
Many bands aim for Pet Sounds when they’re trying to make ambitious pop, but a lot of groups miss out on the pure, inventive, playful joy when they’re channelling Brian Wilson, Curt Boettcher & Co. There’s a shed pop, ramshackle feeling to when these things work best, like someone’s tripped over a box of classroom…

A Tory MP has attacked the whole of Drill music, because she thinks it is the reason that young people carry knives. Nickie Aiken says there’s a “direct link” and wants the government to look at record labels that release music that is found “celebrating gang culture.” At the House of Commons, the Cities of…

Never mind Tay Tay announcing a new LP – we can ignored that as everyone has already talked it to death already. We’re more interested in the imminent music from the mighty Kacey Musgraves. She’s been making a slow-melting psychedelic country music since her utterly fabulous ‘Golden Hour’ album (yes, that wasn’t her debut, but…

Look, we were all set to write and long love letter to Fonteyn’s utterly perfect LP ‘Trip The Light Fantastic’, even though it’s not a new release, because it really is one of the most wonderful records you’re likely to hear. The reason we were hesitating is purely selfish, and that was because we didn’t…

We’ve talked about our love for Dina Ögon at length before, and now there’s a new LP to talk about, and that’s the salve we needed to kick off 2024’s first new release review. Again, we find the band in groovy, sophisticated form, melting psychedelic soul, Balearic, dream pop, and something so uniquely their own,…

As the future of being a working musician looks increasingly bleak, collectively we need to work out a way of getting people paid. If we don’t, that means music will only be viable for people who have parents with blue links in their Wikipedia pages and the like. So, with micropayments and subscriptions becoming more…

There’s a new song from STRFKR (hey! That’s a naughty word hidden in there!) called ‘Under Water / In Air’ and it’s a very breezy, poppy bedroom indie song that sounds real nice on a Sunday morning. STRFKR’s Josh Hodges sez: “It was probably one of the most collaborative songs on the record. It started…

It really is hard to imagine the shape of pop and soul music without Barrett Strong. While he may not have been the household name that many of his peers were, where would popular music be without his hugely influential and soulful powerhouse that is ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’? There’s more too – he…
Imagine for a second, you’re driving past Abbey Road, and you nearly hit a pedestrian on that famous crossing. Imagine some more, that the pedestrian in question is Paul McCartney. The car in question is a Prius, so it’s kinda funny that he nearly got offed by a green motor. Also, let’s go with the…

We all need cool stuff to read. Finding it in the soup of the algorithm can be tricky, with a bunch of former broadsheet sorts going solo, and trying to flog subscription content on their mailers and whatnot. No harm, no foul – but these things tend to skew toward the po-faced and overly earnest.…

Caroline Polacheck’s is an adventurous pop star, and that’s always a good thing. She’s recently hit out at lazy comparisons to Bjork and Kate Bush, preferring to make music under her own steam, which is fair enough. She’s got a big voice and likes to be mildly awkward, which we say as a compliment of…
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