Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
Britpop was a confidence trick. ‘Confidence’ because that’s what the music ran on, a massive surge of aggressive self-belief that catapulted it into the charts. Oasis especially tapped it[…]

Writing about “So Hard”, I suggested that the story of the Pet Shop Boys in the 90s has been one of decline management, which is of course a terribly English story, much more so than the stories of wealth and despair they used to tell. Th[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
You don’t come to the Pet Shop Boys for bite, but still: this sinks its teeth deeper than any other song the band has written. The scenario: a man is angry with his girlfriend. But for the first vers[…]

Death In Vegas – The Contino Sessions
It begins with a tremulously strummed guitar. It ends with a supercharged riff. There are many guitars throughout the songs in between: echoing, shimmering, feedback guitar; gently twanging feelgood guitar;[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
Whatever did pop do before sampling? The history of recordmaking is the history of an increasingly efficient process, its end result maximum excitement for minimum effort. So you had records which were gen[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
Pop sociology cliche of the decade has to be the one about how urban black kids got rich on the rawness and lyrical violence of gangsta rap because suburban white kids got off on the rawness et cetera, tut[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
“…Haven’t you heard? My name rhymes with Elvis.” So this Cocker-worded romp wins its place for the opening lines alone. What about the rest – well, where to begin? Barry Adams[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
There are certain songs I’ve been dreading writing about, and this is one of them, because there are certain songs which turn me back into a slightly confused fifteen-year-old writing lyrics out on h[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
Every decade finds its mood music, records where the design aesthetic is paramount, records whose use-value lies in the invocation of a particular lifestyle and outlook. The easiest way to locate this musi[…]

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[…]