Album-A-Day #5: Tarkus In Black Vinyl, Please 15 Feb 2019 This is a document of my album-a-day listening project. Each entry originally comes out as a tinyletter and subscribers to that get framing content and non-music miscellanea as well as…
GEORGE MICHAEL AND QUEEN - Five Live EP 9 Mar 2012 Britain has a Pop Establishment as surely as it has a political one, and the charity tribute gig is its equivalent of a State Funeral. The line-up for the Freddie…
FIVE + QUEEN - "We Will Rock You" 9 Apr 2015 2014 saw Queen reach an unfortunate milestone - they’ve now been going for longer without Freddie Mercury than with him. It’s been an odd 23 years. John Deacon bowed out…
Lost Property Office 4: Tilda Swinton, Queen Of Atlantis 28 Mar 2012 And we are back in the Lost Property Office, this week with the fearless Kat Stevens who is the first of our guests to shun the sometimes predictable CD route…
Popular '00 26 Jul 2015 Well, it took longer than I wanted, but we got there in the end: the 42 number ones of 2000, now reviewed and ready for your polling delectation. I give…
WESTLIFE - "Queen Of My Heart" 24 Apr 2016 Back to 'Life, back to reality. The charts' burst of Autumnal energy fades, the novelties and classics depart, and it's a return to business very much as usual, the first…
TAKE THAT - "Babe" 18 Sep 2012 For their Christmas tearjerker, Take That – now comfortably the country’s biggest band – deployed their secret weapon: Little Mark Owen, a singer so awkwardly earnest he strips a layer…
Expansion pack 'The Floor' released May 2012 10 Apr 2012 (Apropos much social media rumbling on Erotic Choose Your Own Adventures and the appearance of whatever Heineken think this is) 1. You enter the club and head to the floor,…
21 Nov 2013
So here we are. The 32 qualifiers for the football World Cup have been decided, which means it’s time, once again, to get ready for the POP WORLD CUP. The point of this post is very simple. If you want to be a manager in the Pop World Cup, put your name in the comments […]
1 Jul 2013
This article by Laurie Penny on the pervasiveness and persuasiveness of the manic pixie dream girl trope is really good. I’m the same age as Laurie Penny, so was plagued by the same cultural stuff as her- I don’t know if it’s just egocentrism for my own timeline but I feel like the 90s marked […]
8 Jun 2010
Here we are, at last. Here we stand at the summit of Pop Football achievement, looking back at 63 matches: some wonderful, some perplexing, some illuminating, very few boring. We’ve heard so much pop, enjoyed so many marvellous moments, and we have 30 losing managers to thank for all their research and taste. Never mind […]
29 Oct 2010
#641, 3rd February 1990 Sinead O’Connor is one of the finest song interpreters not just because she thinks hard about the material and the feelings locked in it, but because she’s so good at placing songs into a situation. A great example of this is her version of “Chiquitita”, warm and homely where ABBA’s is […]
15 Aug 2006
The Notorious Bettie Page is a film about the good old days of porn. You know, when it wasn’t exploitative, and all the girls portrayed within were not only fun loving conspirators in an art project, but believed in Jeebus too. Most film about porn are about the good old days. Inside Deep Throat told […]
20 Jun 2005
Last week saw the release of not one, but two films about previous films. And I don’t mean Batman Begins (which should be retitled Batman Starts for Essex). Inside Deep Throat, a documentary about the making of and the effect of notorious porn film Deep Throat. And Baadasssss!, Mario Van Peebles film about the making […]
17 Jun 2010
Finally, the moment of ABSOLUTE POP TRUTH is upon us! And my goodness, what a nail-biter of a contest this has been. Halfway through the voting, two decades broke decisively ahead of the pack, establishing a lead that proved impossible to catch up with. Although one of them looked to have the edge, its rival […]
1 Jan 2003
This article was the author’s working notes for his since published book “Adorno: A guide for the perplexed”, available from Waterstones, reputable booksellers, and Amazon Introduction, by Alex Thomson In many ways Adorno exemplifies the image problem faced by critical theory today. Adorno is not a sexy figure. He comes over in his writing as […]
this year sucks so bad :(