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The cod-philosophical question at the centre of pop fandom is this: is pop a genre or a state? Not all records designed to be ‘great pop’ – in the sense of being good for the feet, the heart and the bank balance – […]

For a while – maybe even a week – after New Year’s, I could still glance at the top of newspapers and feel a quiet, thrilling jolt at the date. Of course I hadn’t thought anything would change when the year did, but even so there was briefly […]

If you want to know about pop music, ask a pop star. Jyoti Mishra, in his guise as a regular poster on uk.music.alternative, is friendly, intelligent, enthusiastic and a pop savant of considerable taste. Jyoti Mishra, in his guise as White Town, is a[…]

So what happened in the 1990s? Trying to put a lassoo round a decade is difficult and dumb, and never more so than now, when all the critics seem to be talking about ‘fragmentation’. The best way to read ten years’ worth of entrails[…]

Low’s Christmas tree is a simple one, with eight plain wooden baubles. The band write four tracks themselves, offer interpretations of two carols and crooners’ favourite “Blue Christmas”, and nobody’s bothered to take credit for “Taking D[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
Why? Because I still believe in the pop single as a public event, and “Common People” was on every station, every channel, every show in Summer 1995, and because it was wonderful each time you[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles OF The 90s
Between 1992 and 1994, Disco Inferno put out probably the most remarkable and innovative string of singles since Pere Ubu’s initial 1975 releases, singles which in ten or fifteen years’ time wi[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
With this kind of kick-off, you have to ask why the 90s weren’t better. The striated rills of drum that open “Soon” sound like God cracking his knuckles: ten seconds later the wavefront o[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
This record taught me two things, the most important things I learned this decade. First of all it taught me about repetition and how it could work to structure a song, and then go beyond structure to beco[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles of the 90s
It’s impossible to imagine any other band even attempting something like this. Nobody else, I think, has the right combination: a cabaret singer’s panache, an ear for pop hooks, a dramatist&#82[…]