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Dylan Jones once described the Eighties as being shaped by ‘a new type of bohemianism, one empowered by a certainty and an optimism that was only fleeting back in the sixties.’ * Moreso, K.Tel records importantly reminded us that home taping was killing music.  So, it’s November 1981, and this young music fan is feverishly taking ownership of two cassettes in his local Woolworths. One blue, o...

We’re going where the sun shines brightly, We’re going where the sea is blue… 1986 really was very Cliff. He had celebrated his first No1 of the 80s with the cast of The Young Ones, featured in some devastating billboard action in the (rerun) finale of the aforementioned BBC comedy show, been covered by the TVam rat and gerbil, and even had one of his most famous songs feature on a rather unique (...

“What we’re gonna do right here is go back, way back!” If you were really down with the cool kids in 1984, you would have most definitely have been passing around the school prized C90 cassettes featuring much copied Streetsounds compilations. And somewhere in there was Kurtis Blow’s AJ Scratch track with those immortal sampled words from the Jimmy Castor Bunch in 1972. Straight out onto The BMXs...

August 1989. The final year of ‘the finest pop decade ever’™️ is moving along quite nicely thank you very much.  There’s most definitely a change in the air, and we don’t mean the launch of the FOUR channel Sky TV network. Relax everyone, UK Gold and TOTP reruns are coming in three years! No, real change was coming. The second summer of love in 1988 (sorry Danny Wilson, probably a y...

It was the wise prophet and occasional flower impersonator Peter Gabriel that said,  ‘I don’t remember, I don’t recall, I have no memory of anything at all.’ Do you remember 2008? Yes, it's only (!) 16 years ago, so I’ve no doubt you still have packets in the kitchen cupboard that are older, but do you also remember how the pop landscape of 2008 was mapping out?  Indeed, what on earth wa...

It's November 2023, and the world's most successful compilation series is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Five decades of compiling the latest hits, the occasional miss, but always the songs that soundtracked our lives. Always there, always democratically and expertly sequencing the music that the UK buying (downloading/streaming/swiping) public were grooving to, laughing to, dancing along with,...

Confidence, they say, is a preference for the habitual voyeur of what is known as… …1994, darlings!  And of course, as perceived wisdom now dutifully dictates, we were all completely mad for it, lemon hooch in hand, union jacks draped around our football tops, waving two fingers to those damn yanks. Go home! Except, of course, the truth couldn’t be further away from the, er truth. Whilst...

Pop. The way that we process everything. So, it's the summer of 1993. According to meteorological 'experts', the UK experienced its lowest maximum temperatures since 1972. Only 4 days were officially classified as ' HOT '. Well, I would argue, pop fans, that is UNLESS you had a swingorilliant copy of NOW, That's What I Call Music 25! (We'll take this quite frankly, cheesy line out in the edit - Ed...

Welcome to Spring 1993. And, I’m sure you’ll all agree, there was only one phrase on everyone’s lips. I lick-he boom, boom down. (Checks notes) Anyway, more of that later. The legendary NOW compilation series has reached its twenty-fourth volume and is now standing proud as the finest collection of chart hits around. HITS who? And as the fourth year of that craziest of decades ‘The Nineties’ got u...

Welcome, one and all, to the 3rd annual Back to NOW review!  As is now tradition, this end of year episode of the variously compiled podcast provides us with a festive opportunity to glance back over our shoulders at the pop landscape of yet another 12 months. Let’s celebrate a dazzling year of NOW compilations that in 2023 have included something for everyone - fabulous yearbooks scanni...

They all know it’s Dynamite,  And the music went on and on and on… The history books will tell us that, in theory, 1973 shouldn’t have worked. Terrorist campaigns, oil shortages, petrol rations, power cuts. Peters and Lee. However, as the saying goes from great adversity comes great art. Or was it great sitcoms?  Either way, 1973 stands not just as one of the greatest pop years of the de...

La, La, La. Autumn 2001. In many ways, it has been a challenging year. 5ive and Steps split, Hearsay don’t. Pop, just like the most boybandish of the latest boybands, Blue is (all) on the rise. The new millennium has most definitely set up its shiny new stall and is fully decked out in its cargo pants, vest tops - and that is just the boys. Mobile phone ringtones were being catapulted into polypho...

