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…
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…
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…
The Jackpot 31 May 2013 A Brief History Of Teen Superhero Comics, Part 4 It’s probably the most famous panel in 60s Marvel history. A gag, a cliffhanger, a revolution. A young woman standing in…
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
29 Sep 2014
#817, 21st February 1999 How was I supposed to know that something wasn’t right? It was a gilded age: the commercial zenith of the music industry at the end of the 20th century. In America, its apex as a money-making force came in 1999 when – adjusted for inflation – $71 per head was spent […]
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.
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 […]
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 […]
1 Oct 2002
Introduction It was about 2 in the morning and I was trying to get a handle on Alexander the Great. I had a final exam coming up and I’d missed half the syllabus – and something else was missing; a way into the man’s head. Alexander had single-handedly destroyed the world’s largest Empire and put […]
3 Apr 2017
So for a while myself and Pamela Hutchinson, of Silent London fame have been talking about doing a more regular podcast. And while we love talking about silent films, we also like new films too. And so The Sound Barrier was born over a Campari Spritz or four, we take a new release and we […]
5 May 2011
#667, 13th July 1991 Sixteen Listens For Sixteen Weeks: An Everything I Do Liveblog This song got to number one for 16 weeks, so I decided to play it 16 times in a row, writing as I went. Play 1: And we’re off. I’ve honestly hardly heard this in the last twenty years so I […]
30 Apr 2000
April 2000, Piccadilly The sun comes out over London and the Summer starts: everywhere you look you see people in love, snogging on the tubes and holding hands on the escalators so you can’t get past them. Baggy shorts and halter tops all over the place, kids sitting together on Eros and choking on the […]
