Music Of The Millennium, Channel 4, 13th November 1999
Bob Geldof was unhappy. So was Courtney Pine, so was Miranda Sawyer. Courtney, plumply likeable in a snug hat, looked politely bemused. Miranda looked annoyed and uneasy, but Bob’s face was[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles of the 90s
“Whenever I get dressed up, I feel / Like an ex-con trying to make good” Not coincidentally, the most ingratiating thing Bill Callahan’s ever done, and the most awkward. “Ex-Con&#82[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles of the 90s
Writing about the moment that makes “Skinteeth” so transcendent feels like giving away a secret, but then again it’s hardly as if any of you are going to hear it off your own bat. Yes, it[…]

What Becomes of The Broken Hearted?
Glamour is a pop critic’s fatal weakness. A bit of spangle and the dreariest band gets to count the raves on a hundred adoring hands, even if their records are then roundly ignored. Of course there’s no[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles of the 90s
Of course it would take this supremely thoughtful pop group to realise the naive potential of handbag house and then alchemise it into a single which is both their and handbag’s most ravishing five m[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles of the 90s
The only thing I ever read about Jo was that she was 18 and lived in Brixton. I’ve made half-hearted enquiries since but to be honest I like her anonymous and unheralded: if I found out she ended up […]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles of the 90s
Some of Freaky Trigger‘s younger readers may be disturbed to learn that the Prodigy, those tough-minded harbingers of a glorious urban-electronic future where we all quote Goering and learn how to sn[…]

The E Brothers Guide To Jukebox Etiquette 
As Dr Johnson once put it :”When a man is tired of jukeboxes, he is tired of Life by Simply Red”. Or was that Don Johnson? Whichever, his sage words merely underscore the quite tectonic importance of th[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles of the 90s
It was around the turn of the 90s that people started to take the Pet Shop Boys seriously. Acceptance and praise increased their range and life expectancy, but it trashed their trump card: this was a band […]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
If you remember one thing from my review, let it be this: DO NOT purchase the Speedy J album which has some impostor unremixed version of “Patterns” on, it is wretched. Having heard it I can of[…]