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[…]

SUGABABES – "Freak Like Me"

10 July 2017

At The Disco
A scene from Phonogram III: The Immaterial Girl, by Gillen, McKelvie and Wilson, published in 2015. It’s the early 00s, at a disco somewhere in the south of England. A group of people who love music so much it’s become their life and[…]

BEYONCÉ – "Crazy In Love"

24 January 2020

History in the making,” says Jay-Z in the intro, and he’s been proven right. As I’ve said before, there’s a temptation with Beyoncé to treat her big moments as inevitable steps in a process of becoming. Her control over her career and image […]

THE KINKS – "You Really Got Me"

16 January 2005

The sound of the atom splitting. Break open the basic unit of pop music, the hook, and we discover a mess of gimmickry, noises and ideas so primeval you can often barely describe them, let alone hum one. Find one strong enough and you can top the cha[…]

Popular '76

21 May 2008

I give marks out of 10 to every song – based on whatever criteria you like, here’s your opportunity to say what you’d have given more than 6 to from 1976. Tick as many as you like.

Number One Hits Of 1976: Which Woul[…]

OASIS – "The Hindu Times"

12 February 2017

The biggest band in Britain grinds on, and as usual when an Oasis single toils its way by, their own past is the best stick to beat them with. In 1994, Oasis’ approach – putting great chunks of rock’s past in a smelter and using noi[…]

BRITNEY SPEARS – "…Baby One More Time"

29 September 2014

How was I supposed to know that something wasn’t right?

It was a gilded age: the commercial zenith of the music industry at the end of the 20th century. In America, its apex as a money-making force came in 1999 when – adjusted for inflati[…]

10cc – "Dreadlock Holiday"

8 August 2008

On one level the ‘plot’ of “Dreadlock Holiday” is hugely important to any judgement of it. On another, not at all, but let’s recap anyway. The narrator is a tourist in Jamaica – he gets mugged for his silver chain […]

THE BEATLES – "Eleanor Rigby"/"Yellow Submarine"

30 December 2005

DIGRESSION:

For Christmas I got Never Had It So Good, the first part of Dominic Sandbrook’s huge new history of Britain in the sixties. Here’s what he says about the project:

“This book seeks to rescue ‘from the enormous[…]

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 TROGGS – "With A Girl Like You"

29 December 2005

In Incredible Hulk comics there’s often a scene where the ’emerald man-beast’, cast out from human society, finds something of fragile beauty – a flower, maybe, or a baby deer – which he then accidentally crushes with hi[…]

JJ BARRIE – "No Charge"

2 May 2008

I was aware of this song long before I heard it – as a young boy it was quoted at me by my Dad should I ever object to tidying my room. Since my room was rarely tidy, I became very familiar with the central notion of “No Charge”. […]