Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
If you could have bought some kind of critical shares in krautrock back in 1990 you’d be a rich pop kid by now, but despite motorik’s meteorise rise there’s no new Neu! now threatening th[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
How much should we demand of our stars? In the 90s, the answer tended to be ‘enough’. Bands would rise up with something to offer, become famous, and then just…continue, offering minor va[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s 
Madonna’s trajectory through the 90s has been a confused one, and who can blame her? She’d always been the object of critical interest – she was tough and canny and massively popular at[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
“Nothing Compares 2 U” stakes its claim and sinks its hooks with its first pinpoint line. “It’s been seven hours and fifteen days” – the inescapable specifics of a split[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
The wounded mind draws into itself, narrowing perception down to a hard, unarguable line, sacrificing perspective and judgement for an awful, logical clarity. The poles of this line are absolute and do not[…]

The Human League – Reproduction and Travelogue
One thing we know about men who go into space: they come back changed. Quatermass’ astronauts return carrying a cold-war plague; Philip K Dick’s Palmer Eldritch comes back a hallucinopa[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
Lyrically this seems negligible, even laughable: the first big gangsta piety hit, wherein Coolio delivers a stern message to the youth, to mend their ways and not follow his path of violence and bloodshed.[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s 
The sharp London boy dialogue which bookends Weekender‘s 12 minutes sounds like Billy Liar or some other bolshy, aspirational 60s youth fable. It’s that link as much as the length which tips […]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
Being as contrary as you possibly can is an excellent ground rule for a pop critic. An example: judging solely by the smug, pot-addled, nervelessly shuffling trip-hop being made mid-decade by Mo’Wax and […]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
It is the fourth track on a four-track EP. There is no chorus, and barely any melody. The voice is flat and preoccupied, the lyrics muted to the point of being muttered, the whole song gives an air of term[…]