Something came up on the Sweet comments thread that tied in with a point I’ve been looking for a space to talk about, viz. what the “glam” in “glam rock” can possibly mean. Glamour? Well, of a sort – Bolan was glam[…]

Sometimes you hear a flaw, a niggle in a track you love and it gradually sours you on the whole. I am worried that this might be happening to “Blockbuster”. For tens, perhaps hundreds, of plays, I had enjoyed this most wholehearted of tra[…]

This post will appear on the front page for a few days before sinking into its rightful place in the Popular Year Poll Archives.
Each song on Popular is given a mark out of 10. The year end polls are your opportunity to indicate which songs YOU would[…]

 
My feeling – hard to pin down – is that this record is something new under the chart sun: the birth of a different kind of novelty hit. The “novelty records” that have featured on Popular before now have been so mostly beca[…]

 
I’ve rarely liked listening to other people have fun and “My Ding-A-Ling” is no exception. You can’t deny they’re having it, though, except maybe the people who won’t sing, pursued by Chuck Berry with a slightly[…]

 
Singer-songwriters – today’s crop, certainly – tend to attempt universality through earnestness. Not so Gilbert O’Sullivan, whose remarkable “Alone Again Naturally” is determinedly low-key, the small thoughts of[…]

 
When I started Popular I wrote an introductory piece which nicked Raymond Williams’ ideas of emergent, dominant and residual trends, and argued that the charts were fascinating because they’re a quasi-artificial space in which all thre[…]

“How can I be sure, in a world that’s constantly changing?” – this is one of the great pop questions. Who’s for real? Who’s leading me on? Who isn’t going to take me down? Will I still love you tomorrow? Here’s a teenpop idol singing […]

“Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-YEAH!” – that’s the point of this single, really: the coda where Noddy stops saying weer crazee and simply goes (goez?) crazee-er, his voice finally catching up with the runaway train drumming that’s been g[…]

“You Wear It Well” reuses a few of the tricks that “Maggie May” employed so well – the eavesdropped lyrics, addressed to an older lover; the doubled drumbeats that keep the track moving – and Martin Quittenton&#82[…]