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It’s the end, the end of the Seventies.

It was a decade that had started with Edison Lighthouse and ended with Another Brick in the wall. After 221 number one singles, the decade that had given us eve…

Poor old Johnnie Ray.

Actually, I wonder what the heart wrenching vocal superstar of the fifties made of his starring role in the biggest selling single of 1982, thirty years after his own chart toppi…

Wake up, it’s a beautiful morning!

It’s the spring of 1995. That most eclectic of decades, the nineties if you will, was no longer the new kid on the millennial block. Pop culture has boxed up the eig…

2002. 

The pop culture landscape would never be the same again.

No, we’re not talking about Robbie Williams £80m, six album deal (although Rudebox would indeed shift the landscape, if not exactly many …

Can You Feel It?

It’s July, 1989 and the temperature is hot! 

Actually, for a lot of the UK it surprisingly was, but let’s leave meteorological memories aside, we’re talking the dancefloor. The country…

In 2025, the iconic NOW series moves into the world of musical theatre with a brand new show ‘NOW, That’s What I Call A Musical’ delivering a storyline that ties friendship and incredible 80s pop mus…

The United Kingdom in Summer 1998 was an interesting place indeed.

In June, the DVD was released for the first time and presumably the first person to ignore random extras, interviews and photo galler…

Welcome, everyone, to the Back to Now review for 2024!

Following in the well-loved festive traditions such as fingering your way through the double edition Radio Times, fumbling your way to the back o…

Ideas, experiments, imagination.

So, what was the optimum Britpop™️ year? Academics, thinkers and BBC documentary makers have wrestled over this question for many a year. Possibly even as long as it t…

Dylan Jones once described the Eighties as being shaped by ‘a new type of bohemianism, one empowered by a certainty and an optimism that was only fleeting back in the sixties.’ *

Moreso, K.Tel records…

We’re going where the sun shines brightly,

We’re going where the sea is blue…

1986 really was very Cliff. He had celebrated his first No1 of the 80s with the cast of The Young Ones, featured in some de…

“What we’re gonna do right here is go back, way back!”

If you were really down with the cool kids in 1984, you would have most definitely have been passing around the school prized C90 cassettes featu…

August 1989.

The final year of ‘the finest pop decade ever’™️ is moving along quite nicely thank you very much. 

There’s most definitely a change in the air, and we don’t mean the launch of the FOUR ch…

It was the wise prophet and occasional flower impersonator Peter Gabriel that said, 

‘I don’t remember, I don’t recall,

I have no memory of anything at all.’

Do you remember 2008?

Yes, it's only (!) 16 y…

It's November 2023, and the world's most successful compilation series is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Five decades of compiling the latest hits, the occasional miss, but always the songs that s…

Confidence, they say, is a preference for the habitual voyeur of what is known as…

…1994, darlings! 

And of course, as perceived wisdom now dutifully dictates, we were all completely mad for it, lemon …

Pop. The way that we process everything.

So, it's the summer of 1993. According to meteorological 'experts', the UK experienced its lowest maximum temperatures since 1972. Only 4 days were officially …

Welcome to Spring 1993.

And, I’m sure you’ll all agree, there was only one phrase on everyone’s lips.

I lick-he boom, boom down.

(Checks notes)

Anyway, more of that later.

The legendary NOW compilation se…

Welcome, one and all, to the 3rd annual Back to NOW review! 

As is now tradition, this end of year episode of the variously compiled podcast provides us with a festive opportunity to glance back over …

They all know it’s Dynamite, 

And the music went on and on and on…

The history books will tell us that, in theory, 1973 shouldn’t have worked.

Terrorist campaigns, oil shortages, petrol rations, power c…