Guinness cheese! Because Guinness needs more fat.[…]

Nick Southall on the end of Stylus and how web 2.0 has changed the criticism game.
Blogged as a marker to myself, really, though one sensible response on my part would be to stop thinking so much about music criticism and just get on with some.[…]

Methinks the lady doth protest too much
Those of you not yet middle-aged, criticise BBC Three while you still can! Really though, the channel’s future seems as safe as their schedules and as a result I don’t think Bennett needs to act qui[…]

As a marketer it gives me shudders of appaling delight to see phrases like “moving up the Value Funnel” in a music comments box, so you can imagine I’ve found Hypebot’s posts on “the rise of the Musical Middle Class&#822[…]

6. Utah Saints – Something Good
Another mainstream chart hit for Rave ’92, one which has cemented itself into the consciousness of the Great British listening public thanks to that stuttering name-check announcement. (more…)[…]

Stylus Magazine is closing – I never read it as much as I ought but there was some good stuff in it, especially William B Swygart’s Singles Jukebox blog. This started off as WBS’ rantings about the week’s UK Top 40 – a s[…]

In a move similar to The Freaky Trigger Top 25 Grants, one of our entries is not a Brand like the others. Where the others are marketing heavy representatives of an ethos, structure and mindset behind a product, number 16 is a person. A famous person[…]

This album came out at a troubled time for its superstar singer. The singer had hit international fame with a provocative, ambiguously sexual image, and had then gone on to work with some of the hottest names in black music – though many critic[…]

Whilst I am happy that the Wispa is back (it’s chocolate heaven, I ate it an hour ago and I’m still on a lovely bleary fuzzy high – Green & Blacks and Montezuma et al can just… fvck off until they get with the cocoa butter[…]

My latest column for Pitchfork looks at tastemaking and consensus in British music. It’s an ambitious column- almost certainly too ambitious, so I’ll use this post to briefly talk about some of the stuff that didn’t get in it and a[…]