Back to NOW!

La, La, La.

Autumn 2001. In many ways, it has been a challenging year. 5ive and Steps split, Hearsay don’t.

Pop, just like the most boybandish of the latest boybands, Blue is (all) on the rise. The new…

It’s a Saturday night in April 1985 and a queue is gathering outside Raffles nightclub in, well pretty much every town and city across this sceptred isle. Feverishly excited boys and girls wait and d…

It’s summer 1991 and school’s out which means it’s time for your latest compilation! It was probably on cassette, possibly from your local high street and most definitely slotted straight into your p…

WARNING!

This episode contains scenes of graphic and often gratuitous pop perfection. Listener discretion is advised.

Summer 2004. 

The wettest summer in the UK for fifty years, and with it being anothe…

Welcome to the middle of ‘the nineties’! Sort of! Spring 1994, to be exact. And indeed, the popworld is revelling in the ‘seed of the new breed’.

Again, sort of…

You know the drill by now, the glorious…

It’s the summer of 1992!

The UK had accidentally voted in the Conservative government again but to make amends wins lots of medals at the Freddie and Monserrat Olympic Festival Sporting thingy in Barc…

Alexa, show me 1984.

If you were to ask a certain searchable device (others are, obviously available), there’s a high probability that the year George Orwell predicted would see us living in a terrify…

Welcome to 1993. Autumn, to be exact. 

And how was it all looking?

Well, it wasn’t really baggy like 1990, or rave-y like 1991, but it wasn’t Britpoppy like 1995. It was all a bit…well, who knows? Can …

Welcome to this bonus edition of Back to Now!

A small but perfectly formed bite-size extra serving of Festive Pop!

To compliment the end of year review of 2022, enjoy a collection of previous lovely gu…

Festive greetings and welcome to what all of the Pop Kids are rightly calling the 2nd annual Back to Now review for 2022!

Can it really be a whole 12 months since we last pulled up a cosy chair, poure…

Jack, jack, jack….wait? What? Who is this Jack?

It’s 1987, and the future has arrived in the shape of the first No1 of the year courtesy of Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley - House Music is here!

Hold up, wait a mi…

1991.

It was the first palindromic year since 1881, and to be honest I’m not really up on the hits of that particular Victorian number. 

(Newsflash: Bruckner’s 6th Symphony was pretty hot that year)

Fas…

1990. 

Well it certainly was time for the guru, but as the first year of the new decade was drawing to a close, it was time - a little time, if you will - for so much more. And as always, our favourit…

‘One goal, one mission…one vision!’.

November 1985, and the latest poptastic edition of NOW kicks off with the unifying cry from Freddie and the boys, after an unforgettable summer when music really d…

Welcome to the end of the eighties! Pop’s greatest (it was, wasn’t it?) decade was getting ready to pack away it’s shoulder pads, leg warmers and Rubik’s cubes (not being too stereotypical are we?) a…

Welcome to Autumn 1996. Royal divorce, Mad Cow disease, Take That helplines, TFI Friday. 

But it wasn’t all bad news, oh no – the pop charts were continuing to dazzle and amaze the CD buying public! I…

It's Autumn 1992! Damn, Would I Lie To You?

What an interesting time for the UK singles charts. Is it fair to say the decade was at some sort of apex point? 

Well, the tracklist for November’s NOW, Tha…

Enjoy this trip.

And it is a trip!

What a poptastic year 1988 was turning out to be at NOW HQ! As the 80s were speeding their way towards a dayglo regeneration into the 90s, the charts were chock full …

For this episode I am joined by award winning film director Grant McPhee.

Amongst Grant’s films are Big Gold Dream, which tells the story of FAST Product and Postcard Records, two of Scotland’s most l…

Can 1996 really be over a quarter of a century ago? Yes it can, and this is where we find the hot hits of summer as sizzlingly delivered in NOW34!

The charts as ever, were serving up a veritable feast…