In grand pop tradition, the Spencer Davis Group’s follow-up to “Keep On Running” simply throws a few switches on that song. The lean R’n’B backbeat remains, and Steve Winwood’s vocal is just as assured and commited[…]

“Make It Easy On Yourself” was a selfish sulk from a big little boy, but this gloom is regal, a woe so deep and indulgent that it stops time and blacks the heavens out. Scott’s producers learn how to do Spector properly and their va[…]

Somewhere on my hard drive there’s a track which mashes this song into Girls Aloud’s “Sound Of The Underground”. Like a lot of bootlegs it works as an act of criticism as well as a song: “These Boots” is indeed the[…]

In an ideal universe the Beatles would be hugely generous to people wanting to sample their songs and deeply harsh on people wanting to cover them. The Overlanders obviously felt that this featherweight tale of chatting up an exchange student would b[…]

About the only thing in this compact, well-tailored song that I don’t like are the occasional whoops and cries in the background. Everything else is precisely right: what’s so impressive about this record is how finely balanced its elemen[…]

I give a mark out of 10 to each track. These polls are for you to select any tracks that you would have given 6 or more to (by whatever criteria you fancy!)

Number One Hits Of 1965: Which Would You Have Given 6 Or More?
Georgie Fame […]

As pop gets more explicit, it’s easy to become nostalgic about acts’ creative attempts to smuggle drugs and sex into their songs. But most of the time the references work the way they do in “Day Tripper” – she’s a […]

What sort of qualities must a song have for both Nick Cave and Boney M to cover it? What those two acts have in common is a fascination with piety, and a fondness for playing up a track’s seriousness so that it totters into kitsch*. “The […]

Jon Kutner’s 1000 Number Ones tells a story about “Get Off Of My Cloud”. The song was played on Juke Box Jury, and host David Jacobs complained that he couldn’t hear the words properly. Told of this, Keith Richards remarked th[…]

Phil Spector’s great insight was that the massive orchestrations of early 50s pop would compliment the teenage agonies of late 50s pop. Like most really good ideas it proved infectious, and so it was that a new hearthrob group like the Walker B[…]