Superior metaphysical wetness from Cassidy – on “Daydreamer” his thin voice sounds utterly wrung-out, a flopping ineffectual adenoidal rag of a thing. It would be intolerable except that it suits the song so well. Effective touches abound – t[…]

How to evaluate a theme tune from a TV programme I’ve never seen? All I have is the name and this track. I asked my Dad if he remembered a show called Van Der Valk, which would have been popular around when I was born. “Yes!” I felt hopeful. �[…]

Again Wizzard offer maximalism pushed to the point of grotesquerie, a sprawling rock’n’roll pastiche that keeps flinging hooks at us, simply not knowing when to stop. This time though the effect is more touching, as “Angel Fingers” is a love […]

Once a teen idol has reached the peak phase of his career, the question becomes – how to stay there? Building a profile is no longer so important – any given single release has a good chance of topping the charts, or close to it, so it’s a matt[…]

A question I’m honestly unsure of the answer to: if Michael Jackson had been found guilty of child molestation, what would have happened to his songs? Would “Billie Jean” or “Beat It” have emptied party dancefloors? Would “Wanna Be Starti[…]

Suppose one wanted to give “Welcome Home” a low mark – what actual grounds would one have for saying it’s a bad record? It’s a catchy, memorable, uptempo song, delivered in a friendly and honest way. It’s sentiment[…]

“Cleverness” wasn’t usually something Slade aimed for – though you wouldn’t necessarily call them stupid – but on “Skweeze Me Pleeze Me” even they dip a toe into metatext: “Can’t you learn t[…]

Like “See My Baby Jive”, “Rubber Bullets” is a really dense bit of popcraft – a restless concentrate of hooks and ideas. 1973 seems to have been a moment in pop when this overload strategy was commercially viable: intell[…]

I’m pretty sure that the ‘ideal’ time for a pop songle has been revised up in my lifetime, the “three minute single” granted an unwieldy extra 30 seconds, which would make “Can The Can” a shot at perfection &[…]

At work today I was doing a bit of research on sweets, and found a site which boasted a “Bush Tucker Prize” jar – an enormous plastic thing designed to cash in on the I’m A Celebrity reality show. The jar was filled with jelly[…]