At the center of FT’s 2002 round-ups is a rundown of the 101 tracks I heard this year that I want you to hear too — frivolously arranged in a Chart Countdown! Only problem was — I couldn’t settle on 101. Here are the tracks wh[…]

“Backwoods”
I went out to the hazel wood
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread- Yeats, ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’

This shouldn’t take long.
Records of the Year, that woul[…]

The Roots’ Sacrifice
Previously this Philadelphia Hip Hop crew claimed ‘Things fall apart,’ but with the right attitude the comeback can be miraculous. And it is. Phrenology – the most multi-layered title since “Muse Sic[…]

Tangents on pop books: I agree that Gary Mulholland’s book looks like a waste of time and money but the problem seems to be that he’s got nothing much to say about any of the records he selects, not that they’re obvious choices (tho[…]

Fred’s doing his singles too – I’d better get a move on![…]

A List Of Forty Movies of 2002 placed in some sort of order by Pete Baran
Any year end list should come with a disclaimer, and therefore I am going to start with the most obvious disclaimer that there is. This is a top forty of the films that were r[…]

Another day, another poll – this one confirming what all wedding DJs know deep in their bones. There’s not a bad song in the Top 10. And courtesy of Team Groke here’s an exclusive chart of our very own – key acts of ’02 […]

That link was c/o Submeat, which is also running its own best singles of 2002 list. Singles are great! We like singles![…]

The Top 212 Singles of 2002, according to Popjustice at any rate. We thought of a joke for PJ’s advent calendar but it got so absurdly long that we’ll be running it as the Freaky Trigger Christmas Joke separately and meanwhile try and thi[…]

NAS – “Made You Look”
One of Nas’ most famous tracks finds him rapping from a gun’s point of view; here that idea gets turned into music. A shot is fired – and the beat is a bullet trail, slowed down John Woo style[…]