It would have taken a particularly gifted Nostradamus in the 1990s to predict both the demise of the traditional western rock band and the rise and rise of their South Korean replacements. yet that's what happened?But how did it happen? ...

The best and worst double albums ever. The 50 greatest cover versions of all time. The 100 greatest British albums of all time. The greatest indie anthems ever. The 100 greatest albums you've never heard. The 50 darkest albums of all time. The ...

The terminally uncool "pop" programme from the terminally uncool state TV station, BBC1. A recipe for failure, surely. And yet, everyone watched Top of the Pops. Why was that?Take a trip back in time to the culturally hegemonic imperial ...

In July 1979 Steve Dahl organised a Disco Demolition Night at a baseball game in Comiskey Park, Chicago. Infuriated by disco music and its chart dominance it was the latest in a growing nationwide "Disco Sucks!" campaign. That night ended in a ...

Sure, we've all got a favourite carol or maybe anthem and words matter with them. Hard to imagine a hymn with la-la-las instead of lyrics halfway through.But you know how people say "I never forget a face, but I'm no good with names." I...

Nigel Marsh has been hosting the 5 Of My Life podcast for many years now and in that time has interviewed all the great and the good, from prime ministers to rock stars, comedians to novelists, community workers to poets.https://open.sp...

La jour de gloire est arrivée. Things can only get better. It's time. Born in the USA. Keep on rockin' in the free world.Can music change anything when it is used in political campaigns?Come with us now as we travel through vari...

A few weeks ago Richard Osman on the Rest Is Entertainment podcast pointed out that only 3 bands had had #1s this decade. This was in contrast to the end of the previous century when bands dominated the charts.Why is this? Have all band...

If you're not an Australian it can be hard to identify a distinctive Australian sound or movement. One candidate is the Aussie Pub Rock phenomenon which flourished in the 70s and 80s and out of which bands like AC/DC emerged.One of Aust...

Some people say there's no such thing as guilty pleasures in music. You either like it or you don't. So, own it.Still, would it have a name if it didn't exist? (Well, yes, it might. There are no unicorns, after all.)

Some academic bod has analysed every US presidential election and worked out the Keys To Success. He claims to correctly predict every populist vote.Can we do the same for musical success? We can have a go. This is my equivalent - The T...

This episode is the the second of a double header. Steve Pringle, author of the classic Fall analysis "You Must Get Them All", gave us his thoughts on why the group resonate so strongly for so many in Part One. Here, he suggests to a nominal ne...

If an author writes a book analysing every single, every album, every phase and every lineup change of a band, it might be a decent-sized tome.In the case of The Fall, there's over 50 members, over 30 albums, over 500 songs and over 40 ...

Oasis are reforming for a reunion tour. Have you heard?What marks out Oasis as so different from their contemporaries? It's hard to believe it's their musical sophistication or their profound lyrics. But something makes them incredibly ...

On our previous show, Paul Burke proposed that punk was unimportant at the time, left no lasting musical legacy and the reason people still bang on about it is because the middle classes act as its gatekeeper in the media that we all read and w...

Contrariness - we've got it."If you were born after 1970 and don’t remember punk, you’ve almost certainly been misled by people who do. You’ve probably been told – through countless paean-to-punk retrospectives, documentaries and ne...

What even defines indie?It used to mean something way back when. Groups that were on independent labels with a DIY approach and a different take on the world.But in a world where Lana Del Rey and Billie Eilish with their billion...

That lime green colour. That blurry font. And now BRAT has been picked up by the Kamala Harris campaign (this is August 2024).Is this something worth finding more about or will it all blow over by the autumn, like Gangnam Style and Barb...

Turn on commercial radio and what time signature are you 95% likely to hear in the  first song? 4 beats to the bar, that's what. Is that just the natural pace of music or is something else going on?In fact, if you went to a dance i...

Why do sports fans chant? Is it just to support their team or is there more to it than that? (Spoiler alert: there is more to it than that.)Join me, Ian Forth, in a spirited discussion which will take in the Chip Butty Song, organic liv...

Poet and author Paul Feldwick arrived for the first day of school in 1963 just as it The Beatles were starting their domination of the decade. As Paul made the journey from awkward 11 year-old to a sixth-former on the cusp of entering the adult...

By the end of her 131 date worldwide Eras tour, Taylor Swift will have generated an additional $5 billion for the economy. Other artists have been phenomena before, but surely never before have we seen an artist have this sort of effect. No art...

The American accent in pop and rock music is ubiquitous. It has become the default accent for any aspiring artist to sing in, to the extent that it's virtually taken for granted and no one finds it odd.But it is a bit odd. This episode ...

Short stories in songs and music in stories. An episode of two halves, which coincidentally is the name of one of the tracks mentioned.In the first half, I choose ten of my favourite "short story songs" - tracks which form a more or les...

"Why don't young people write protest songs any more? It's not like the 1960s when we cared about the world and weren't glued to a screen."You might have heard this argument. Protest songs are usually thought to have disappeared or at t...