The Pop Corporation
WORDS ABOUT MUSIC + POP CULTURE
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When you’re singing along to a song at the top of your lungs, sometimes you don’t know what you’re singing. Sometimes you can be singing the saddest lyrics imaginable, but you’ve not realised because you’re half-cut on a bottle of rum and some floor-drugs, and it’s Friday night. Ever danced to ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’ by
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We’re not arsed if you already knew about this, because some of us didn’t. Below is a video of Nico (Velvet Underground/Warhol) playing in Preston, and that’s exciting. Nico’s time with the Velvets is well documented, but ever the Bohemian, she moved from romantic partner to country and was generally a nomad going where the
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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Hey! Do you like new music and, not just new music, but slightly difficult music that’s fun? Well, you should check outy Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra newbie, ‘Future Shaman’. Apply here if you like wonky jazz and post-rock. It’s discordant, good stuff. Mazurek is a composer/trumpeter and the Exploding Star Orchestra features Damon Locks
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We like a popstar making bold choices, and Sam Smith has been doing exactly that lately. It doesn’t matter whether you like the tunes or not, we should absolutely support a commercial artist when they lean into the experimental and off-kilter. Did you see them on SNL, with Sharon Stone draping themselves all over the
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It feels kinda shitty referring to a new artist as ‘Bjork’s daughter’, but needs must. Isadora Bjarkardottir Barney is her name, and she’s released her debut solo work as part of a comp showcasing Icelandic music. The comp is called ‘DRULLUMALL 4’ and Isadora’s track – ‘bergmál’ – is really good, you’ll be glad to
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The mighty Pet Shop Boys are all set to share some previously unreleased songs in April. It’s all part of a new thing they’re doing and that new thing is a book called ‘Annually’. The 2023 edition of the yearly release (hence the name) will be a 64-page hardback affair, containing journals, photos from their
STOP HOARDING TUNES
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ALEX HORNE’S 24 HOUR SONG RIGHT NOW
Alex Horne has a band called The Horne Section and of course, is the creator of Taskmaster, so his brain works a little differently. For charity, he’s singing live for a whole 24 hours doing a version of Ace’s ‘How Long’, which is really funny. Horne and his band, along with some guests, are doing…
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EUROVISION PRESSURE CONTINUES
Israel’s participation in Eurovision continues to create woes for the song contest organisers as countries boycott the summer event due to take place from May 12th at Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna, Austria. This of course, feels very much like a problem entirely of the making of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) themselves, given that they’ve stopped the likes of Russia…
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KINKS TEA
You’ve heard ‘Afternoon Tea’ by The Kinks, right? You should’ve as it’s great. Obviously, since the band were stopped from entering the United States for a host of reasons, where the soft Yanks would have such hooligans in town while Woodstock was on, The Kinks leaned into their Englishness. The albums during that period were…
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FREE RANGE / BEST OF 2025
That’s it – we’ve basically completed 2025, so save a few surprise drops, all we have to do now is dig into Christmas music and familiar party songs on the work’s do and down the local. It’s good stuff, whether you celebrate god or not. You’ve read the round-up of songs, now it is time…
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