One of the divisive things about disco was the apparent will to discofy anything and everything: no style, era, film theme or rock classic was safe. To haters it was proof of disco’s stultifying lack of creativity – why make something new[…]

The problem with the phrase “vocal gymnastics” – if used as a pan – is that plainly gymnastics are awesome. Their poise, control, grace, swiftness and fluidity – why wouldn’t these be things you’d aspire to i[…]

A song of many lives: we’re catching it at the end of its first, after a failed release in 1993 and a bounce around the charts. In three years time it’ll be changed for good, the soundtrack to Tony Blair’s first election win. From then on its c[…]

Looking back on the Summer of Ragga (and indeed the Winter Of Ragga), what strikes me is how cuddly its chart presence was. Dancehall was a controversial import: for a pop audience used to reggae as good vibes unity music, the arrival of young lions […]

The year that broke Popular! (nearly)
I gave every song a mark out of 10, now you can say which you’d have given 6 or more to, and reminisce about the year in general, post lists, discuss the merits of Back To The Planet, etc etc.

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For their Christmas tearjerker, Take That – now comfortably the country’s biggest band – deployed their secret weapon: Little Mark Owen, a singer so awkwardly earnest he strips a layer of skin off even the hokiest of material. And what he has t[…]

“Mr Blobby” is something of a first. We’ve met terrible records before – worse than this, in many cases – but their terribleness has been down to incompetence or cynicism (or in Jive Bunny’s case both). Blobby is d[…]

Pretty much since this song came out Meat Loaf, his fans and all around him have taken great rolling eyed pains to disavow the notion that “THAT” might be something a bit dirty. “It’s in the lyrics,” they sigh, “it[…]

With “Pray” I made the case for Take That being – visually at any rate – something new in British pop. But they could do tradition, too – “Relight My Fire”, a confident consolidation of their stardom, put down careful markers on two dif[…]

At this point, what differentiates the hip-hop that tops the UK charts from the stuff which peeks in lower down is legibility: not too much slang, metaphors spelled out, a flow any kid could follow. At a time when the public face of rap in Britain wa[…]