At the start of the pandemic, I felt resentful towards anybody who proposed we might use this change of pace to learn a language, take up oil painting or write a novel. “Shakespeare wrote King Lear during the plague!” Well, blow up my bloomers and stick a quill up my…

Hello — is it Lionel trivia you’re looking for? It’s 37 years since Hello topped the charts, becoming one of Richie’s best-known hits and Motown’s first million-selling single in the UK. To celebrate the existence of this super-ballad and its famously awful music video, here are some ace facts about…

From 1996–2008 I played in noisy DIY bands. I sat in the back of stinking Transit vans. I drove to Durham in an Austin Maestro to play to a room full of exuberant underage drinkers. I secretly photocopied endless flyers at work. I sat in rock clubs and listened patiently…

The seventies. An era of hairy men with guitars, schmoozy crooners, snotty punk rock and shiny disco. …

Way back in March 1981, a swoony cover of John Lennon’s Jealous Guy became the first number one hit for art-school rockers Roxy Music. Roxy’s interpretation poured a shot of heady glamour into the original, catapulting it onto a thousand low-lit dancefloors. …

The moon leans down, large and white. My eyes are closed but I see you in my dreams. You are standing over me. Your wine-coloured mouth is saying something, I see the shapes. It’s not good, this thing we’re in. This space. You are asking me something, pleading. The sheets…

It’s happening. Office workers all over the country are being told to pack up their work laptops, locate the charger for said laptop (shit), access VPN (argh) and work from home. This time just over a year ago I jacked in my own office job to go freelance. I have…

Nena’s 1983 smash hit 99 Red Balloons is a reliable staple of every 1980s compilation CD and the soundtrack to many a drunken wedding disco. Yet its catchy-like-a-cold hooks belie a more serious political message. The song was inspired by a trip to a Rolling Stones concert in West Berlin…

Blondie were one of the first bands I really remember. I was introduced to them so early on that, initially, Debbie Harry seemed unremarkable in her women-in-a-band-ness. As I grew out of childhood and into worldly awareness, that concept got flipped. I began to see Harry refracted through the male…