CHRISTINA AGUILERA - "Beautiful" 27 Nov 2019 One of the notable things about “Beautiful” is that having written it, Linda Perry wanted to keep it for a proposed solo career – it was one of her “personal”…
CHRISTINA AGUILERA ft REDMAN - "Dirrty" 7 Sep 2019 Christina Aguilera’s album title, Stripped, has an obvious double-meaning, one she’s been keen to point out to interviewers. Stripping off, yes, clearly, but also stripping back, removing the layers of…
CHRISTINA AGUILERA - "Genie In A Bottle" 7 Dec 2014 When surface-similar acts emerge at the same time, there’s an urge to paint them as rivals – not just personally but aesthetically. A pop moment becomes such when you have…
The Freaky Trigger Readers’ Poll 2011: #97-#51 6 Jan 2012 "Hi! We're amusing pop scamps Rizzle Kicks and we'd like to thank everyone who sent in their votes for this year's poll! We had a great response in the end…
Lost Property Office 7: Apple Armbands 18 Apr 2012 There is a rule wherein every newspaper columnist is allowed one "Get Out Of Jail Free" card, where they can write a column about the process of writing a column.…
Lost Property Office 5: Five Do Nothing 4 Apr 2012 The most significant thing lost in this weeks Lost Property Office could well be my voice! Luckily I have an excellent guest in the form of Rock Star, Playwright, Validator…
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…
12 Mar 2010
People in the Popular comments boxes are talking about “the canon”. I’m always quite curious as to which bits of the canon have ‘taken’ with a broadly pop-positive audience such as we have here. So here’s a poll, very easy to fill in, just say which of the Top 50 albums OF ALL TIME EVER […]
20 Aug 2004
How Old Is Superman? One of the seemingly undefined aspect of the Superman mythos is that of his ageing. Those who fall on the side of his omnipotence in everything (the superhearing, superbreath, superhair bunch) probably think as a preternatural godhead he will live forever. Look, he has been banging around in the comics for […]
15 Dec 2009
One of the things that’s fascinating about the UK Top 40 is that a device designed to be a pure expression of popularity also works as a reflection of so many other things. People buy songs: if enough people buy a song it gets into the charts, or to #1. Simple! But so simple that […]
11 Jan 2016
I wrote a thing for here about David Bowie and how I felt about him and what he meant to me, but then Pitchfork kindly decided they wanted to run it, so it’s below. (Original title: He Could Be Dead, He Could Be Not, He Could Be You). And to any other good pieces I […]
5 Jan 2019
“Greetings! It’s me, 90’s summer dance craze The Macarena. I’ve never really gone away, as you must surely know: the muscle memory of hand flips and hip wiggles is ingrained into the very fabric of your DNA, to be passed down to your heirs and their heirs for many centuries hence, waxing on and waxing […]
10 Jan 2012
Hi, I’m Lauryn Hill circa my breakthrough role in Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit, and it is a real pleasure to be able to present to you the top ten FreakyTrigger tracks of the year. When my mother told me I couldn’t join the choir run by a fake nun, I got really […]
4 Jul 2018
An intriguing group for this third Pop World Cup match, with two of the sleeping giants of pop football – Sweden and South Korea – lined up against the always capable Germany and dark horses Mexico. Group of death? In a sense, they are all groups of death when YOU have the casting vote. Pick […]
1 Jun 2002
1 The weather matters. Saturday 1st June: 8pm, and the sky out of my window is still fading pale blue, weightless, benevolent. A jubilee weekend of rain would be a symbolic down: but then, we are long used to finding a meaning in the rain. Not just we aesthetes (‘I’m happy when it rains’; ‘You’re […]