Taylor Dayne – I’ll Be Your Shelter

It’s time to talk about Taylor. Not that Taylor, the other Taylor. Taylor Dayne. In the very late eighties and the very early nineties Taylor Dayne briefly threatened to become the […]

Goldfrapp – Rocket

Choosing the right first single is a very exact science, and there are many factors to consider. Are you coming back from a hugely successful debut? Then you’ll be wanting […]

Olivia Newton John – Twist of Fate

Think back to a time when you teamed up with someone at work and it turned out to be unexpectedly brilliant. For most of us that amounts to doing a presentation where […]

Paula Cole – I Believe in Love

One of the great things that can happen when you’ve had a successful album is that you can ring up the record company and say “hello, I quite fancy having […]

Philip Jap – Save Us

For many years I’ve traded on being a walking 1980s encyclopaedia, and then the other day a pal destroyed my entire world by mentioning an artist I’d never heard of […]

Kim Wilde – It’s Here

The 1980s felt like a very long decade – in a way that few since have – and they got off to a lovely scruffy start, with Bananarama arsing about […]

Pepsi and Shirlie – Someday

Time moves in strange ways in pop music: 1987 and 1991 may only be four years apart, but that short period ushered in so many changes that sometimes it feels […]

Eurythmics – Shame

Here’s another good example of the sort of thing that happens once a band has passed its Imperial Phase – songs that would have previously sailed into the top 20 […]

Suzanne Vega – In Liverpool

In the late summer of 1992 I had just entered my third year at Glasgow University studying English Literature and Medieval History – boy have those come in handy – and […]

Jody Watley – Another Chapter

Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that Japan has great taste in Western pop music – Shampoo notwithstanding – for as a nation they’ve continued to embrace releases from people we’ve […]

Bent – Sing Me

Some of the happiest times of my life were spent working in the Virgin Megastore in Buchanan Street, Glasgow. From the day it opened with a fake Melanie C and […]

Laura Branigan – Shattered Glass

It’s almost impossible to discuss pop music at the end of the 1980s without mentioning Stock, Aitken and Waterman. For the last two years of the decade they essentially colonised the UK charts, […]

Malena Ernman – La Voix

Prior to 2009, it’s probably fair to say that not many people had wondered what it would sound like if you welded together Can’t Get You Out of My Head and […]

Gwen Stefani – The Real Thing

“Supergroup” is a term that rightfully sends a shudder through the body of even the most optimistic pop fan. You’d think that putting a bunch of hugely talented people together […]

Pet Shop Boys feat. Example – Thursday

Let’s return to the notion of the Imperial Phase, that period of invincibility where everything you do is huge and deemed better than everyone else simply by virtue of your own […]

Golden – Anglo American

I think one thing I’ve established over the last couple of months is my love for classic English girl voices, and specifically girls who sound like they’ve been plucked from the […]

St. Lucia – All Eyes on You

When you get to a certain age there comes a point when you have absolutely no clue about what’s going on in modern music. You don’t really understand how it […]