I’m suffering from pop fatigue, readers, so Popular is off on its Christmas break, and will return after Xmas if I feel inspired, or in January otherwise. Sorry to not put 1986 to bed – it’s proved unexpectedly gruelling! You’[…]

Alas, to wake up you must first fall asleep, and Boris Gardiner’s lovers’ rock slowie veers awful close to lullaby. The tune is sweet, the keyboard lands halfway between bounce and caress, and there’s a gentleness and humility in hi[…]

In a market economy, value is not intrinsic – it’s determined by the extent to which other people desire a thing you possess. “The Lady In Red” captures this at the romantic level – Chris De Burgh’s realisation of the value of a woman occ[…]

“Papa Don’t Preach” is a fantastic record. Not because it’s a star getting serious, or because it raises issues, or because it ‘tackles’ anything in particular. It’s not a newspaper column. What it does is ta[…]

Tempting to give this one the deep consideration G. Michael did when writing it, i.e. none at all. A final Wham! single was required, yes, but “Edge Of Heaven” doesn’t round them off in any particularly satisfying way. Instead it ra[…]

Every year has its flukes but this is one of the more inexplicable – unknowns before and since, amiable psych revivalists by the look of their discography, scoring a massive international hit with this unexceptional cover. Everyone I knew hated it,[…]

I wouldn’t say I was a ever a fan of “Agadoo”. But I danced to it – like “The Birdie Song” and Russ Abbot’s “Atmosphere” it was played at school discos when I was 12 or 13, to entertain the segmen[…]

The lyrics to “Rock Me Amadeus” cast Wolfgang M as casanova and punker, not that 95% of its English-speaking audience cared. We just got off on the bug-eyed spit-shower of consonants and the sudden detours into cod-Wagnerian backing vox. […]

At first brush “A Different Corner” sounds too diffuse and tentative to count for much – the kind of single that gets to #1 when its maker is a big enough star that anything will. But this is misleading – “Corner” […]

I was absolutely forbidden from watching the first series of The Young Ones, in 1982. I relied on awed playground rumour of its violence and uproar. I was a little scared of it. Second time around, in 1984, I could watch it but not in the living room[…]