Feeding The 13,000 14 Jan 2016 Last night, in my commitment to not kowtow to the critics, I decided to watch 2014 flop comedy Let's Be Cops. It was, I believe, reviewed particularly harshly because it…
PWC14 Third-Place Match: Chile v Iran 3 Jul 2014 Welcome back, my friends, to the competition that is about to end. Rather behind schedule - not quite a month! - but when the football world cup has been this…
BLUE - "If You Come Back" 28 May 2016 The review of this record is in the S Club 7 - "Have You Ever" entry. This is a placeholder entry for its discussion thread and mark.
EMINEM - "The Real Slim Shady" 30 Mar 2015 Never has the “early, funny stuff” cliche held such weight in pop: we’re at a stage now where the new stars coming through are still heavyweights now, and the sclerotic…
The Freaky Trigger Movie Poll 2015 18 Dec 2015 "Hi I am Kevin Costner, star of Waterworld and The Postman, but in this instance from the poorly German Dubbed Version of Swing Vote, here to sell to you the…
CHRISTINA AGUILERA - "Beautiful" 27 Nov 2019 One of the notable things about “Beautiful” is that having written it, Linda Perry wanted to keep it for a proposed solo career – it was one of her “personal”…
BLUE - "Too Close" 2 Mar 2016 The differences between Blue’s “Too Close” and Next’s “Too Close” don’t seem profound – four years, a few production gewgaws, a mild shift in context between male US R&B group…
narnian origins: imagined islands in the great green sea of gloom 25 Jun 2014 Sometimes you’re reading a book for purely aimless diversion and it strikes you that someone -- some book-burrowing Arne Saknussemm -- was there before you. I can’t really claim that…
About the Author
Tom invented Freaky Trigger on a bus journey in the mid-90s. A page about what he's up to can be found here
28 Jun 2013
We are now firmly into the BRITPOP YEARS on Popular, oh yes, so it’s time to consider its musical legacy in the only language we truly understand, viz. a ticky-box poll. We have selected 32 bands who someone, somewhere, might possibly have once described as Britpop. Tick all the ones you like and by science […]
25 Jun 2018
No, you’ve not missed any matches. We’re putting this year’s games up as we get the entries in, and so it’s a big thankyou to the prompt Group E gaffers of Serbia, Brazil, Switzerland and Morocco. It’s a group of veteran pop managers in the dugout this match, but only two can progress beyond the […]
1 Mar 1981
My name is Tanya Headon. I hate music. All of it. And I’m bloody good at what I do. Which is why, when picketing a gig of The Feeling I managed to get over 90% of the fans to agree with me that they are just soft rock bobbins and their new album is just […]
1 Sep 2002
Spiders: creepy, crawly little critters which seem up to no good – hanging in the corner of your room, leaving webs around just to make a mess – definitely with their own agenda. Not the most obvious creature to base a film on. Yet Hollywood returns to the theme of spiders every ten years or […]
1 Jan 2019
Hello and happy new year! It is I, Cameron Mackintosh, the world’s most powerful and most 80s theatre producer. Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, CATS – I’m kind of a big deal guys!!!!! Thanks Cam! On the principle that every drunk idea at Pete’s flat is a good idea, today now presenting the […]
4 Sep 2009
#543, 15th December 1984, video “Do They Know It’s Christmas” is significant in one way, and insignificant in another. First, it raised a lot of awareness and money and established the pop single as an excellent mechanism for doing those things. This was significant. Gargantuan “supergroups” like this fell out of favour but charity records […]
23 Mar 2014
#773, 13th September 1997 “Whenever we played that live there would be rows of grown men crying. It was almost like these guys couldn’t cry when they needed to cry, but that song operated like a pressure valve for them and it was okay for them to cry at a big rock concert.” – Richard […]
5 May 2011
#667, 13th July 1991 Sixteen Listens For Sixteen Weeks: An Everything I Do Liveblog This song got to number one for 16 weeks, so I decided to play it 16 times in a row, writing as I went. Play 1: And we’re off. I’ve honestly hardly heard this in the last twenty years so I […]
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