By 2005 I’d been a music blogger for 5 years: it seemed like long enough, so I shut down New York London Paris Munich – Freaky Trigger continued as a generalist site with some pop music elements. Maybe at the back of my mind was a sense t[…]

Alongside 2000, this is the year with the most longlist picks – a real bruiser. In the wider world of music discourse, 2004 is the year Kelefa Sanneh publishes “The Rap Against Rockism”, corralling some of the sprawled-out conversat[…]

2003 was a big year personally – I got married! – and in terms of writing – I started Popular! – and at least at this point the new focus on pop’s past didn’t push me too far off the present. As ever, I’m wor[…]

My #FearOfMu21c challenge selection posts continue with 2002! This was a feverish high point of my engagement with current music, the first year in which I had internet speeds fast enough to make large-scale MP3 acquisition a reality AND had an offic[…]

Continuing an attempt to work out my favourite 50 21st Century singles for a music challenge. As before, what I’m doing is trying to reduce my longlist (>200 tracks) to a more manageable shortlist. It’s proving a challenge.

JAY-Z &#[…]

This Autumn I’m taking part in Arron Wright’s #FearOfMu21c challenge – a bunch of people selecting and listing their 50 favourite singles of the 21st Century, one a day.

It’s the sequel to last year’s #Uncool50 challenge (see below),[…]

Just a bit of CROSS PROMOTION with the Peoples Pop part of the site, where we’ve launched a new! feature – The LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY TRACKS!

It’s a music discovery game. You listen to a themed 12-song playlist each week and pic[…]

ABBA Voyage, The ABBA Arena

In Jim Steinmeyer’s fine history of stage magic, Hiding The Elephant, he goes into detail on the history of Pepper’s Ghost, the illusion that captivated Victorian London and revolutionised the tricknology of magic p[…]

TALK TALK – Laughing Stock (1991)

Written as a “Designated Champion” essay for the Best Album Of The 90s tournament on Twitter.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. It’s 1991 and there’s this band, minor in their gen[…]

Writing this proved to be an extremely slow process for all sorts of tedious reasons, but here are my notes on DAY 3 of the 2021 poll. Now long since completed but you can listen along on YouTube here – some true greats in this stretch.

 
Day[…]