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


  • 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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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.