Biopics. Nearly always rubbish right? I can’t be doing with their sanding down of the rough edges of life to turn them into some sort of narrative that makes sense. Whose life has an arc (Noah excepted and Evan Almighty I guess but he’s n[…]

Perhaps icons inevitably try to upstage each other. Madonna, given the chance at a 007 theme song, is provoked into her most radical 00s single. Also – to be fair – one of her most divisive: it got abuse both from Bond purists who deteste[…]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHzAyCu5r3A
I came to The Beatles Rock Band with nothing but the best of intentions.
(more…)[…]

I don’t like Adam Sandler films. I have actually got into a fight once (with a minor physical altercation) over the fact that I believe Punch Drunk Love to be rubbish AND a waste of a good track from the Popeye musical. The whole manchild / an[…]

I was playing this record quite a lot while I put the final edits on my “Decade In Pop” piece for Pitchfork: now I wish I’d mentioned it. It’s producer Rich Harrison’s pet girlband project, and for once that patronising […]

I loved “Head On”, Fatih Ak?n’s previous film which was a gutsy violent Turkish / German romance. It was proper European cinema, no pussyfooting around with its depth of emotion between two characters both drawn together and who hat[…]

One of the minor and miserable themes of my 00s has been the generally vain search for a British indie hype that I could enjoy. I’ve never consciously acknowledged this itch but the fact I once paid money for a CD by The Coral suggests it&#8217[…]

A little over ten years ago I started writing about my Top 100 Singles Of The 90s. Pretty much as soon as I’d finished I started looking forward to writing this feature on Freaky Trigger. In between, this site has – directly or indirectly[…]

Two cheeses from the same maker, both blue, one made with cows milk and the other with goat. They might have everything but the milk in common, but these are very different cheeses. The first is strong and tangy and tasty, the second sent me croaking[…]

Thank You For The Music: The Music of ABBA, Hyde Park
We pick our way through the sea of tartan blankets, picnic baskets, foldable chairs, sensible anoraks and fidgeting eight-year-olds who have each been given a bag of fizzy cola bottles and a glows[…]