It seems to me that in America there’s been a teensy bit of media revisionism around “Ice Ice Baby”. Unlike most revisionism though, the idea isn’t that the track was a lost classic. No, the point is to suggest it was extreme […]

The charts have always moonlighted as a marketing department for Hollywood but sometimes in the early 90s it seemed that was their primary role. A shrinking pop audience was no match for the commercial wallop of blockbuster cinema, so soundtrack hits[…]

“A Little Time” gives us the duet as short story. Dave Hemingway offers some sensitive-dude patter, Briana Corrigan busts it up and shows what’s really been going on. He’s smooth, she’s sharp; she’s sympathetic, he[…]

Take my breath away, leave me breathless: the general “Top Gun, only not as good” vibe of Days Of Thunder extended to this single. As stately, as vague, more soporific somehow. One new ingredient is religion – “such amazing gr[…]

“The Joker”‘s quick run at Number One is best known for one of the chart’s notorious injustices – it tied in sales with Deee-Lite’s “Groove Is In The Heart” and took the honours owing to a greater sales[…]

Timmy Mallett is one of those horribly British professional funsters who seem to find employment as DJs and TV hosts and then worm their way to the heart of the UK’s pop culture. Pop, and life, is for them a kind of cosmic struggle between the […]

You can trace the Ninjafication of Western pop culture back to the 70s martial arts boom and then specifically to Shogun, a mass market “Horrid Histories” for Japan. All its Ronins and Samurai and whatnot caught on to some degree but pube[…]

In the latest X-Factor series they did an Elton John theme week for the first time. Nobody sang “Sacrifice”, probably because it’s very glum and not terribly good. But the choices they did make brought out the unique qualities not s[…]

“World In Motion” is the ultimate 1990 record, but oddly the specific World Cup it reminds me of is 2002: living in London, broadly optimistic about England’s prospects, watching football in the morning then going out in the afterno[…]

From Yazoo onwards, collaborations between electronic musicians and soul singers have followed certain protocols. The singer is the star, the living presence on the right-hand side of that “featuring”: the producer is the mood-setter, the[…]