Normal Service Will Resume Shortly (UPDATE Has Resumed!) 6 Aug 2014 We're just trying to shake out some gremlins on the FT server. The beautiful FT appearance will be restored as soon as possible UPDATE 10:20pm: The FT appearance will be back…
WESTLIFE - "World Of Our Own" 4 Jan 2017 It’s taken them until their 10th number one, but Westlife finally bring us an original uptempo song. Within the band’s corpus “World Of Our Own” is a break from the…
The People's Pop Poll: Starts 5th May 4 May 2020 Below the cut is a very geeky process-oriented post about THE PEOPLE'S POP POLL, which starts tomorrow on Twitter (@tomewing). The main thing, though, is that over 100 people have…
The Freaky Trigger Readers' Poll 2014: #10-#1 18 Jan 2015 "Well, an early finish to the snooker tonight has left me twiddling my thumbs here at Alexandra Palace, so I'll take this opportunity to introduce my plans for world domination…
S CLUB 7 - "Never Had A Dream Come True" 6 Jul 2015 “Never Had A Dream Come True” is enjoyably drippy, but does nothing to shake my sense that S Club 7 are the blandest proposition of this pop era. Like their…
ROBBIE WILLIAMS - "Rock DJ" 14 Apr 2015 Back at “Millennium” I claimed that Robbie Williams’ wild success, his undeniable - and untranslatable - appeal as a pop star, said something wider about turn of the century British…
Omargeddon #5: Cryptomnesia 15 Dec 2018 Most Omar Rodríguez-López albums are released under his name, but there a few variations: El Trío de Omar Rodríguez-López, the Omar Rodríguez-López Quartet, the Omar Rodríguez-López Quintet, and when touring,…
BOYZONE - "No Matter What" 11 Jun 2014 “No Matter What” has an elevated position in Boyzone’s catalogue. It’s their big crossover hit, the one by songwriters of real mass-appeal pedigree – Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jim Steinman…
About the Author
Tom invented Freaky Trigger on a bus journey in the mid-90s. A page about what he's up to can be found here
10 Aug 2004
Distilled from several years of pop experience, here from the WORST to the BEST are ways to approach a cover version. The Acoustic Guitar: i.e. “Any good song will sound great on an acoustic guitar”, runs the prized nugget of MOJO wisdom which results in Travis mauling “…Baby One More Time”. Culprits throw up their […]
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 […]
20 Feb 2007
“[John Thelwall] also had the misfortune to be a mediocre poet — a crime which, although it is committed around us every day — historians and critics cannot forgive.” —E.P.Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class* It was called The Battle of Waterloo, and it was one of the plays offered by J. K. […]
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 […]
9 Jan 2004
Independence Day. Isn’t it marvellous? Hurrah hurrah let’s kill the stripper and those hippies! That’s the kind of morals I WANT from my films! Until the aliens bugger up by deciding just to kill EVERYBODY. Where’s the subtlety, the art, the je ne sais quoi indeed about that? Who cares when we have plucky heroes […]
9 Jan 2013
GET UR FROAK ON While most of my online acquaintances were geeking out today at the thought of a new David Bowie album, our house was far more excited by the announcement of new Pokémon games – Pokémon X and Pokémon Y, the first on Nintendo’s 3DS console(1). The announcement was made by the President […]
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 […]
14 Nov 2006
In The Beginning There Was Nothingness. IF ONLY. In The Beginning There Was The Word. NOT THE BIRD FROM L7 PULLING DOWN HER KECKS AGAIN. But neither of these are strictly true. Because the first book of the Bible Of Badness is Genesis. And if you were ever to question how bad this Bible could […]
