SUGABABES - "Hole In The Head" 5 Mar 2020 “Hole In The Head” has three tough acts to follow. “Overload”, the one which perfectly introduced the Sugababes and their core idea - talk-to-the-hand teenage moodiness as a girl group…
SUGABABES - "Freak Like Me" 10 Jul 2017 At The Disco A scene from Phonogram III: The Immaterial Girl, by Gillen, McKelvie and Wilson, published in 2015. It’s the early 00s, at a disco somewhere in the south…
GEORGE MICHAEL - "Fastlove" 3 Nov 2013 “All that bullshit conversation, baby can’t you read the signs?”. This is a curious record: there’s little in pop like the way “Fastlove” marries seductive form – the discreet grind…
The Freaky Trigger Movie Poll 2016 20 Dec 2016 “Hi I am Red Skelton, exceptionally annoying star of the 40's and 50's - trust me there was no comic turn I could flatten, or subtle humour I couldn't mug…
SHAGGY feat. RIKROK - "It Wasn't Me" 8 Sep 2015 One of the things dancehall does supremely well is project authority. The genre is born in competition – between soundsystems, between MCs. While rappers jealously guard their beats, dancehall MCs…
PWC14: Group E Finale (France, Honduras, Switzerland, Ecuador) 9 Apr 2014 Welcome to the Group E finale! Here's how things stand. France (managed by Jessica) have qualified with 6 points, and will top the group unless they come last here. Honduras…
STEPS - "Heartbeat" / "Tragedy" 30 Aug 2014 This is the first Popular entry I’ve written in the Southern hemisphere. And while it wasn’t a big hit down under – or, I think, anywhere except the UK –…
MICHAEL JACKSON - "Earth Song" 31 Jul 2013 "The environment" is something of a pop graveyard, and no surprise. Beyond specific conservation efforts, the problems we've created seem simply too vast for us to cope with as a…
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
1 Jan 2003
101. THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS – ‘My Elastic Eye’: ‘It sounds exactly like an elastic eye!’ said Fred S. I scoffed, but you know what? – it does! Though maybe more a clockwork one – but the wobbly fuzz-bass still sounds like it’s looking, even probing the track for something. Every music-box noise here is luxurious […]
23 Apr 2000
My first encounter with the exotic was on the Magic Mill at Thorpe Park, a South-East England theme park which from appearances had originally been based around a cramped zoo or city-farm set-up. At some point in the late 70s it had seemingly panicked, though, and parked itself up in order to survive. With its […]
15 Sep 2013
Ten years ago tomorrow, I started writing a review of Al Martino’s “Here In My Heart”. I’d never heard the first UK Number One, and thanks to P2P networks I had the chance. Somewhere between starting the blog entry and finishing it, I thought of reviewing all of them. I had no idea how long […]
25 Jul 2006
Or: Games I Have Known. For the sake of my patience and yours, I have mostly restricted this to games I either owned or played – ones where I read a friends’ rulebooks and only dimly remember have been ignored, with a couple of notable exceptions. If you want to know more about any of these, […]
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 […]
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.
17 Jun 2010
Finally, the moment of ABSOLUTE POP TRUTH is upon us! And my goodness, what a nail-biter of a contest this has been. Halfway through the voting, two decades broke decisively ahead of the pack, establishing a lead that proved impossible to catch up with. Although one of them looked to have the edge, its rival […]
