The very definition of a tune your milkman could whistle, this delivers its melodic payload right upfront and then just hangs around for a bit, tapping its toes and honking its horns until the party wanders off somewhere else. The Ingredient X that &[…]

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I give each song on Popular a mark out of 10. In this poll, you should pick any YOU would have given 6 or more to from the 1973 number ones. As many as you like!

Which of these Number One[…]

I had thought I might have to write about it in that tiny sliver of summer we had this year, but turns out I come to it at the end of September – a proper September, as Robin Carmody put it on his blog: crispness in the air, conkers on the ground a[…]

Glitter halves the pace for what by his standards is a ballad. Surprisingly it’s still effective, less rabble-rousing but more anthemic – assuming you can turn off your hindsight detectors long enough to get past “So here we are a[…]

Superior metaphysical wetness from Cassidy – on “Daydreamer” his thin voice sounds utterly wrung-out, a flopping ineffectual adenoidal rag of a thing. It would be intolerable except that it suits the song so well. Effective touches abound – t[…]

How to evaluate a theme tune from a TV programme I’ve never seen? All I have is the name and this track. I asked my Dad if he remembered a show called Van Der Valk, which would have been popular around when I was born. “Yes!” I felt hopeful. �[…]

Again Wizzard offer maximalism pushed to the point of grotesquerie, a sprawling rock’n’roll pastiche that keeps flinging hooks at us, simply not knowing when to stop. This time though the effect is more touching, as “Angel Fingers” is a love […]

Once a teen idol has reached the peak phase of his career, the question becomes – how to stay there? Building a profile is no longer so important – any given single release has a good chance of topping the charts, or close to it, so it’s a matt[…]

A question I’m honestly unsure of the answer to: if Michael Jackson had been found guilty of child molestation, what would have happened to his songs? Would “Billie Jean” or “Beat It” have emptied party dancefloors? Would “Wanna Be Starti[…]

Suppose one wanted to give “Welcome Home” a low mark – what actual grounds would one have for saying it’s a bad record? It’s a catchy, memorable, uptempo song, delivered in a friendly and honest way. It’s sentiment[…]