How I learned to stop worrying and love Bon Jovi
The arrival of a new greatest hits gives me an opportunity to make a shameful confession: I love Bon Jovi. Actually, scratch the shameful bit – I’m not embarrassed in the slightest. "Guilty pleasures"...
View ArticleWhy did it take a lager brand to get Alan Partridge back on our screens?
He’s one of the greatest comic characters ever conceived – and today Alan Partridge returned to our screens after a seven-year absence. You’ll scan the TV listings in vain, however: the new series, Mid...
View ArticleFrom Pulp to Take That, has music moved on at all since the '90s?
In pop as in politics, history is repeating. It’s a troubling fact that, just as the Coalition attempts to roll back the state to pre-New Labour levels, suddenly music is dominated by acts whose glory...
View ArticleCould this extraordinary iPad app change the way we discover music?
Everyone bangs on about how the iPad will revolutionise publishing. Might it also do the same for the music industry? So far, music has been poorly served by the device. None of the apps developed so...
View ArticleThe return of Peep Show is cause for celebration. But why is it streaming...
Lovers of excruciatingly awkward dialogue rejoice – Peep Show returns to our screens this Friday, for its seventh series. That doesn’t make it the longest-running British comedy series – to the...
View ArticleWhy These New Puritans''Hidden' is the album of the year
This week the title I work for, NME, revealed its albums of the year. People are often suspicious about the list, as though it’s been decided by a shadowy committee – but there’s no mystery to it: we...
View ArticleCould corporate cash save the music industry?
The day after being called the c-word (twice!) by presenters on Radio 4, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt did something that made rather fewer headlines. He gave a speech at the London HQ of JP Morgan...
View ArticleYes, Matt Cardle is awful. But has the Christmas Number One ever been any good?
With dismal inevitability, Matt Cardle’s When We Collide is this year’s Christmas Number One, making it five years out of the last six that the X Factor winner’s song has occupied the festive top spot....
View ArticleNever mind Jessie J, here are five acts you really do need to hear in 2011
There was a time when the mainstream media waited until an act had actually released some music before hyping them to high heaven. Nowadays, they decide in advance which acts the public will like, and...
View ArticleIt's time we recognised the godlike genius of Dave Grohl
One of the planet’s most successful rock stars, for years Dave Grohl has been saddled with the not-especially-rock n roll title of “nicest man in rock” – a curious way of describing a beer-chugging...
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