Neil Finn joined the band Split Enz as a guitarist when he was still a teenager. His brother Tim was the band’s leader, writing most of their material, but Neil Finn wrote many of the band’s successful singles in the…
Welcome back for week 4 of the Popular Spotify Song challenge. This is how the leaderboard looks: Participant Week 3 Total Sheik Yerbouti 19 59 Geoff (1001) 20 58 jprobichaud 20 58 Rich Kamerman 20 58 Tony 20 58 John…
An Explanation I wanted to provide an explanation to my fellow bloggers who may have noticed that this blog has undergone a name change, and that I’ve had to un-follow and re-follow your blogs. A few weeks ago, I noticed that I…
Math-rock band Tricot formed in Kyoto in 2010, released their debut album in 2013. Their fourth studio album 真っ黒 (Japanese for Pure Black) marks their major label debut. Tricot spent time as an all-female trio, but drummer Yuusuke Yoshida was…
It’s a long way to the top (if you wanna rock ‘n’ roll), and Australian hard rock band AC/DC spent much of the 1970s building their profile. They cracked the big time with 1979’s Highway to Hell, which peaked at…
Welcome back to the third week of the Spotify quiz series. Eleven contestants have completed the first two week of Spotify quizzes. The leaderboard now looks like this: Participant Week 2 Total Sheik Yerbouti 20 40 Geoff (1001) 19 38…
In popular music, lyrics are less important than the music. Often the words of popular songs float past innocuously. Stringing together meaningless words that sound good together can be an effective strategy – ask Jon Anderson or A.C. Newman. Bad…
Of all the b-sides that I’ve covered in this series, Elvis Presley’s cover of ‘Mystery Train’ is the most iconic. It was voted on a 2003 Rolling Stone as the 77th greatest song of all time, an astounding feat for…
Welcome back to the Spotify quiz series. We had ten contestants in the first week of Spotify quizzes, and the leaderboard looks like this: Participant Week 1 Total Rich Kamerman 20 20 Sheik Yerbouti 20 20 jprobichaud 20 20 Jim…
I didn’t enjoy any single album from 2019 as much as I liked Mitski‘s Be The Cowboy in 2018. Nevertheless, 2019 was a strong year – albums that I enjoyed by established favourites like The New Pornographers and Taylor Swift…
