The first year of the new decade is coming to a close, and it was an intriguing if not exceptional year for music. there were signs that hip hop was emerging from the doldrums of sound-alike rhymers with little to say, new stars shone in the indie rock firmament and the parade of reunion shows [...]
Welcome to 1975. The idea of punk rock as a movement was still a year or two in the future, the charts were a grab bag of rock, easy listening, soul, funk, and an emerging dance genre known as disco. Naturally looking at just the albums masks this vibrancy a bit (perhaps a follow-up of [...]
The year 1980 marked the waning of the malaise era in America and the second year of Thatcher in the UK. The anything goes 70s was being supplanted by the glossy, go-go 80s where the shiny surface masked such travails as AIDS and a resurgent Cold War. The first year of the decade catches music [...]
It’s fair to say that although he enjoyed a number 1 single at the height of the 1960s Alex Chilton’s influence has far, far exceeded his record sales. While he may not be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame his genius, his songs, and his career have inspired multiple generations of bands and [...]
If the 80s and 90s saw music fragmenting into hundreds of tiny subcultures the 00s offered a way out – in part by destroying the very music industry machinery that encouraged such fragmentation. File sharing may have killed music but it also saved it by letting people hear thousands of songs they never would have [...]
The Twitters