There is a rule in the FT Top 100 which means that Tom won’t write about a number one: clearly he is going to write about all of them in Popular. And he is not a million miles away from reaching Carl Douglas’s Kung Fu Fighting: and what&#[…]

I have a firm belief that this is the first song I ever heard.
Really.
As the weeest of wee nippers, I would happily burble along, or toddle precariously around the living room as my mother did no end of never-ending housework. To do these acts she […]

* The recent Take That revival has brought them up as a topic of conversation in my flat. My American flatmate saying to me that she was surprised the Take That had been quite so big over in the UK. I replied that Take That were like Wham!, N’S[…]

I didn’t like Dirrrrrrrty when I first heard it. Indeed I probably heard it about twenty times before I finally got it. And that is when I saw it. I remember exactly where this was. In a hotel room in Brussels, Belgium.
How many moments of your[…]

* Just Because.
OK. This list was derived almost two years ago now, and in our slow, thoughtful trawl through it, throws up odd anomalies such as this. Why Tears For Fears in 2004? Do we dare blame Donnie Darko?
Of course we bloody blame Donnie D[…]

Freakytrigger has been quiet over the last few days. This can pretty much be put down to the marriage of our main technical support and indispensable chief Admin bloke Alan Trewartha and his stunning bride Emma Hamilton. This means that the site will[…]

Nobody volunteered to write about this record, so it falls to yr humble pop editor. Which is a bit of a shame, because it turns out I don’t like it much. (more…)[…]

I think this song, by Carole King and Gerry Goffin, might be the best song ever written. It’s a beautiful melody, given superb life by producer Luther Dixon’s luscious string arrangement (over a cod-Latin beat which I like less, but Leibe[…]

YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH BOOOOOOOIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!
As soon as Flav appears after 6 seconds of, even for Anthrax, ridiculously fast heavy drumming, you knew something was up. This track takes the idea that Aerosmith and Run DMC (quite literally, in t[…]

aqua: lollipop (candyman)
There’s a device in film soundtrack music which may well go back to 19th-century opera — or actually operetta, something just round the corner of memory is whispering (bizet, it whispers, bizet) — where ban[…]