
If you’ve been reading the music press this week, there was some alarm or peevish glee (depending on where you were doing your reading) that vinyl sales had dropped. A Billboard piece stated that vinyl sales dropped by 33%, which is not insignificant. That’s selling 34.9 million units, down to 23.3 million in 2024. Are…

At the country music awards, they didn’t nominate Beyonce for anything despite her all-conquering country LP and while many shrugged, many were irritated by the whole thing. The irritation came from all sides, but more importantly, so did the shrugs – apart from something for the shelf in the spare toilet or a sticker to…

There’s something about golden era rap that just loves a fancy action figure, to place on your shelves next to your collected essays from hip hop journalism, tchotchkes, rap comics and high-end record middles and the like. It’s very wholesome, honestly. Well, Doom’s ‘Mm… Food’ is getting a reissue for its anniversary on November 15th,…

Once upon a time, music retreated away from the bombast of Britpop and US rap-rock, and all over the place, more introspective bedroom producers were making tricky electronic music and singer-songwriters gravitated toward the acid-folk of the ’70s, focusing more on cottage industries and community. Tunng managed to straddle both worlds, with critics dubbing their…

Look, most bands put a song out to let you know new things are coming, but not 2nd Grade. The power poppers from Philadelphia have chucked THREE whole songs at our ears and mercifully, they’re all really fun and filled with skuzzy pop hooks and jangly guitars. The revival of power pop is very welcome…

Today is John Lennon’s birthday – he would have been 84 – and to celebrate this, we’ve been treated to something rather surprising. While a lot of repackaged music from musicians can feel a little exploitative at times, churning out old stuff without much new going on, that’s not the case with this latest Lennon…

The excellent GULP are having a party for the 8th instalment of their broadsheet counter-culture magazine, which features all the wonderful words, tidbits, diatribes and cool design we’ve come to expect from them now. The issue drops on Friday 11th October and you can get down in person at The New Cross in Manchester’s Northern…

Thanks to Jonny Trunk and his ever gorgeous mailout for alerting us to this delightful clip of a very young Marcos Valle on the Andy Williams show. Of course, Marcos would move away from bossa nova and having short hair, to make a clutch of brilliant psychedelic LPs, before moving into jazz-fusion MPB and all…

There’s always a resurgence of Good Country and Americana when the USofA is in turbulent times. Lines are drawn, and Bad Country will focus on tired, conservative issues (in some cases, siding with literal baddies and idiots, becoming Cringe Edgelords: The Musical), giving the good heads something to kick against. We’ve had a ’70s country…

Ambivalence in pop, rock and everything else, is not often spoken about. And why would it? Barely summoning a feeling about something is not something you can really crow or cry about, because in it’s place, is an uninterested shrug. It’s not being above anything – it’s literally a magnolia painted wall in a flat…

The thing with The Band is that they seemed to land perfectly formed. Are there many better debut albums than ‘Music From The Big Pink’? As well as spearheading the revival of rootsy Americana, which is no mean feat in itself, to find yourself there when Dylan was called “Judas!”, Robbie Robertson lived enough for…
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.
POP CULTURE IS WORTH TALKING ABOUT.
CONTACT: HOWDYPOPCORPSATGMAILDOTCOM