For all that “Move Closer”‘s intro positions the song as a see-what-you’re-giving-up-boy move, on the surface there’s something surprisingly chaste about this record – maybe it’s Nelson’s high-register […]

A charity record is a bargain struck between the urgency of the situation and the weight of the subject: you want to get something done quickly, but it also has to be serious enough not to seem tasteless. As gesture turned into genre, instigators wou[…]

The two Phils team up to warn a vulnerable pal off a wicked woman, this intervention requiring a jeepful of mid-decade production flim-flam. “Easy Lover” is full of wannabe hooks – a guitar jab here, a keyboard twinkle there –[…]

*thankyou Mark.
Mike TD – a comments box regular – was ON THE PLINTH in London’s Trafalgar Square on the 17th. Here’s what happened.[…]

If “Relax” – as Mark Sinker put it during the subsequent discussion – was a non-DJs idea of a club record, “You Spin Me Round” is a DJ’s idea of a Frankie track. In fact, it sounds like Stock, Aitken and Wate[…]

Beware of what you wish for: Benny and Bjorn had spent much of ABBA’s imperial phase wanting to write a musical. They even put together a little taster, with their “Girl With The Golden Hair” trilogy at the back end of ABBA: The Alb[…]

Jim Diamond be advised: this is what a power ballad sounds like. Even lined up next to the moral weight of Band Aid it’s like someone’s gone and parked a Hummer in the British charts’ car park – something unbelievably enormou[…]

I give every record on Popular a mark out of 10 (and if you’re registered, so can you). Here’s where, by the magic of polling, we look at the year as a whole. Tick any and all records you’d personally give 6 or more out of 10 to, an[…]

“Do They Know It’s Christmas” is significant in one way, and insignificant in another. First, it raised a lot of awareness and money and established the pop single as an excellent mechanism for doing those things. This was significa[…]

On the 2nd October we’ll be having the Popular HALFWAY THERE party at the Horse Bar in Lambeth, during which we will be playing only No.1 hits.
We want to save the best for last, so the night will climax with The Best Number Ones (that we&#8217[…]