GARETH GATES ft THE KUMARS - "Spirit In The Sky" 17 Dec 2019 This is Comic Relief getting back to its roots - a familiar song, disrupted by the comic turn. I never watched the Kumars, and the clips I looked at for…
GARETH GATES - "Anyone Of Us (Stupid Mistake)" 1 Feb 2018 If you’re going to apologise for infidelity, “it could happen to anyone” is not the best starting point, but in its very callowness this is a much more suitable song…
GARETH GATES - "Unchained Melody" 19 Jan 2017 Making sense of Simon Cowell requires negotiating a maze of banalities – a host of things which are, like judges’ verdicts on a reality show, obvious and lacking insight, but…
The Freaky Trigger Readers' Poll 2014 5 Dec 2014 'Hi everyone! I'm long-haired Canadian warbler Alanis Morisette, and I'm here to remind you that you "oughta know" that submissions for the Freaky Trigger Readers' Poll 2014 are now OPEN!…
GERI HALLIWELL - "It's Raining Men" 2 Dec 2015 Living with my parents over summer ‘95 I read the Independent, cover to cover, largely as a way to delay writing job applications. I become a small-scale fan of Bridget…
TFTACOXS* - December 12: M&S Chestnut Roast Wrap 12 Dec 2017 If buying sandwiches from a pharmacy seemed alien to me, I wonder what I would have thought about department stores selling them. I learned what Marks and Sparks was on…
GEORGE HARRISON - "My Sweet Lord" (2002 re-issue) 4 Nov 2016 “They get to that age and they don’t need the operator any more. They’ve got the direct line.” – Father Ted. Singing about going to be with God – about…
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
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 nominated the songs which will fight it out in this poll, and donated over £2100 for Refuge (the fundraiser is still open!). They are amazing […]
15 Aug 2017
Spooky happenings over on Silent London this week, where the Sound Barrier Podcast dabbles in the supernatural, otherworldly and ectoplasmic. Or rather, a pair of meditative films which use death, and the afterlife, to dwell on the nature of existence. But if that feels a little dry, don’t worry there are madmen axing down doors, […]
10 Mar 2015
This is a post listing the records I’m listening to for my YEAR OF ROCKISM**, as outlined here (cut and pasted from Tumblr): I’m going to listen to one album on a once-a-day basis for a week, a different one each week. Not in order to write about them or anything, unless I decide I […]
21 Dec 2009
Well, that’s that: the machine has been given a good beating and we can look forward to “Bulls On Parade” on the festive Argos ad next year. I will admit I didn’t think the RATM crew could do it: I was wrong. But as the dust settles on this most fractious and increasingly entertaining Christmas […]
26 Apr 1999
The mode of the music changes, the city quakes, or at least those blocks of primer-than-thou office space quake that house the HQs of worldwide record companies. The reason, apparently, is MP3 technology, which you all know about and most of you use, and which has been the subject of acres of ruminative, pessimistic music […]
8 Aug 2019
Hello Popular readers! After sixteen years, and suffering from (as you’ll have noticed) a much slower posting rate, I’ve come to a decision. I’m going to crowdfund this project, using Patreon. HERE’S THE LINK. This coincides with me leaving my day job and going solo, which opens up a lot of spare time. But billable […]
4 Jan 2005
An OLD MAN and a WISE MAN are sitting on a bench. WISE MAN: Tell me, Old Man, if you had one piece of advice to give young students, what would it be? OLD MAN: I would tell them to be neither too proud or too ashamed of their music taste. The music you hear […]
27 Mar 2014
#774, 20th September 1997 Every Popular entry starts with the same question: why this record? This time it’s especially loud. “Candle In The Wind ‘97” is the highest-selling single of all time in the UK, almost 2 million clear of its nearest competitor. This is as big as pop gets. But “why?” might strike you […]
