Most rock bands are remembered for their albums, but British pop-punk quartet Buzzcocks are most loved for their compilation Singles Going Steady. The group’s driving, tuneful, and lovelorn songs suited three-minute bursts. Their run of A-sides includes ‘Ever Fallen in…
Detroit power-pop maestro Marshall Crenshaw isn’t a household name. But his tuneful, often exuberant, 1982 debut album sometimes sneaks onto greatest album lists. Deservedly so – it’s a great little record of guitar pop, with a timelessly simple three-piece sound,…
During sessions for their debut album Ten, bassist Jeff Ament, guitarist Mike McCready, and vocalist Eddie Vedder improvised a song in the studio. McCready’s opening guitar licks are inspired by Jimi Hendrix, while Vedder made up lyrics on the spot…
Kimbra Johnson was earmarked for stardom early. Online videos show her singing as a pre-teen, while she placed second in New Zealand’s national secondary school rock quest at 14. But after a generic debut single ‘Deep For You’, she took…
The Jam are arguably the most British band ever, with all the telltale traits. They: Although they were from the class of 1977, The Jam were never punk. They were often fast and frenetic, but they were 1960s revivalists, taking…
Fleetwood Mac‘s 1977 album Rumours was a sales behemoth, jam packed with hits written by the group’s three songwriters, Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie, and Lindsey Buckingham. But there was at least one great song that didn’t make the cut –…
I think that, regardless of our musical differences, we can all agree that the current decade has been tough for sharks in popular music. We all ironically enjoyed the performance of the “Left Shark” in Katy Perry’s 2015 Superbowl show,…
Spring is my favourite time of the year in New Zealand – the days get longer and sunnier. I don’t have a song that I associate with any other season, but my spring song is 10,000 Maniacs’ ‘These Are Days’.…
It’s difficult to not pick favourite members in a band like The Moody Blues; during their “Core Seven” albums, between 1967 and 1972, all five members wrote and sang (or in drummer Graeme Edge’s case, recited) their own material. I’ve…
A few months ago we discussed a curious incident at Wellington Zoo, New Zealand, when an intruder broke into the squirrel monkey cage, and was fought off by the tiny primates. The man responsible has appeared in court this week,…
I’ve been tremendously under the weather this week, and one of the best parts of being sick is the hallucinatory dreams I sometimes experience. In the throes of sickness I dreamed that I interviewed Neil Finn (of Crowded House and…
For some reason, hosting a birthday slumber party for my seven year old daughter on Friday reminded me of this song. The Records are a power-pop band from the late 1970s, best known for the minor hit ‘Starry Eyes’. The…
1970s progressive rock is one of my favourite eras of music – bands like Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, and Gentle Giant produced adventurous sonic tapestries. If you broaden the definition of progressive rock outside of symphonic rock acts, you can…
The prodigiously talented Jeff Buckley only made one studio album, 1994’s Grace, before his accidental drowning in the Mississippi River in 1997. \His estate has continued to release a wealth of posthumous material. These range from top notch material like…
In New Zealand, this week has witnessed the beginning of sprinter. The daffodils are flowering, and the washing is drying in the sunny breeze. In New Zealand and Australia, some weather scientists have attempted to change our weather paradigm to…
It’s a fair bet that Queen’s Brian May is the only person to have achieved a number one pop song and a PhD in Astrophysics. He combined these two skill-sets in ”39′, an album track from 1975’s A Night At…
Rickie Lee Jones is a one hit wonder in the eyes of the public; she charted with the jazzy, breezy ‘Chuck E.’s In Love’ from her 1979 debut album, which established her bohemian credentials, dating Tom Waits and wearing a beret.…
By the mid 1980s, The Clash were in disarray – musical lynch-pin Mick Jones had been fired from the group, and impresario Bernard Rhodes was back pulling the strings. The resulting album, 1985’s Cut The Crap, was widely derided, and…
Written by guitarist Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, ‘Kashmir’ is one of Led Zeppelin’s most well known and best loved tracks. It’s from their sixth studio album, the sprawling double Physical Graffiti. As well as the Eastern scales than Page…
Singer-songwriter Nadia Reid hails from Port Chalmers. It’s a port suburb of Dunedin, New Zealand, known for alternative life-stylers and artists. Her mother is a local jazz singer. Operating in the singer-songwriter genre, it’s easy to overlook what a capable…
After a string of successful albums with Crowded House, Neil Finn teamed up with his older brother Tim and recorded a relaxed and low-key album in 1995. The brothers’ previous attempts to write together had been incorporated into the 1991…
I’ve undergone a career change this week – I’ve dropped from full-time to a few hours a week, while my wife has returned to work almost full-time. It’s been quite a sudden change – we realised that I was finding…
My walk to work this week has been different than usual. Can any of my perceptive readers guess which city I’ve been working in? This clue is a red herring, as I haven’t actually been working in Liverpool: I had…
Warren Zevon was an industry veteran by the time he made his major-label debut in 1976. He’d toured with the Everly Brothers as their band leader, and was rooming with Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks in 1975. Jackson Browne had…
Up until this year’s Dirty Computer, Janelle Monáe’s entire musical career has consisted of Afro-Futurist concept albums, based around her alter-ego Cindi Mayweather. But with Dirty Computer, Monáe’s created a much more personal album, expressing her political and sexual concerns; she.…
With all the success The Flaming Lips enjoyed with their layered, emotional Pet Sounds-inspired albums like The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi, it’s easy to forget that they started back in the 1990s, as a raw, psychedelic guitar band. This song,…
Although jazz bassist Charles Mingus was best known for his musical accomplishments, he was a renaissance man with interests in surprising areas, namely the Charles Mingus Cat Toilet Training Program. Mingus writes that it took him three or four weeks to…
