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
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 […]
2 May 2008
#389, 2nd June 1976 I was aware of this song long before I heard it – as a young boy it was quoted at me by my Dad should I ever object to tidying my room. Since my room was rarely tidy, I became very familiar with the central notion of “No Charge”. Like my Dad, I […]
4 Jul 2018
An intriguing group for this third Pop World Cup match, with two of the sleeping giants of pop football – Sweden and South Korea – lined up against the always capable Germany and dark horses Mexico. Group of death? In a sense, they are all groups of death when YOU have the casting vote. Pick […]
3 Sep 2007
Mars Planets: the atomisation of the Mars Bar. An entropic dis-integration, the tendency of all things to become more chaotic, in confectionery form. I’m trying to resist the impulse to tie this stuff up to no-such-thing-as-Society atomisation because that’s not how we do things, right? And Mars Planets are better to share than a proper big […]
12 Feb 2002
There’s too much love to go around these days How much do you think I like music? Sometimes I get e-mails, angry about this or that, telling me I don’t like it at all. Sometimes I’m inclined to agree. Every now and then a poster pops up on our discussion board, I Love Music, and […]
25 Jun 2018
No, you’ve not missed any matches. We’re putting this year’s games up as we get the entries in, and so it’s a big thankyou to the prompt Group E gaffers of Serbia, Brazil, Switzerland and Morocco. It’s a group of veteran pop managers in the dugout this match, but only two can progress beyond the […]
13 Jul 2018
What if a World Cup lasted ALL YEAR? That’s the experiment we appear to be running with this year’s PWC, and a grand experiment it is too. Here we are with the fourth match, group C, which even features a team that is STILL IN the football tournament. France are one of the great exponents […]
28 Jun 2013
We are now firmly into the BRITPOP YEARS on Popular, oh yes, so it’s time to consider its musical legacy in the only language we truly understand, viz. a ticky-box poll. We have selected 32 bands who someone, somewhere, might possibly have once described as Britpop. Tick all the ones you like and by science […]
