Brooklyn indie band TV on the Radio were formed in 2001. They’re effectively a rock band, but their music is overlaid with loops and samples, and topped off by the vocals of Tunde Adebimpe. The R&B in his voice tops off…
California’s Judee Sill had a troubled childhood, losing her father to pneumonia at eight years old. Her mother’s second marriage was often violent, and as a teenager Sill spent time in reform school after committing armed robbery. At reform school…
Paul Kelly’s a respected songwriter in Australia, with a solo career that began in 1981. He’s the type of figure who receives songwriting awards and inclusions on great song lists, without necessarily breaking through to public consciousness. He’s little known…
There are a substantial number of songs by the late Tom Petty that I love and that I could have chosen to feature this week. I could have chosen a ubiquitous hit like ‘Refugee’, ‘Free Fallin”, ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’,…
I’m publishing this blog entry in advance, and this song gives an indication, better than any other piece of pop music than I can think of, of what I’ll be doing this Sunday morning (although of course my circumstances won’t…
When my wife and I bought our first house, it was a small two-bedroom doer upper. It needed plenty of work, but the most memorable was the asbestos removal. Obviously asbestos has a dangerous reputation, but at the same time,…
I don’t want my weekly song post to turn into an obituary thread, but the world of popular music lost another significant member this week with the passing of Hüsker Dü drummer and song-writer Grant Hart. Like a lot of…
We’re reaching peak rock star death era – many of the musicians active during rock music’s formative years are reaching their seventies. This week we lost Walter Becker of Steely Dan, who was an integral part of one of the…
Not content with merely creating some of the greatest albums ever made (and winning a bucket-load of Grammy Awards) during the 1970s, Stevie Wonder also produced a couple of albums for his ex-wife Syreeta Wright. He wrote most of the…
Whether he’s recording as the guitarist and co-leader of Hüsker Dü, as a solo artist, or as the leader of Sugar, you generally know what you’re going to get from Bob Mould. I understand that he’s diversified somewhat on some…
The Carpenters, from Downey California, released some transcendent songs in the early 1970s. Karen Carpenter’s beautiful voice showcased beautiful melodies with dark undertows, on songs like ‘Rainy Days and Mondays’ and ‘Superstar’. But the brother and sister duo’s career was…
Don McGlashan is up with Dave Dobbyn and the Finn brothers as New Zealand’s best mainstream guitar-rock writers. He’s best-known for his work in 1990s rock band The Mutton Birds, but they were the third group he recorded with. His…
When my wife and I bought our own first house, we lived next door to a young man with mental health issues. I quickly earned his dislike by calling the police on the first day after we moved in –…
The New Pornographers are a Canadian power pop super-group – the members were drawn together from other projects. Notable alumni include leader A.C. Newman, previously of Zumpano, alt-country vocalist Neko Case, and Dan Bejar, who records as Destroyer. The group…
Dusty Springfield began her career in a folk-pop trio The Springfields with her brother Tom. When The Springfields broke up, she went on to solo success in the early 1960s with ‘I Only Wanna Be With You’ and ‘I Don’t…
The small city of Dunedin, in the south of New Zealand, produced a lot of great music in the 1980s – The Flying Nun record label distributed acclaimed albums by acts like The Chills, The Clean, The Bats, and Chris…
I’ve been very impressed by Jason Isbell’s last two albums; 2013’s Southeastern and 2015’s Something More Than Free. After sobering up, he’s fulfilling his potential as a great songwriter. After two albums of heartfelt, acoustic country, Isbell plugged his electric…
Germany’s Can were too ahead of their time, and too weird, to enjoy a hit record, but they were hugely influential; for instance, when Radiohead ditched guitar rock in favour of more experimental work, Can were one of the bands…
For some reason I never found Aretha Franklin’s original studio albums in second-hand bins, and for years the only album I owned from her was a double disc retrospective. The second disc dabbles in her 1980s work, with star power…
Vigilantes of Love took their name from the New Order song ‘Love Vigilantes’. The band hailed from Athens, Georgia, a city with rich pop music heritage; in all honesty they’d probably struggle to break onto a list of greatest musical…
Formed by a group of Auckland students in 1972, Split Enz are an iconic New Zealand band. With a distinctive visual image – percussionist Noel Crombie designed their costumes and album covers – their career had two distinct phases. In…
New Zealand’s Bic Runga has only released four albums of original material, starting with her 1997 debut Drive, but despite her limited output, she reigns supreme as the queen of New Zealand pop music. Runga comes from a unique cultural…
Prominent popular music from New Zealand in the late 20th century was often Caucasian in origin, with the most internationally recognised musicians coming either from the Flying Nun stable of twisted guitar pop or the mainstream pop of the Finn…