‘Heads Roll Off’ has one of my favourite openings – a Church-like organ fills the room, before a chugging guitar and thick Scottish accent delivers a memorable opening line; “Jesus is just a Spanish boy’s name….to anybody that doesn’t have…
Making and reading lists is one of the Great Pursuits of music geekdom, and I’ve certainly indulged from time to time. But while I generally limit myself to finite, single artist lists, a list written by Bill Wyman (but not…
It’s been an interesting month for 1970s band reunions – first we had Fleetwood Mac drop Lindsey Buckingham, effectively becoming Fleetwood House and a Heartbreaker. And now ABBA have announced their first new music for 35 years, along with a…
My wife and I are away on our tenth wedding anniversary holiday this weekend. I wanted to post a song befitting the landmark, but I struggled to find anything appropriate. Led Zeppelin’s ‘Ten Years Gone ‘ has always felt autumnal…
After success with Th’ Dudes and DD Smash, Dave Dobbyn’s reputation took a hit with his involvement in the Queen Street riot. He rehabilitated his reputation with this classic song from an animated movie. Dave Dobbyn Every country has a…
The most interesting news story to emerge from New Zealand this weekend was an attempted monkey burglary at Wellington Zoo. Thieves broke into the squirrel monkey enclosure with bolt cutters, but were fought off by the small primates. Despite only…
It’s already Easter Sunday in New Zealand today, so it seems appropriate to cover a piece of music that I associate with Church. As soon as Church is over each Sunday, the vicar likes to hook his phone up to…
The Replacements are one of my favourite bands of all time, with their rough and ready bar band sound contrasting with Westerberg’s sensitive insightful lyrics, and creating some terrific college rock. After making one of my favourite trios of albums…
Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg had a controversial career – he was a modernist who embraced the 12 tone scale, and the Nazis labelled his music as degenerate. There are plenty of famous deaths in 20th century music; Buddy Holly’s plane…
In late 1964, Brian Wilson quit touring with The Beach Boys so that he could focus on composing and arranging their records. His replacement for the first few months, covering his bass and falsetto, was the talented Glen Campbell. Campbell…
My favourite musical discovery of 2018 has been Nadia Reid. Reid is from Dunedin in the south of New Zealand, and ‘Richard’ is from her second album, 2017’s Preservation. Preservation was runner-up for album of the year in Mojo magazine,…
There’s recently been a study released, based on streaming data from Spotify, that indicates that most people gravitate towards music that was released in their early teens. Females favour music that they first heard at the age of 13, and…
I’ve already discussed HAIM recently on this blog, and I still find their sunny harmonies like musical comfort food, but I had a startling epiphany about them during the week that I wanted to share. Here’s the cover of the…
We’ve recently been away on a family road trip. My six year old is tolerant of different music, only once politely remarking that Steve Reich was “a bit boring”. But my three year old is fixated on children’s music and…
Over the last fortnight, while on holiday, I’ve been reading an oral history of Rough Trade Records, who boasted acts like The Smiths, The Fall, The Strokes, and The Libertines. While on holiday, I also heard of the passing of…
As an eager young music fan, I was perhaps an archetypal rockist. I wasn’t necessarily sexist, but 19 year old me dismissed Madonna as too pop, not playing an instrument, and in the case of this song, not writing her…
One of my favourite books is The Rolling Stone Rock ‘n’ Roll Reader, a collection of Rolling Stone articles and interviews from the late 1960s and early 1970s. It captures a point when the magazine, and rock music as a…
It sucks to be me, but I’ve just spent most of the last week at a work conference at a Thailand beach resort. This week’s selection is from Neil Young’s 1974 album On The Beach, while it’s also a commentary…
One of my favourite musical discoveries of 2017 has been the solo catalogue of Jimmy Webb. While his 1970s albums are a little scattershot, there are plenty of examples of his harmonically complex but accessible songs. Along with his contemporaries…
I spent my time at University working in a supermarket part time, and it only served to deepen my apathy to Christmas pop songs. The supermarket played music on a four hour cycle, with the songs in the same order…
I haven’t spent a lot of time with Janelle Monáe yet, but she’s impressive; able to enjoy popularity despite an uncompromising approach. While there are clear antecedents to her use of science fiction concepts in the R&B genre, with Parliament in…
Tommy Keene passed away unexpectedly in his sleep this week at the age of 59. The critically acclaimed power pop musician had recorded an album with Robert Pollard, and collaborated with The Goo Goo Dolls, Paul Westerberg, and recently with…
Mark Kozelek has steadily released a handful of brilliant songs on most of his albums, ever since the Red House Painters’ 1992 sad sack, slo-core debut Down Colorful Hill. His songs are usually coloured by his own nylon string or…
As a piano playing singer and song writer, North Carolina’s Ben Folds is almost inevitably going to draw comparisons to Elton John, the godfather of piano pop. But the first single from Folds’ second solo album, 2005’s Songs For Silverman,…
Melbourne’s Hunters & Collectors started as an arty new-wave band, but ‘Holy Grail’, released in 1992, is slice of Australian pub rock. There’s plenty to critique; it’s based around the straightforward I – IV – VI – V chord progression,…
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…
Each May is New Zealand Music Month. It’s a promotion that has outstayed its welcome, especially as New Zealand has outgrown the cultural cringe for homegrown music that was evident in the 1960s and 1970s. But, perhaps not coincidentally, I’ve…
Formed by a group of Auckland students in 1972, Split Enz is an iconic New Zealand band. They had 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. Most internationally recognised musicians came from the Flying Nun stable of twisted guitar pop or the mainstream pop of the Finn Brothers. The early 21st century…
