The Pop Corporation

WORDS ABOUT MUSIC + POP CULTURE

  • SPOTIFY PAYOLA?

    Any musician who has uploaded their music to Spotify as an independent artist knows how futile it all is, expecting to end up on any of the editorial lists made by the company, which help push songs to millions of people using their front page. The fact is, if you don’t have the connections through…

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  • RIP JOSEPH BYRD – A TRUE ONE-OFF

    After his father bought a mine in Tucson, Arizona, Joseph Byrd grew up and found himself drawn to music. Initially, it was vibraphone and accordion in pop groups, he soon branched out into local TV arrangements and college jazz combos. A talented kid, he found himself in a fellowship at Stanford, where he rubbed shoulders…

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  • SHOEGAZE DANIEL AVERY MIX

    You may know Daniel Avery for his smart techno music, but there’s more strings to his bow than thunderous beats and brain frazzling synths. To show that, he’s done a really nice shoegaze mix which is perfect for transporting you out of the gloomy weather at the tail end of 2025. While this mix may…

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  • WEYES BLOOD FEATURES ON SPELLING TRACK

    If you’ve been waiting impatiently for a new album from Weyes Blood, you need to chill your boots. All good things come in their own time. Of course, she featured on a Drugdealer track earlier in the year, but she’s also appearing on a new track from SPELLING. And yes, we kinda feel bad that…

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  • ORVILLE PECK RETURNS

    Orville Peck is one of the leading alt-country voices – thankfully, that means his musical choices, rather than simply branding him as ‘alternative’ because he isn’t a heterosexual man – although you’d be forgiven for thinking that’s the case. He’s got a new EP coming out on November 14th called ‘Appaloosa’ and there’s a song…

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  • VIAL’S GLAM GRUNGE

    A lot of punk has a hardcore or pop punk bent at the moment – makes sense given the early Noughties are officially retro and the kids are looking to the past for comfort. Well, it’s nice to see some other genres bleeding into the scene. We look to VIAL, who have put a single…

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  • DISCUSSING ROISIN MURPHY

    We wanted to write something about this Whole Thing with Roisin Murphy, but didn’t get much further than “why can’t some people just shut their mouths about other communities, especially ones who loved them so much?” Well, we just watched a very sensitive and well thought out video essay from The Last Mixed Tape, which…

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  • CHECK THE CONVENIENCE

    There’s a certain twang in alternative rock that really works the gears of music nerds. You look at Pavement, Television et al, and you find that the discordant guitars aren’t simply playing out of key, but makes you feel a bit smarter. It’s a cunning trick. Well, we got that feeling from the new song…

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  • FREE RANGE NOV 25

    Hello there. We remembered that listeners of our related radio show – FREE RANGE – might like to read the tracklisting for the show, instead of just listening to the words being pronounced badly throughout it. It’s the last show of the year before the round-up of 2025’s best music, so the last time where…

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  • SURPRISE NEW NONAME TRACK!

    We’re big fans of NONAME who is someone who absolutely marches to the beat of her own drum, and she’s at it again with a surprise new track! Called ‘Hundred Acres’, it appeared on the algorithm which did its job for once, and as you’d expect, it’s smart as hell, funky, irresistible chorus, and is…

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STOP HOARDING TUNES


  • NEW SQUID TUNE

    Look, we don’t know a lot about Squid, but you might. Squid feel like one of those bands that people like you probably like. We realise that this sounds like shade, but it’s not. There’s new music to listen to, crucially, and we don’t quite know how to describe it, which in an age of…

  • DO WE NEED TO TELL YOU ABOUT NEW GAGA?

    Such is the paid-for media churn these days, it almost feels redundant writing about bit single releases. What’s the point in telling you what we think, when you’ve already been alerted to the existence of a song, and listened to it yourself? It all reeks of us trying to vaguely grab some traffic off the…

  • HELP SHAPE THE FUTuRE OF MUSIC

    Instead of shrugging at the inevitability of everything being bad in the world of music, maybe we could all take a few minutes out of our day, to contribute to the future of it. If you want to have your say about the state – and future – of live music, then you’re invited to…

  • FREE RANGE / FEB25

    The new radio show of ours – Free Range – is out. Music from all over the globe as ever, with new music from Panda Bear, Hayley Williams’ granddad, Everything Is Recorded, Vulfmon, and loads more. There’s a tribute to dear Marianne Faithfull too, as well as the usual shenanigans with a dreadful AI co-host.…

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THERE’S NO MONEY IN THIS GAME ANYMORE, BUT IF YOU WANT TO WRITE SOMETHING FOR THE POP CORPS, YOU ARE WELCOME TO GET IN TOUCH. HAPPY HUNTING.