I’ll tell you what pop’s missing at the moment and that’s rivalries. Not feuds, we have plenty of feuds, there’s a feud a day on Twitter I think. Feuds are great but the emphasis is on the stars themselves and what they think […]

A washed rind cow’s cheese from Co Cork, Ireland, bought from Neal’s Yard Dairy.

We have a wedge of this – an old favourite of mine – for lunch. The crumbly rind is a pale peachy, biscuity orange, and the paste inside’s[…]

Among the millions of ways to convince people to buy things, two strategies have really taken off in the last several years. The first is when a product promises to be so great that it will make you literally insane. We’ll get to that one in a […]

Sometimes in the middle of a long tournament you pause for breath, you think about the time you’re spending on all these games, look at the sun shining outside, consider all the other stuff you could be doing and you think to yourself “ma[…]

We’re back to live action this week as senior pop analyst and USA manager Peter Baran joins Roger Bozack for the kickoff of the Round of 16. With every match a decider, the managers are pulling out all the stops, breaking out the big guns, i.e.[…]

Pressure. Seasoned PWC-watchers love to see the way the pressure begins to play on the managers as the tournament progresses. Most of the time, the standard of the music doesn’t suffer, but the managers suffer plenty, spending time second guess[…]

The Official Charts Company have launched their new portal, which (if you dig about a bit), offers week-by-week archived charts going back to 1960 with links to buy where such a thing is possible.
The centrepiece of the portal though is of course the[…]

Mark and Eli very kindly helped me with this entry in my It Took Seconds MP3 blogging project, a performance (and something of a bastardisation!) of John Cage’s most famous piece.[…]

Isabel’s South Africa team stormed through Group A, only dropping points once they’d qualified, and even then to the pop might of France. Chris R steered Korea Republic, to second place in Group B despite being early favourites. It’[…]

Now the massive popglut of the final group stages is over, we return to a more sedate pace, though the pressure is by no means off the managers. Big beasts are everywhere. There are no easy games at this level, and there are no second chances. This i[…]