The difference between a great pop-house record and a generically competent one can seem inscrutable. It’s not that the great ones are hard to detect – “Lola’s Theme” is like “Ride On Time” or “Dreamer”, the house beat smoothly […]

“Yeah!” casts a long shadow, and the truth is I’d mostly forgotten its follow-up, the intended lead single for the Confessions LP before Lil Jon muscled it out the way. So “Burn” was a pleasant rediscovery: it’s hardly the genre-bursting,[…]

I’m delighted we have some proper McFly fans in the comments crew – genuinely delighted, as I bounce off their chunky power-pop almost entirely and I would truly like to know what I’m missing. Maybe Tom Fletcher’s one of those songwriters[…]

Some songs are so glutted with outside context you can hardly hear them. Everything about “Everytime”, from its Justin-fallout meta-text to its Britney-as-martyr video, arrives coated in meaning, strands of significance encircling and cocooning t[…]

If the hits of 2004 have a theme, perhaps it’s men’s hurt feelings. Busted, Eamon, Mario, and more to come, like a damburst of male confusion, spite and woe. The year’s most enduring hit – in chart terms the most enduring hit of any year […]

“Answer? I hardly know ‘er!” – hard not to feel for Eamon having his hit both confirmed as a novelty so immediately and gazumped so effectively. Whether Frankee and Eamon were exes or strangers before their tracks came out hardly matters […]

“Swear Word Song Hits Number One” ran the BBC News Headline, and as summaries go, it does the job. By 2004 standards, 4 weeks at Number 1 felt endless: no denying “Fuck It” was big. But was it clever? We were only a decade on from Sagat’s c[…]

McFly were Busted friends and affiliates, and refreshed the earlier band’s ailing formula with sixties pixie dust – chanted do-do-doo harmonies and a sunshine disposition conjuring a spirit of Monkee business. But their retro aesthetic isn’[…]

We’ve got used to seeing R&B singers in command of their tracks – the beats and music arranging themselves around a star’s performance, discreetly ensuring the best possible setting for their voice. That’s especially been the case for[…]

“Land Of 1000 Dances” is not a census, it’s a promise – that as long as there is music and there are dancefloors, fresh dances will be found. The pleasure of so much pop lies in those new moves, the routines which attach themselves to[…]