I used to hate this song. If you’re a reader who skips to the mark first you’ll have realised that I still don’t like it much, and you might want to check the bit in bold for the rationale. But I used to hate it. I identified it as […]

A song about wimpiness and non-intervention, whose subject seems to infect its delivery: close harmony as a coccoon, a kind of pretty disengagement from the beastly world. It’s a cover version of a record that’s only three years old but i[…]

In a sense the UK’s relationship with the Eurovision Song Contest mirrors its attitude to ‘Europe’ as political entity: a conflicted, pendulum-swing mess of amused contempt, cynical superiority, desperate attempts to play catch-up a[…]

The sort of song “Something Stupid” is depends very much on who’s singing it. Sung as a solo it’s a more bitter than sweet dispatch from that relationship relegation zone known as the ‘long game’, the limbos betwee[…]

“Release Me” spent 56 weeks on the UK charts, but its position in modern pop history is as a footnote – the single that kept The Beatles’ “Penny Lane”/”Strawberry Fields Forever” off number one, an inju[…]

Of course this isn’t her song (that would be “Downtown”). It’s Charlie Chaplin’s song – the royalties from it helped pay for the final, flop film it starred in – which may explain why it sets its cap so firml[…]

My feelings about the Monkees and their music are entirely entangled with my feelings about their TV show, and childhood TV in general. Pop music wasn’t a big deal in my house growing up, and I had no real idea of the Monkees as ‘a band&#[…]

I give marks out of 10 to every single on Popular. Here’s where you can say which entries you’d have given 6 or above to, and discuss the year in general in the comments. Here we have 1966, a year of many high marks including the project&[…]

The worst thing about “Green Green Grass of Home” is how close it comes to being OK: for two verses the band is tight and Tom is as close as Tom gets to ‘restrained’, and the record is shaping up nicely. Carry on for another v[…]

A couple of years ago, I was in a karaoke pub. “Good Vibrations” flashed up on the screen and a confident, 40-ish businessman stepped up to sing it. He was immediately nonplussed by the intro, and as the song continued it became obvious t[…]