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Weekly podcasts providing an expert briefing on a wide range of intriguing musical themes.
35 Episodes
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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? Join me as we take a medium-sized dive into what K Pop is all about and how come it's been such a runaway success. Be expertly briefed each week on a wide variety of intriguing musical topics.
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 101 albums to hear before you die. Why must we always rank rank rank these records? Let's have a medium-sized dive on the urge to rank, whether it's helpful or not, the pluses but also the minuses. Be expertly briefed each week on a wide variety o...
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 phase of the programme; to a time when it was great act of subversion to play air guitar as you mimed to your hit live on air; to a time when Tony Blackburn was being driven round a lagoon by a Womble in a speedboat. Let's find out why Top of the Pops was so ...
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 riot. But some have argued it also ended disco as a genre. But now, is the distrust between a liberal elite and an embittered midwest back to where it was almost half a century ago? On this episode we look at the weird and unpleasant "Disco Sucks!" cam...
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." It seems to be a badge of honour for some people to say they can't be bothered with lyrics, almost as if it shows strength of character. But do lyrics matter? What's the history of lyrics in songs? Are they becoming more popular or less? How do they fit the c...
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.spotify.com/show/0SwVzJ5JWezUpuJoKUA1OU?si=af32aa090fd64575 One element of his show is guests picking out a track of their life - a song that, for whatever reason, means a great deal to them. I asked Nigel to join me and pick out 10 musical highlights from ov...
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 various countries and multiple songs and anthems which have been devised to sway the voter. Some have been written especially for the task, some have been repurposed and some have been deployed in the teeth of fierce opposition from the people who actually wrote them i...
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 bands disappeared? (Spoiler alert: no.). Why have pop bands fallen off a cliff? On this episode we investigate this new phenomenon and uncover some fascinating theories. Be expertly briefed each week on a wide variety of intriguing musical topics.
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 Australia's leading copywriters joins me in the studio to explain its origins, the secret to its success and its eventual demise. A fascinating episode and one from which I personally learned a lot. Join me, your host Ian Forth, and Michael on this episode to ha...
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.) This episode seeks to understand why some people do feel a sense of guilt when they listen to certain types of music and why that should be. We cover the history of the idea, subjectivity versus objectivity, musical canons, forms of identity and so much more. See...
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 Ten Keys To Music Success. It's obligatory to say "You won't believe Number 7!", but in reality it's entirely credible. See if you agree. Be expertly briefed each week on a wide variety of intriguing musical topics.
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 newcomer to the group's work where to get started on The Fall's vast catalogue. A handful of representative tracks from across the four decades the band flourished to get a rounded idea of where their appeal lay. I took the liberty of adding a few of my ...
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 years to process. That is exactly what Steve Pringle undertook to carry out and he achieved his aim magnificently in his definitive 650 page chronicle on the group entitled "You Must Get Them All". It was a pleasure to talk to Steve and drill down on ...
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 popular. We also take a look more broadly at why people get so misty-eyed about the 90s. Is it just harking back to a non-existent recent golden age, or is there something specific about the 90s themselves? Something to do with technology or society that was...
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 watch. In this riposte, while not dismissing all of Paul's points, I'll try to put punk in its cultural context and show how profound its influence has been, not just the music, but in design, a DIY spirit, female inclusivity and racial integration.&nbs...
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 newspaper culture pages – that it was a glorious, anarchic revolution that swept all before it. I can tell you first-hand that it wasn’t. Punk was as middle-class as a Labrador in a Volvo. Far from being hugely influential, punk was a passing fad that made little...
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 billions of listens are indie - even Taylor Swift - does indie mean anything at all any more? How did we get to where we are now? Join me, Ian Forth for a short history of independent and indie music. Be expertly briefed each week on a wide variety of intriguing musical ...
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 Barbie did? Almost certainly yes. But, it is intriguing and is, I believe, worthy of analysis. If nothing else, you can outwit your nephew and niece - or your sceptical mother and father - by sounding incredibly well-informed on the subject. You are, as ever, mo...
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 in the nineteenth century, it would most likely be in 3 time, or a waltz. Travel to, say, Burundi, Bulgaria, Bengaluru or Bursa and outside of commercial radio, local time is quite different - 11/8, to take one example. So how did 4 time come to dominate? Was...
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 living folk traditions, secular rituals, the Maori hakka, Sufi whirling dervishes, the Covid effect, Pat Nevin, various professors, Posh Spice and the origin of language. Then, finally answer the question - Why do sports fans chant? Be expertly briefed ea...
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