Science-fiction songs are rare visitors to the mundane world of Earth’s pop charts, and a song that goes beyond sci-fi into a genuinely apocalyptic future vision – a kind of folk-rock Olaf Stapledon! – is more unusual still. Everyth[…]

1969 birthed two of the darker elements of the Stones legend – Brian Jones’ death and Altamont – but as a chart-topping hit “Honky Tonk Women” interrupts a run of strange, doom-laden records[…]

My stock line on songs and adverts is “so what?” A song you like appears in a commercial? Who cares? It doesn’t harm the song, and if it harms your relationship with the song, maybe it wasn’t that strong anyway. Association wi[…]

The Beatles’ last number one is a rum do. Knocked out quickly with half the band absent it’s a postcard from Lennon and Ono’s ’68-’69 peace tour, turning on the repeated chorus suggestion that “the way things are g[…]

 
I’m not a huge fan of late 60s bubblegum in general – though I respect it as a root for a lot of stuff I do love – and “Dizzy” is a puny specimen at any rate. A rewrite of Roe’s earlier (and cuter) “Sweet […]

 
“The Beatles as nature intended”, according to the single’s ad copy. It’s familiar enough now, this back-to-the-roots move: something of a cliche even, in the way bands like Oasis invariably trail their latest album by prom[…]

“Get up in the morning slaving for bread Sir”
The intro to “Israelites” – two chords, and Dekker’s naked voice – is one of the most striking in 60s pop. Taken slower than the rest of the verses it’s a […]

Some of my favourite soul performances go to the ragged-throated extremes of the style – Lorraine Ellison’s apocalyptic “Stay With Me”, for instance. But more of them are like “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”, wh[…]

 
In an NME interview, John Peel once named this record as his personal worst of all time. The man heard a really very large number of bad records so this claim made quite an impression on me. And it’s easy to imagine the young Peel, earnest[…]

Amen Corner flap dangerously on the boundary between dreamy and drippy, and then tip right over thanks to the washed out vocals of Andy Fairweather-Low, whose voice is a pale and smeary thing, a wimpy croak that leeches any real delight out of the so[…]