Back to NOW!

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...

Welcome to the end of the eighties! Pop’s greatest (it was, wasn’t it?) decade was getting ready to pack away it’s shoulder pads, leg warmers and Rubik’s cubes (not being too stereotypical are we?) and was heading at breakneck speed towards the nineties, and the latest edition of the Now series absolutely represented the change ahead! Well, sort of. As ever the democratic forces behind the UK char...

In memory of a wonderful guest and outstanding writer, Neil Kulkarni. Welcome to Autumn 1996. Royal divorce, Mad Cow disease, Take That helplines, TFI Friday.  But it wasn’t all bad news, oh no – the pop charts were continuing to dazzle and amaze the CD buying public! Indeed, if we weren’t snapping up those hits on £5 CD singles (both one and two, to complete the set) we were most defini...

It's Autumn 1992! Damn, Would I Lie To You ? What an interesting time for the UK singles charts. Is it fair to say the decade was at some sort of apex point?  Well, the tracklist for November’s NOW, That’s What I Call Music 23 album was certainly not giving us a clear a view of what the next big thing was going to be. Or was it? Whilst the start of the 90s had exploded with a colourful wave (...

Enjoy this trip. And it is a trip! What a poptastic year 1988 was turning out to be at NOW HQ! As the 80s were speeding their way towards a dayglo regeneration into the 90s, the charts were chock full of a glittering arrays of sensational delights and 7” wonders!  The first instalment of NOW That’s What I Call Music – Volume 11 in April – had delivered a chart topping selection of skyscraping...

For this episode I am joined by award winning film director Grant McPhee. Amongst Grant’s films are Big Gold Dream, which tells the story of FAST Product and Postcard Records, two of Scotland’s most loved independent record labels and Teenage Superstars the story of what happened next in the uncompromising world of Scottish indie music, featuring music and interviews from the likes of The Vaseline...