The Pop Corporation

WORDS ABOUT MUSIC + POP CULTURE

  • LONG LIVE THE 45 KING

    We’ve lost The 45 King, and we couldn’t let his passing go without paying tribute. Real name Mark James, The 45 King is a supremely influential producer and mover and shaker in hip hop and club music, even if he wasn’t a household name broadly. Influence and fame aren’t the same thing. James has produced

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  • IS BRITNEY’S BOOK THE ALBUM DROP OF THE YEAR?

    Whether you like it or not, Britney Spears is about to drop the biggest pop-cultural moment of 2023, and it’s not even new music. The fervour around her new memoir is bigger than, say, a new album from Rihanna or the imminent Beatles release. And why is that? Well, largely, it’s because Britney is still

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  • BRAZIL’S PSYCH MASTERS, BIKE

    Brazil has a wealth of incredible psychedelic music at the moment – a second wave of Tropicalia if you like – which we plan on writing about extensively (if it doesn’t appear in a magazine, pitch skills dependent). One of the best groups are BIKE who are fuzz forward and heavily cosmic and we love

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  • HOUSEY TUB THUMPS FROM DAWN RICHARD

    Dawn Richard is brilliant. Experimental R&B and related and always ahead of the curve for sure. We shared her fantastic ‘Bubblegum’ track a while back, but now there’s a three track EP and one of the songs of it needs you to update your playlists! ‘Babe Ruth’ is a cross between house and R&B and

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  • CAROLINE POLACHEK GLITCHES WITH DANG

    Caroline Polachek has been making big waves lately and even landed a primo slot on the Colbert show, which is no mean feat. With that, she’s got a new glitchy number which might be our favourite of hers yet. It’s called ‘Dang!’ too, and came from the same sessions as her last LP ‘Desire, I

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  • BANDCAMP RIP?

    It isn’t generally a good sign when a company takes over another company and promptly sacks half the staff, is it? Seen the absolute shambles at Twitter? Exactly. And so to Bandcamp, depressingly. Music licensing company Songtradr bought the platform – widely regarded to be the saviour of independent musicians getting any kind of income

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  • THE TOUR THAT BROKE THE JACKSONS

    You’d think 1984 would be a vintage year for Michael Jackson. His album ‘Thriller’ has basically conquered the world and, for many, redefined what it meant to be a popstar and the subsequent tour only cemented his place in the annals of pop, fully breaking free from the shadow of his pop past. However, post-Thriller,

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  • THIS WISHY TRACK IS FUN

    It’s nice to see the return of noisy indie music. We’re not sure if this is classic college rock, shoegaze or what. It doesn’t really matter as we’re imagining the sound of Wishy cascading over us from a small stage, and it feels real nice. They’re from Indiana and we don’t know too much about

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  • DANIEL ÖGREN VINYL

    Mr Bongo put good records out, and the latest we’ve spotted is a gem from Daniel Ögren, who you might know from our newest favourite band Dina Ögon. Available on special magenta vinyl (and standard obvs), Ögren’s ‘Fastingen-92′ was initially put out on a limited pressing in 2020, and now Mr Bongo have reissued the

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  • THE BIRTH OF PUNK IN NYC

    Wanna watch something cool? You’re in luck. Amplified have shared a documentary on YouTube about the start of the New York City punk scene. All the faces you want to see are there – Iggy, Debbie, The Ramones, and talking heads from Jayne County, Alice Cooper, Lenny Kaye, Alan Vega and loads more. From non

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STOP HOARDING TUNES


  • RYAN LESLIE BACK WITH THE STUDIO VIDS

    When Ryan Leslie is on form, he’s hard to beat. From ‘Diamond Girl’ to ‘I-R-I-N-A’, to ‘You’re Not My Girl’ and ‘Addiction’, R-Les was serving up bangers that were big, but should’ve been made even bigger. His production work with other artists was hot stuff too, with the mega ‘Long Way 2 Go’ with Cassie,…

  • TRACY CHAPMAN X LUKE COMBS NICENESS

    There’s been a lot of chatter around Luke Combs’ hit cover of ‘Fast Car’, a lot of furrowed brows and people wafting their forks pensively at dinner parties, about whether a country singer should be doing a song by a woman of colour, a woman people assume is gay (look, she might be, but she’s…

  • TWO TYPES OF PEOPLE

    In the corporate world, there’s this terrible pair of words that people use – “proactive” versus “reactive”. There’s something in it though, because we all know that there’s two types of people in the world. The first is someone who creates a parameter for a fun Spotify playlist. Maybe they come up with a scenario…

  • THE RETURN OF BETH GIBBONS

    Beth Gibbons is one of the good ones. Never needlessly hurried, she’s made incredible music with Portishead, and of course, she’s done other work like the folkie numbers with Rustin Man and Paul Webb. Well, she is back again with her debut solo LP ‘Lives Outgrown’. “As usual it reflects what’s been going on with…

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