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CRAZY FROG – “Axel F”
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Popular: #1012, 4th June 2005
— 25 April 2025 Tom 23 comments

In 2004 I took on the worst project of my professional life; worst in the sense that it was miserable and time-consuming and also in the sense that I did it very badly. A certain mobile phone company wanted to know what their rivals were doing online[…]

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OASIS – “Lyla”
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Popular: #1011, 28th May 2005
— 14 April 2025 Tom 24 comments

The long twilight of Oasis is reaching its end, at least in Popular terms. The 00s took them from the kings of English rock to a drab fixture and finally a running joke, bigmouths promising a return to form which never comes. This is almost the last […]

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Omargeddon #54: Sworn Virgins
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— 17 Jun 2025 Bec Comment

As much as this idea totally whips, sadly, Sworn Virgins isn’t a concept album centred around the priestesses of Vesta, although it did inspire me to draft a fantasy longlist of musicians I’d like to see approach such a project.* As the very firs[…]

About Popular

I'm writing about every UK number one single, in order. It's taken a while, it'll take a while longer. Wander around in the archives, or join in with the marvellous bunch of commenters we've managed to attract - new voices always very welcome!

Popular is funded by the generosity of my Patreon patrons. They get early posts, exclusive material, and more. You could be one of them! Index of reviews and scores so far Popular FAQ

Latest comments on Popular

  1. There's a 2005 VW campervan on my street with Lyla written on the side. 60s nostalgia made unfussy and functional…

  2. Yeah but. It was of it’s time, we loved it at the time, and perhaps most key of all, they’ve…

Recently on Popular
AKON – “Lonely”

4 April 2025

This is going to be one of those annoying reviews which takes the billion-view signature hit of a highly successful artist and picks away at production choices which – objectively! – have been extremely successful. “Lonely” is not a o[…]

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TONY CHRISTIE ‘ft’ PETER KAY – “Is This The Way To Amarillo?”

31 July 2024

The success of Elvis’ reissues – a promotional gimmick which actually managed to hack the charts – made a strong case that the new pop of 2005 simply wasn’t able to capture the wider public imagination. This record makes it inarguable[…]

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McFLY – “All About You”/”You’ve Got A Friend”

12 July 2024

McFly’s biggest hit, crossing the 500k sales barrier partly because it was the official Comic Relief single. The Carole King cover is doing most of the hard work on that front, with a video involving the lads helping out in Uganda, and the song sto[…]

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Featured on Popular
THE KINKS – "You Really Got Me"

16 January 2005

The sound of the atom splitting. Break open the basic unit of pop music, the hook, and we discover a mess of gimmickry, noises and ideas so primeval you can often barely describe them, let alone hum one. Find one strong enough and you can top the cha[…]

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OASIS – "The Hindu Times"

12 February 2017

The biggest band in Britain grinds on, and as usual when an Oasis single toils its way by, their own past is the best stick to beat them with. In 1994, Oasis’ approach – putting great chunks of rock’s past in a smelter and using noi[…]

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THE BOOMTOWN RATS – "Rat Trap"

13 August 2008

“Rat Trap” is billed – in the Guinness Book Of British Hit Singles, no less – as the first punk No.1. I couldn’t recall it – my memories of the Rats themselves were vague; Geldof I knew for later good works. So I a[…]

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THE VERVE – "The Drugs Don't Work"

23 March 2014

“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 con[…]

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JJ BARRIE – "No Charge"

2 May 2008

I was aware of this song long before I heard it – as a young boy it was quoted at me by my Dad should I ever object to tidying my room. Since my room was rarely tidy, I became very familiar with the central notion of “No Charge”. […]

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SINEAD O'CONNOR – "Nothing Compares 2 U"

29 October 2010

Sinead O’Connor is one of the finest song interpreters not just because she thinks hard about the material and the feelings locked in it, but because she’s so good at placing songs into a situation. A great example of this is her version […]

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THE TROGGS – "With A Girl Like You"

29 December 2005

In Incredible Hulk comics there’s often a scene where the ’emerald man-beast’, cast out from human society, finds something of fragile beauty – a flower, maybe, or a baby deer – which he then accidentally crushes with hi[…]

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BRYAN ADAMS – "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You"

5 May 2011

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 twen[…]

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EMINEM – "The Real Slim Shady"

30 March 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 Marshall Mathers of the mid-10s haunts this swaggering, sparkling kid. But […]

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KYLIE MINOGUE – "Can't Get You Out Of My Head"

6 April 2016

Between its two writers and its performer, “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” is the sound of over seven decades’ pop experience. It’s better heard as distillation than prediction. Maybe its bright, brisk pop-dance sensibility c[…]

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ALL SAINTS – "Never Ever"

13 April 2014

You’re in the car with the radio on and no expectations, and suddenly you hear it: a song that stops everything around it, breaking through the playlist and announcing itself as a hit. More than a hit, a classic, a song you’ll be hearing for the […]

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ELTON JOHN – "Candle In The Wind '97" / "Something About The Way You Look Tonight"

27 March 2014

Every Popular entry starts with the same question: why this record? This time it’s especially loud. “Candle In The Wind ‘97” is the highest-selling single of all time in the UK, almost 2 million clear of its nearest competitor. This is as big[…]

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