Revelations, even small ones, hit you unexpectedly. Mine comes about halfway through ‘Spooked’, the third track on Layo & Bushwacka’s Low Life, when, having explored some rather tasty crunchy electronic sounds, punishing bass a[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
The saddest songs are often the simplest songs. “Abba On The Jukebox” is seven minutes long and feels like a miniature, a Zen sketch of heartbreak. A short, high-toned guitar phrase over tick-t[…]

A triple album box set, three hours long, containing 69 songs, covering almost as many genres – well, it has to be crap, hasn’t it? Surely it must betray signs of Prince-like lack of quality control? Amazingly, it doesn’t. The Magnetic […]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
“I don’t know where this one came from” mutters the run-out voice. Not so: “Unfinished Sympathy” may have swanked into the charts and had classic status handed to it on the sp[…]

Average: 1.95 Controversy: 1.31
AT: A misguided cover, but not without a certain logic to it along the drunk lady does karaoke lines. 3
KG: Back to film soundtracks with you Madam. 3
GE: Better versions probably performed in pubs every day of the yea[…]

Average: 2.33 Controversy: 2.71
KA: They were doing so well until stooping to suckle from the teat of MOR AOR rubbish. 8
GE: A band like this in every town – why them?? 4
NW: And people thought the Manics sounded hamfisted. 2
TE: The Stereophon[…]

Average: 2.36 Controversy: 2.22
NW: The kind of cheesy dance pop I’d imagined died in the early 90s. 7
KG: As nothing to the majesty of previous offerings. Quite annoying they’ve taken this route. 3
PB: If I was five this would be great. […]

Average: 2.38 Controversy: 0.74
FS: After all I heard about her, this was massively underwhelming. 3
JM: Acid jazz is soooooo 1994. 3
KG: Has a lovely voice, sadly the song is bollocks. 3
AT: Jools Holland’s wet dream. 1[…]

Average: 2.58 Controversy: 2.81
NW: Whitney Houston in single that doesn’t completely suck shocker! It’s probably due to her choice of collaborators this time round, but Whitney manages to reign in the melodramatics. The dying Yeti vocal […]

Average: 2.75 Controversy: 3.37
KG: Sounds really old-fashioned – poor Channel 4 documentary lyrics. 2
PB: The social commentary is ten years out of date. Literally in-credible. 0
TE: What if the Stereophonics discovered synthpop? Mercy! 0
JM: […]