Popular – Page 2 – Every UK#1 reviewed

U2 – “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own”
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Popular: #1004, 19^th February 2005

— 30 November 2023 Tom 16 comments

While I’ve been writing about 2004 and 2005’s pop music I’ve also been helping my wife sort out her mother’s memorial service, so a song about a parent dying is – unfortunately – Relevant To My Interests right now. Not that I real[…]

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EMINEM – “Like Toy Soldiers”
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Popular: #1003, 12^th February 2005

— 27 November 2023 Tom 15 comments

I’m not sure how rap grudges and running battles came to be called beef but I love it as a word for them – juicy, red meat with inescapable macho connotations. The actual minutiae of rap beefs are strictly fans-only in most cases, playing out[…]

#EventsDearBoy – THE BIG LIST
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— 12 Jul 2026 Tom 2 comments

As you might know if you’ve been on Bluesky, I’m counting down EVERY COMICS EVENT* *(that I’ve read) from worst to best and writing a little paragraph on each. I might Do Something with all this when it’s finished but for now […]

About Popular

I'm writing about every UK number one single, in order. It's taken a while, it'll take a while longer. Wander around in the archives, or join in with the marvellous bunch of commenters we've managed to attract - new voices always very welcome!

Popular is funded by the generosity of my Patreon patrons. They get early posts, exclusive material, and more. You could be one of them! Index of reviews and scores so far Popular FAQ

Latest comments on Popular

Bartleby on BRYAN ADAMS – "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You"18 July 2026
Now that the current No1 has broken this song's mammoth run at the top seems good a time as any…
Bartleby on BONNIE TYLER – "Total Eclipse Of The Heart"18 July 2026
Much as this is deservedly Bonnie's epitaph, Holding Out For a Hero was always my song of choice for Tyler…
Rory on BONNIE TYLER – "Total Eclipse Of The Heart"9 July 2026
Farewell, Bonnie Tyler, gone at age 75.

Recently on Popular

ELVIS PRESLEY – “It’s Now Or Never”

26 November 2023

It’s an American trilogy! My original plan for the Elvis entries was to do them as a high concept piece inspired by (ripping off) Borges’ “Pierre Menard, Author Of The Quixote”. Since, in their wisdom, the Official Charts Company decided thes[…]

CIARA ft PETEY PABLO – “Goodies”

21 November 2023

The singles market was weakest in January even in those happy times when Number 1 hits outsold model railway magazines – it’s one reason the Presley scam was successful, letting a fanbase of a little over 20,000 push their boy to the top when[…]

ELVIS PRESLEY – “One Night” / “I Got Stung”

18 November 2023

“The things I did and I saw / Would make the earth stand still” – Smiley Lewis

In the early days of Popular lack of research was part of the Method. Context was the enemy: the text was the text. My job was to see what, 50 or so years lat[…]

Featured on Popular

ELTON JOHN – "Candle In The Wind '97" / "Something About The Way You Look Tonight"

27 March 2014

Every Popular entry starts with the same question: why this record? This time it’s especially loud. “Candle In The Wind ‘97” is the highest-selling single of all time in the UK, almost 2 million clear of its nearest competitor. This is as big[…]

LIMP BIZKIT – "Rollin' (Air Raid Vehicle)"

10 August 2015

“Take my advice,” says Fred Durst on “My Generation”, “you don’t want to step into a big pile of shit.” Wise words. But shit comes in many forms. The spoor of Durst, the self-styled chocolate starfish, the anus, is compacted nuggets of […]

BRITNEY SPEARS – "Toxic"

20 January 2023

The first thing you notice about “Toxic” is the strings – urgent, stabbing, a shock of treble. The string bursts compress a riff into a couple of seconds, turning its curling snatch of melody into a red alert, a warning sign on a system out[…]

EMINEM – "The Real Slim Shady"

30 March 2015

Never has the “early, funny stuff” cliche held such weight in pop: we’re at a stage now where the new stars coming through are still heavyweights now, and the sclerotic Marshall Mathers of the mid-10s haunts this swaggering, sparkling kid. But […]

THE VERVE – "The Drugs Don't Work"

23 March 2014

“Whenever we played that live there would be rows of grown men crying. It was almost like these guys couldn’t cry when they needed to cry, but that song operated like a pressure valve for them and it was okay for them to cry at a big rock con[…]

EMINEM – "Stan"

10 July 2015

“Stan” is a murder ballad. A song – not the first or last such Eminem recorded – about killing a woman. If this seems a strange way to look at it, it’s because the record takes pains to make its murder incidental. Its victim is name[…]

PET SHOP BOYS – "Always On My Mind"

4 May 2010

In the comics series Phonogram, there’s a scene in which the – kind of horrible – pop DJ Seth Bingo and his indie collaborator Silent Girl are struggling to work a recalcitrant dancefloor into life. Their solution? “Play the B[…]

WHITE TOWN – "Your Woman"

4 February 2014

In 1997, talking about music on the Internet means USENET, a Gormenghast of diverging and reconnecting fora whose goblin tribes gleefully rampage through each other’s chosen lairs: a thread will start on alt.music.prodigy, then careen into alt.[…]

U2 – "Beautiful Day"

26 May 2015

A theological detour. The rise of New Atheism – Dawkins et al. – seems to have made it somewhat infra dig for lifelong unbelievers like me to admit there are things we respect and admire about religions and the religious. But of course th[…]

GIRLS ALOUD – "Sound Of The Underground"

8 October 2019

Looked at one way, this had to happen. Reality TV pop shows weren’t going away. Lightning had struck for Hear’Say, then again for Liberty X, then so often for Pop Idol that you’d think Zeus had the ITV voting lines on speed dial. The maths of i[…]

ABBA – "Dancing Queen"

13 May 2008

In my teens I read a science fiction novel with a startlingly elegant twist. (I won’t mention the book’s name in case you come across it yourself.) It was about a brilliant scientist who vanishes: the book’s protagonist goes looking[…]

AALIYAH – "More Than A Woman"

30 October 2016

The Queen Of The Damned soundtrack, released later in 2002, is a fearful pile of tosh, a body count of nu-metal second-raters which illustrates a dilemma the film didn’t totally resolve: just which children of the night was this thing aimed at – […]