KYLIE MINOGUE - "Slow" 28 Apr 2020 I'm raising money for domestic violence charity Refuge by running a People's Pop Poll on Twitter, which starts in May. If you can spare any money, please consider donating (and…
KYLIE MINOGUE - "Spinning Around" 26 Mar 2015 Most comebacks risk being overshadowed by the past. To find its distinct identity, “Spinning Around” has to battle the future. The second phase of Kylie’s career pivots on one single,…
Popular '01 19 Aug 2016 I give a mark out of 10 to every entry. These polls are your chance to say which records YOU would have given 6 or more to. Not quite as…
#1: La la la la la la-la-la 1 Sep 2020 This bracket is for what you might call ‘pure pop’, though in the 2001 context that has very uncomfortable overtones, since the stuff in here - Kylie, Steps, Sophie Ellis-Bextor,…
The Freaky Trigger Readers' Poll 2012: #20-#11 9 Jan 2013 "Hi, I'm Sexy Thorin Oakenshield, and I like nothing more than a good sing-song, especially if it's about gold. Sitting down, standing up -- as long as transition metals are…
KYLIE MINOGUE - "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" 6 Apr 2016 Between its two writers and its performer, "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" is the sound of over seven decades’ pop experience. It's better heard as distillation than prediction.…
Sclerotica 30 Jan 2015 Before I start writing about Number Ones again, a quick bit of stattery around the current state of the charts. This is an extremely wonkish post, so reader beware. The…
Refried Dough 24 Apr 2014 As you've probably noticed, the Popular archives are fairly extensive. I often think it would be nice to do something with them, so (among other slow-brewing schemes) I came up…
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
30 Jun 2020
This month’s poll at @peoples_pop on Twitter is about the year 1990. This is the nerdy procedural post about how I’ve put it together and how I’m going to run it. DO NOT READ IF YOU HATE ADMIN.
23 Aug 2005
One of the happy upshots of the Bosman Ruling which we have been living with for almost ten years, is the effect it has on players prices near the end of their contract. Take Clinton Morrison (Birmingham wish someone would) the Republic of Ireland striker. Bought for a club record of £4.25 million three years […]
5 Jul 2013
#725, 26th August 1995 BOXING? A “heavyweight battle”, the NME cover-billed it. And if “Country House” vs Oasis’ “Roll With It” was a title bout, the music press were desperate to play Frank Warren. Perhaps they had most at stake. It was, in a way, their last great fight. Many other moments define Oasis. Blur […]
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 is because of something being imposed by our hosts to stop continued spam comment attacks. We’ve taken the actions requested (updating wordpress etc) but there’s […]
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 […]
1 Sep 2002
I don’t think much of the idea of ‘guilty pleasures’ but there’s guilt and there’s guilt, isn’t there? There’s guilt for something you might be doing wrong – breaking some invisible law of taste, maybe – and that guilt you can and should kick aside. But then there’s guilt for the things you have done, […]
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 […]
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 […]
