What’s up and down in my personal pop pantheon
UP: Marit Larsen! Ha ha laugh at rubbish Tom who didn’t hear “Don’t Save Me” the week it was in the Stylus jukebox, and then didn’t hear it for weeks and weeks and MON[…]

Over on our sister site, Poptimists, our exploration of the history of pop via NOW albums has reached late 2003, and the landmark represented by ahead-of-his-time capped balladeer Gary Jules and his cover of “Mad World”. (Younger readers […]

The first time I played this I got the sample wrong – a thrill of shocked recognition as I heard the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” intro, run crudely under the beat. Great choice, I thought – Brian Wilson&#8217[…]

I have heard his new single (“Summertime”), four times in the last two weeks. Once in the c ar back from a family renuion, once when swimming, and twice while eating. When I reviewed the album for Stylus a couple of months ago, I liked it[…]

This really is the last NYLPM post.
If you’ve enjoyed NYLPM, you might also enjoy:
– the NYLPM archives, which will be staying up.
– the rest of Freaky Trigger, which will sail on unaffected, though with fewer overall hits most like[…]

This is the last NYLPM post*.
After five and a half years, 3,500 posts and something like forty contributors I’m pulling the plug on this blog. Once upon a time it was the best music blog in the world, more recently it was just something nice t[…]

Oddly enough I’m feeling happier about music, and writing about music, than I have for a couple of years. 2006 is going to be a treat: I want to get there quickly, not look back.
So I got a machine to look back for me. I was a late iPod adopter[…]

There are lots of warning signs in pop: many of them can be easily paraphrased as “You Are Now Leaving Pop”. Getting in orchestras, concept albums, sacking the entire band*. But certainly when you find out that your favourite band has mad[…]

Frank Kogan’s Real Punks Don’t Wear Black is a devastatingly good book. The first evening I read it I found that it shook me up a lot – I recognised the ideals and ideas Frank was chasing, even if I couldn’t have articulated t[…]

Christmas Ain’t Christmas, New Year Ain’t New Year, Without The One You Love – heartbreak Christmas soul, upped here because of snarl-ups on the Poptimists Advent Calendar.[…]