What is the relationship between the charts and everything else? The charts are a show home for pop music, filled with its shiniest mod cons, but one stuffed with hidden doors and tunnels, records that can tumble you out of pop and into other worlds[…]

The baton passes from one manufactured disco band to another, but “Y.M.C.A.” is superior to “Mary’s Boy Child” in absolutely every respect – well, the dancing in the video is just as awful, but in “Y.M.C.A.&#[…]

I give each record reviewed on Popular a mark out of 10. This is a poll where you can indicate which ones you would have given 6 or more to – pick as many as you like, and discuss the year in general in the comments box if you want.

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Christmas is a time for the kiddies, but I can’t say Boney M made much impression on this five-year-old: “Mary’s Boy Child” was never quite a first-division carol for me, and as for Frank Farian’s unique contribution to […]

HAHAHA “Do ya think I’m sexy?” heh heh well the answer to that Rod is…..
NO!
AHAHAHAHAHA!
It’s the gag no pop show talking head can resist, but the title line doesn’t actually show up in this admittedly odd record,[…]

“Rat Trap” is billed – in the Guinness Book Of British Hit Singles, no less – as the first punk No.1. I couldn’t recall it – my memories of the Rats themselves were vague; Geldof I knew for later good works. So I a[…]

“Summer Nights” brings into focus the differences between pop on stage and pop on single: its structure, building and building and getting more cacophonous and then peaking into a languid fade, is a really unusual one for a pop single, bu[…]

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 […]

Lionel Richie pens a heartfelt tribute to the Celtic triple Goddess – maiden, mother and crone.  Well, I assume that’s what it’s about. Before I got into soul music, this is pretty much what I assumed all soul music sounded like:[…]

I have never seen Grease. My cultural ignorance is becoming a bit of a theme in these entries, but here at least I had a reason: I hated it. I can’t remember when I started hating Grease, or why exactly – incomprehension and resentment, I[…]