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BOYZ II MEN – "End Of The Road"
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The “End Of The Road” video presented its directors with a logistical dilemma: in a vocal group, what do the other members do when it’s some other dude’s turn to sing? The solution was a sometimes hilarious extended essay in m[…]

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TASMIN ARCHER – "Sleeping Satellite"
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One-hit wonders can catch time in a bottle like no other records, since there’s barely any career context to distract you from your memories. “Sleeping Satellite” feels achingly 90s, but its mix of busker’s strum, baggy backbe[…]

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THE SHAMEN – "Ebeneezer Goode"
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Has an album ever spawned a weirder set of singles than Boss Drum? You got hands-in-the-air club confectionery (“LSI”), moody tribalism (“Boss Drum”), a twenty-minute spoken word piece by Terence McKenna – honestly, &#82[…]

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SNAP – "Rhythm Is A Dancer"
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If you were to make a Eurodance drinking game, “Rhythm Is A Dancer” would have you under the table in one track. There’s Turbo B making a ninny of himself, of course, but also the wordless chanting, the house piano break, the echoed[…]

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JIMMY NAIL – "Ain't No Doubt"
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“Ain’t No Doubt” plants its emotional flag in territories claimed and mapped by Phil Collins – that master of gangrenous wrath and bitterness lurking below blokery’s rumpled jacket. It’s break-up pop of the shabbie[…]

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ERASURE – ABBA-Esque EP
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I’ve always found it hard to get a handle on Erasure. I end up filing them in the same headspace as ELO: remarkably successful, remarkably long-lived pop craftsmen who are generally – as here – enjoyable but only very rarely hit any[…]

Naughty, Naughty, Very Naughty (An Apology)
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Hello everyone – a six-week hiatus is no kind of way to treat a blog, let alone one with such a strong and interesting community as Popular. There are plenty of factors here – family illness, a summer of dramatic and distracting events, c[…]

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KWS – "Please Don't Go"/"Game Boy"
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It’s hard to muster much love for “Please Don’t Go” – a barely adequate trot through a good song. “Begging” has never sounded so thoroughly rote. It’s a good example, though, of one of the nineties leas[…]

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RIGHT SAID FRED – "Deeply Dippy"
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Right Said Fred were a rum proposition – solid light entertainment values in leather pants, with the mildest dash of sauce added. Jobbing musicians, no great shakes as singers but likeable chaps, so people gave them the benefit of the doubt and[…]

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SHAKESPEARS SISTER – "Stay"
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What people remember about “Stay” are its extremes – the teetering, cracking soprano of Marcella Detroit’s lead vocal, and Siobhan Fahey’s growled and throaty intervention on the bridge. The deliberate contrast laid the […]

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Latest comments on Popular

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  2. Yeah but. It was of it’s time, we loved it at the time, and perhaps most key of all, they’ve…

  3. Thankfully one of the quite-a-few records of 20+ years ago that I have yet to hear on any of the…

  4. I doubt Noel was stockpiling the "best" songs for his solo career, the last two albums had a record low…