Five weeks of “Swing The Mood” and six of “Ride On Time” were more than enough for Jive Bunny to get a follow-up into the shops, the charts, and back to number one: the creature was now a phenomenon. As one of the commenters o[…]

The controversy around “Ride On Time” now feels like a mixture of typical sharp practise and unusual naivety. Details are murky, but it seems production team Black Box had obtained sample clearance for Loleatta Holloway’s “Lov[…]

Where does one even begin?
How about this: back at the start of the “late 80s phase” of Popular I wrote about how the charts became a free-for-all between radically different visions of what pop was for: a futurist, bricolage-driven club […]

A theme we’ll come back to relentlessly when we reach the 00s: people assume reality pop talent shows are (or rather, ought to be) about talent, when in fact they’re about narrative. The records sell initially because we’ve accompan[…]

What’s remarkable about “Back To Life” is its self-sufficiency: surrounded by records so very eager to please, this is a track which stands out for its restraint. It’s become a ‘classic’ almost to the degree &#8220[…]

Digging into the earlier versions of “Sealed With A Kiss”, I discovered two things. First that I really liked the song, second that it’s stretchy enough for nobody to have quite nailed a definitive take on it. It works just as well […]

I wrote before that The Crowd’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” became “a tiny part of a disaster’s wider story, and left no mark on pop’s”. The same holds for “Ferry Cross The Mersey”, but a thou[…]

“Hand On Your Heart” lands in similar emotional territory to “Too Many Broken Hearts” – this is it, do you love me or not? But while musically it’s just as cheap the Kylie track has ten times the Jason song’s[…]

Just a quick note this to let you know that away from his life as Popular comment box raconteur Waldo (aka Jimmy The Swede, among others) has written a novel!
It’s called Pick Your Own Strawberries, and it’s about a man who founds an unco[…]

“Eternal Flame” is absurdly top-heavy, all the treble in the strings and Susanna Hoffs’ voice teetering like a gyroscope on a single looping point of rhythm. As someone on Twitter said, the triangle on this track is something you ca[…]