“Yellow River” has a story if you’re looking – man coming home after a war – but content is supremely irrelevant next to the song’s urgent march-time bounce. What I like most about it, beyond its more-than-servicea[…]

 
It wasn’t the first football record by a long way, but “Back Home” ticks all the genre’s traditional boxes. Rousing tune graspable by fans between 8 and 80 – yes. Heavy involvement by actual players – yes. Dou[…]

Apparently much loved by the British public in whatever form it makes the charts, but this is a case where the original is best. Later versions play the song as a knees-up, but Greenbaum goes deeper and finds the spiritual connection between revival […]

 
It was pointed out to me in the pub last week that this record is actually the best of Ireland’s Eurovision winners, a claim with horrible implications that may sadly be correct. It also shows off two of the Song Contest’s typical idi[…]

The most celebrated track on the biggest-selling album of the 1970s in Britain, “Bridge Over Troubled Water” has become a marbled standard and it’s hard to step back from that and listen to the thing. Maybe it’s useful to leav[…]

 
Nelson Riddle’s arrangement for “Wand’rin Star” harks back a good twenty or thirty years, to the days of the singing cowboys and particularly acts like Sons Of The Pioneers, whose massed male backing voices this song remind[…]

American bubblegum pop was often like garage rock’s bouncy little brother: lacking the moodiness and sex appeal, but you could see the shared DNA. British bubblegum was born out of the same talent glut of session musicians and songwriters and s[…]

Back in the Summer of 69. And the Spring, Autumn and other bits too. A missing Popular year poll for you to keep your spirits up while Tom regroups. Tom’s standing orders are:
I give a mark out of 10 to every single featured on Popular. This […]

In rock terms you could locate the end of “the 1960s” at Altamont or Woodstock, or the Beatles’ final split. In the wider narrative of British life, you could point to the 1970 World Cup defeat and the end of the Wilson government. […]

How much sugar are we dealing with, exactly? Here’s an itemisation of the hooks in the last minute of “Sugar, Sugar”:

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