
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

You know James Acaster from the TV and clips of him rinsing Ricky Gervais don’t you? A ball of nervous energy in a tracksuit top, famed for his Bake Off failures and his wild ride on Taskmaster. He’s a funny, smart fella. He’s also in a 40 piece collective called Temps, which sees Acaster in…

There’s nothing a music writer likes saying more than ‘toldyouso‘. Be it spotting a band before they get big and you told everyone they’d like them, and they did, or better yet, saying there’s something off about an artist for them to reveal themselves to be dicks. This is all to lead up to this…

We could have said that ‘Thrust’ by McNeal and Niles was getting reissued, but that may not mean a lot to most people. Instead, we’re telling you it has been sampled by J Dilla, because that’s a bit catchier. Either way, it’s a masterful and very, very sought after LP, so this is great news…

Let’s face it – we don’t need to write about the imminent Beyonce tour. We don’t need to mention it at all, because obviously, the Beyhive have alerts set up and publications bigger than this one, with their CEO teams and algorithm jammers, will write about it more prominently. So we’ll be honest and just…
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