In a piece I wrote last year for Zero Books’ The Resistible Demise Of Michael Jackson, I argued that the sense of self-conscious scale and event in 80s music came partly as an after-effect of Thriller’s colossal sales, which suggested an […]

I’m beginning to realise quite how bad I was at hearing music when I was 14. My reaction to “La Bamba” back in 1987 was to sulk, roll my eyes and dismiss it as mere necrophilia. Obviously this was missing the point that not all cove[…]

With The Immaculate Collection, Madonna was able to remix and edit her history as well as her songs, jumping triumphantly from the True Blue singles to the Like A Prayer ones, from superstar consolidation to next-level persona building. She took the […]

Neil Tennant does not have a weak voice but it is a thin one, with a limited range, and a lot of the Pet Shop Boys’ effectiveness comes from how they work with and around that. It means, for example, they can’t often surrender to euphoria like th[…]

Sometimes there is no gulf wider than the one between the 12 and the 13 year old boy. I remember meeting up with a friend – 18 months or so younger – in the school holidays and him absolutely bouncing with delight over this record, which […]

“I wanna dance with somebody who loves me”: the lyrics on this record suggest vulnerability, but who are they kidding? It’s pure titanium, stadium-ready dance music backing a singer on juggernaut form. I’ve talked a lot in the[…]

Listening to this song you realise that at some point the idea that a rock record should sound like a bunch of people in the same place playing the same music at the same time was completely abandoned by record producers. Not in the name of experimen[…]

Madonna’s appropriation move into Latin pop is a tightrope walk between corny and respectful: on the one hand an arrangement which packs in every Hispanic signifier bar a finishing “Ole!”, on the other a performance that has far more authority,[…]