It’s a Saturday night in April 1985 and a queue is gathering outside Raffles nightclub in, well pretty much every town and city across this sceptred isle. Feverishly excited boys and girls wait and dream of Malibu and coke, Quatro and ice, whilst expectant beams of pink neon shoot out from beyond the velvet rope and the intimidating bouncers (possibly both called Dave).  Through the door...

It’s summer 1991 and school’s out which means it’s time for your latest compilation! It was probably on cassette, possibly from your local high street and most definitely slotted straight into your parent’s car stereo for that sweet-fuelled, motorway exodus to the sun! But WAIT! After NOW 19’s release in the spring, the horizon isn’t delivering the nation’s favourite 20th variously compiled select...

WARNING! This episode contains scenes of graphic and often gratuitous pop perfection. Listener discretion is advised. Summer 2004.  The wettest summer in the UK for fifty years, and with it being another three years before Rihanna invents the umbrella, there is a need for something more drastic to help dodge the dampness.  So where does one shelter from the storm?  Well, certainly n...

Welcome to the middle of ‘the nineties’! Sort of! Spring 1994, to be exact. And indeed, the popworld is revelling in the ‘seed of the new breed’. Again, sort of… You know the drill by now, the glorious NOW, That’s What I Call Music 27 steers you though the wonderfully choppy waters of the UK charts. Sometimes the shore is graced with the wonders of perfect pop from the likes of Swedish Global grab...

It’s the summer of 1992! The UK had accidentally voted in the Conservative government again but to make amends wins lots of medals at the Freddie and Monserrat Olympic Festival Sporting thingy in Barcelona, so everyone forgets for a while. Alan Shearer becomes the most expensive soccer star in the whole of history and the English FA celebrate their winning bid for Euro96 - spoiler, it still doesn’...

Alexa, show me 1984. If you were to ask a certain searchable device (others are, obviously available), there’s a high probability that the year George Orwell predicted would see us living in a terrifying future nightmare would instead be adorned with a wash of neon, colour and an array of sunshine pop.  And the character staring back at us wouldn’t be Big Brother, it was a pig in shades....

Welcome to 1993. Autumn, to be exact.  And how was it all looking? Well, it wasn’t really baggy like 1990, or rave-y like 1991, but it wasn’t Britpoppy like 1995. It was all a bit…well, who knows? Can we say, a bit of a pop hinterland? And were there any clues across our ever reliant pop culture landscape for how ‘93 had shaped up? Well in a year that saw the launch of two modern icons - the...

Welcome to this bonus edition of Back to Now! A small but perfectly formed bite-size extra serving of Festive Pop! To compliment the end of year review of 2022, enjoy a collection of previous lovely guests as they revisit some memorable Christmas hits. Or should that be December hits? Or Christmas adjacent pop? You decide, wonderful listeners! Indeed, in the true sense of pop memorabilia, consider...

Festive greetings and welcome to what all of the Pop Kids are rightly calling the 2nd annual Back to Now review for 2022! Can it really be a whole 12 months since we last pulled up a cosy chair, poured ourselves a large creme de menthe and ruminated on the variously compiled world of pop? Well, yes indeed and so much has happened since! We don’t talk about politics here, no, no no - it’s all about...

Jack, jack, jack….wait? What? Who is this Jack? It’s 1987, and the future has arrived in the shape of the first No1 of the year courtesy of Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley - House Music is here! Hold up, wait a minute! As the ninth edition of the famous Now, That’s What I Call Music testified from within it’s (so 80s!) Ring binder cover, the charts were much more varied. Whilst dance music was loading up its...

1991. It was the first palindromic year since 1881, and to be honest I’m not really up on the hits of that particular Victorian number.  (Newsflash: Bruckner’s 6th Symphony was pretty hot that year) Fast forward to the 2nd year of the ‘nineties’ as we called it, and there are plenty of other newsflashes abound. War in the Gulf dominated the spring (news and charts, but more of that later), Ea...

1990.  Well it certainly was time for the guru, but as the first year of the new decade was drawing to a close, it was time - a little time , if you will - for so much more. And as always, our favourite compilation series was there to capture it all. So volume 18 provided us with the NOW albums second numbered album of 1990 in the shape of big ballads, bigger ballads, pop, rock, dance, indie...

‘One goal, one mission…one vision!’. November 1985, and the latest poptastic edition of NOW kicks off with the unifying cry from Freddie and the boys, after an unforgettable summer when music really did seem to change the world from London to Philadelphia and beyond.  But how representative of those wonderful UK charts is Now, That’s What I Call Music 6? Well, the events of Live Aid had certa...