TOMCRAFT - "Loneliness" 31 Dec 2019 Andrea Martin’s “Share Your Love” is an attractively crafted 1998 R&B tune about loving a philanderer. She opens with a sad idea, “Happiness seems to be loneliness, and loneliness killed…
Popular Crystal Ball: 2016 - The Year Pop Broke 18 Jan 2017 Well, that was a year. It’s not what 2016 will be remembered for, but this was the year that streaming broke the charts – or fundamentally changed what they reflect.…
The Freaky Trigger Readers' Poll 2014: #30-#21 9 Jan 2015 "Hi everyone, I'm Tasmin Archer. You may remember me from The Harry Hill Show on TV's Channel 4, where following a freak accident that NASA have banned me from talking…
BABYLON ZOO - "Spaceman" 17 Aug 2013 The nu millennium demands nu music. Twinkling neon keyboard and nebular swells of synth herald the cyberdelic overlord of compu-pop. What galactic visions have his mauve eyes witnessed? What secrets…
SHAGGY - "Boombastic" 15 Jul 2013 The key to dealing with hot weather is economy of effort – do the things you really have to with the least possible fuss, and the rest of the time,…
WHIGFIELD - "Saturday Night" 24 Feb 2013 DEE DEE NANANA! "Saturday Night" has two big things going for it. The main thing is that it's one of those iconically simple pop hits, like a "Louie Louie" for…
30 Dec 2005
#222, 20th August 1966 DIGRESSION: For Christmas I got Never Had It So Good, the first part of Dominic Sandbrook’s huge new history of Britain in the sixties. Here’s what he says about the project: “This book seeks to rescue ‘from the enormous condescencion of prosperity’…the lives of the kind of people who spent the […]
21 May 2012
Huge weepy thanks to Bob, Pete and Sarah for immortalising us in song. And thanks to commenters past and present for making it worth immortalising.
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 […]
13 Feb 2000
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 spare time, writes fanzines about it or has them poured over themselves at weddings. […]
17 Nov 2003
I notice elsewhere, in my absence, some young scamp over on NYLPM has started a concept piece, some say think piece entitled the Alphabet Of Pop. Now no-one knows more than myself the beauty of lists, as my Week Of Wank and Breakfast Of Banality proves. Its cheap easy journalism and also gives one a […]
13 Jul 2018
What if a World Cup lasted ALL YEAR? That’s the experiment we appear to be running with this year’s PWC, and a grand experiment it is too. Here we are with the fourth match, group C, which even features a team that is STILL IN the football tournament. France are one of the great exponents […]
1 Jan 2019
Hello and happy new year! It is I, Cameron Mackintosh, the world’s most powerful and most 80s theatre producer. Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, CATS – I’m kind of a big deal guys!!!!! Thanks Cam! On the principle that every drunk idea at Pete’s flat is a good idea, today now presenting the […]
1 Mar 1981
My name is Tanya Headon. I hate music. All of it. And I’m bloody good at what I do. Which is why, when picketing a gig of The Feeling I managed to get over 90% of the fans to agree with me that they are just soft rock bobbins and their new album is just […]