delight, or even a minor pleasure. As it is the only unexpected thing about “The First Time” is its attempted fake-out: you think it’s going to be one kind of bad song (vaguely motivational ballad) and instead it’s another (vaguely agonised power ballad). more »
Tom in Popular • 50 Comments
I have a great big post on the boil looking at Last FM stats but in case it doesn’t get finished here’s a quiz for you. NO PEEKING – Peeking meaning no going to Last FM and checking the answers.
The quiz is very easy! All you have to do is guess which is the highest ranked track on Last FM by each of these artists. LFM’s public data only goes back 6 months, which makes a difference in some cases, and it hasn’t got the VERY latest hits (i.e. Katy Perry’s #1 is “I Kissed A Girl” not “California Gurls” let alone “Teenage Dream”). For some of the listed acts it is the obvious track, for others it isn’t, this is where blind luck your skill and judgement will play a role.
So here goes! Quiz under the cut, answers in the comments box and I’ll let you know who does best. more »
Tom in FT • 20 Comments
Brian Eno famously used to write his lyrics – or claim he did, at any rate – on the basis of sound rather than meaning: if the phonemes danced in service to the song, that was good enough for him and what they actually said could go hang. I get something of that vibe from “Orinoco Flow” – the arrangement’s pert staccatos bubbling up into Enya’s cute, clpped phrasing. But she corrals her syllables into something that does make sense: a hymn to travel and motion for their own sake. more »
Tom in FT /Popular • 92 Comments
“No Parlez by Paul Young? Yes, I THINK I remember seeing one of those…”
New CDs for Old! Trigger pals The Hangover Lounge are hosting a “Music Swish” at the Lexington this Sunday – details here. The idea is that you bring along up to 15 unwanted CDs, records, tapes, etc. and you leave with 15 which other people have brought. I’d be there myself, except I’m in the New Forest that day.
It’s a great idea and if successful the plan is to make it a regular event, so do drop by on Sunday with your cast-offs in tow.
Tom in FT • 2 Comments
Written for the Seoul Olympics, “One Moment In Time” makes an age-old connection between sport and character – if you want to win, you have to suffer, be more than you thought you could be, and so on. Do this, and you might be rewarded with your moment when you’re “racing with destiny” – only caring about the Track And Field is a classic US Olympic-watching stereotype, of course, though I guess all your dreams are a heartbeat away in the dressage or synchro too. more »
Tom in FT /Popular • 63 Comments
“Music’s become too scientific, it’s lost that spunk and energy that it had in the ’50s and ’60s. When I listen to most modern records I hear a producer, I don’t hear musicians interacting. And that quality, that missing quality is something we were trying to get back into our own music. What I like about Desire is that if there’s ever been a cool #1 to have in the UK, that’s it because it’s totally not what people are listening to or what’s in the charts at the moment. Instead it’s going in exactly the opposite direction. It’s a rock and roll record – in no way is it a pop song.”
- The Edge, October 1988 more »
Tom in Popular • 144 Comments
Furrowed-brow gospel rock which risks being weighty in all the wrong ways. The title phrase is from a 1940s magazine cover, said by a cute li’l scamp in a “from the mouths of babes” moment. Transpose it to a rock song and you get a stodgy mix of wartime folksiness and King James solemnity (“no burden is he”). The arrangement echoes this unhappy combination: dustbowl harmonica and churchy string section in a forced marriage of two quite different kinds of seriousness. more »
Tom in Popular • 56 Comments