ROOM 5 ft OLIVER CHEATHAM - "Make Luv" 18 Dec 2019 The sound of a subgenre on its deathbed. We’ve had some good times with filter-disco, or French touch, or whatever you want to call this woozy sound. At its best…
USHER - "You Make Me Wanna..." 21 Apr 2014 Another piece of the present slots into place: if you leave out charity records, this is the first artist we’ve met to also have a Number One in the 2010s.…
GEORGE MICHAEL - "Jesus To A Child" 15 Aug 2013 Writing this post could have felt awkward. I have been very lucky: I've never had to face the premature loss of a loved one, and having never been tested by…
Popular: The 90s 2 Jan 2015 This is another one of our decade polls, where we ask: which year was best for pop? Pick one only! Using the Popular vault of scores as a guide, I've…
What's Going On With The FT Comments? 17 Oct 2019 Hi all - We know some of you have had serious issues with the FT comments, both in terms of logging in on existing IDs and creating new ones. This…
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…
Seasonal slatternry returns: Brandy Cream Cauliflower Cheese 1 Jan 2016 Some years ago I decided to apply the theory that putting brandy-inclusive dairy products into a bacon sandwich would definitely not make things any worse. This year I have taken…
BOYZONE - "All That I Need" 6 May 2014 This is one of the two Boyzone records I couldn’t well remember. So, it’s not the slow cover version, or the fast cover version. It’s not the one by Andrew…
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 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 […]
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 […]
1 Jan 2002
British Bubblegum Pop 1968-1972 “Sunday morning, up with the lark, I think I’ll take a walk in the park, Hey hey hey, it’s a beautiful day …” Daniel Boone, “Beautiful Sunday”, 1972 British bubblegum pop, circa 1968-1972 – as distinct from its more worldly and sophisticated American equivalent – is a pure insight into a […]
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 […]
12 Nov 2014
The Secret History Of Band Aid Everybody remembers Band Aid. And – despite everything – most people remember Band Aid 2. And now we have Band Aid 20 30. Which rather begs the question – why does nobody ever talk about Band Aids 3 to 29? Take a trip down memory lane as we remind […]
1 Sep 2002
Spiders: creepy, crawly little critters which seem up to no good – hanging in the corner of your room, leaving webs around just to make a mess – definitely with their own agenda. Not the most obvious creature to base a film on. Yet Hollywood returns to the theme of spiders every ten years or […]
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 […]
