I need to stop listening to this damn album, so I’m writing in this ever expanding box on the internet, the geography of the mind map I find myself  in. Just in the hope that I can move on – just a little – to the next grid reference. I feel s[…]

This post is my contribution to Harkive – an opt-in mass ethnographic record of a day in the lives of music fans worldwide. (A bit like Nick Southall’s Music Listening Day from the last couple of years). The post will be updated occasiona[…]

Commenter Nixon, on another thread, asked this: “we’re now past the 40-year mark, long enough for trends to emerge… do you think that the list of UK number ones, taken as a weird at-a-glance sweep of British music history, very broadly […]

Young Avengers 2, by Jamie McKelvie and Kieron Gillen (post will contain SPOILERS)
Let’s think about pop and parents for a moment.
Pop from the 50s on may have been about the generation gap, but it was rarely about the generation gap. Parents showe[…]

1. Take a large number of individual tracks.
2. Put the first 64 into a playlist.
3. Shuffle.
4. Play (no skipping allowed).
5. After two tracks, decide – as quickly as you can – which of the two you want to hear again.
6. Delete the othe[…]

I asked a question on Twitter last night – what songs have actually scared you? – and it got a whole bunch of interesting replies.
So here they are. I haven’t gone through hunting YouTube/Spotify links because I was too lazy terrifi[…]

(While I am in slow recovery from virus mode, here’s an article from the Tumblr vaults.)

I have been listening to the Village People’s discography recently. Village People albums may not have seemed especially good value for money, because t[…]

STEPS
WAS
ROBBED
(more…)[…]

When Was The X-Factor’s Imperial Phase?
I got bored with the recent series of the X-Factor, and I was not alone: the ratings this year have crashed by a few million. The post-mortems are beginning: the editor of the Radio Times wasted no time i[…]

X-Factor 2012 Live Shows, Week 3
“Club Classics” week – but what could this mean, in the land of the X-Factor? If you guessed maximum rave alert, go to the back of the class. If, however, you guessed ballads and acoustic guitars, yo[…]