Tom Ewing posts
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Deep Magic From Before The Dawn Of Poptimism
A thing I have sometimes threatened to do is write about poptimism. This is not exactly that - at least not yet - but it comes out of a conversation I had about the word on Bluesky.The great Ann Powers was saying that a persistent issue is that “poptimism has never been properly theorised” - she meant at the time, ...
WESTLIFE - "You Raise Me Up"
(#1021, 4th November 2005)Winning the Nobel Peace Prize is an immense and serious honour. A sign of one’s arrival in the top tier of international statesmen, perhaps, or recognition of a life spent selflessly working to promote international harmony and end the scourge of war. In 2005, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the ...
ARCTIC MONKEYS - "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor"
(#1020, 29th October 2005)“Don’t believe the hype” says Alex Turner at the start of the “I Bet..” video. “We have no influences” he says in one of their dozens of interviews that winter. It’s an itchy, wary refusal to be defined - positively or negatively - that finds voice in the debut album title: Wha...
SUGABABES - "Push The Button"
(#1019, 8th October 2005)A third album with the Heidi-Keisha-Mutya line-up, a fourth number one: for a group whose membership shuffles are notorious, you can lose sight of how consistent and successful the Sugabaes’ heyday was. Look to the credits, though, and “Push The Button” marks a transition that’s just as...
PUSSYCAT DOLLS - "Don't Cha"
(#1018. 17th September 2005)If “DARE” at No.1 felt like a lairy fluke, “Don’t Cha” feels coldly predestined, a branding project whose success was engineered by all the machineries at Hollywood and the industry’s command. Look more closely though and there are similarities too - the Pussycat Dolls, like Gori...
GORILLAZ - "Dare"
(#1017, 10th September 2005)It’s an irresistible coincidence that ten years after the “Battle Of Britpop”, Noel Gallagher and Damon Albarn met again at the top of the charts. Brought together in a moment of media heat, in 1995 they were the faces of a trend both men wanted to outgrow. Gallagher in a literal sense...
OASIS - "The Importance Of Being Idle"
(#1016, 3rd September 2005)When I heard the news Oasis were reuniting, my first thought was, “thank God, an angle on the ‘Idle’ entry”. It’s not impossible that this might even end up only being their penultimate Number 1. It would be a surefire news story if “Wonderwall” finally got there, the charts’ ...
McFLY - "I'll Be OK"
(#1015, 27th August 2005)I still find McFly hard to appreciate, but in the comments for their previous No.1 I linked a piece which made the strongest case I’d seen for them as songwriters and musicians. One of the questions this piece asked was why critics had so little time for them, giving the impression of McFly a...
JAMES BLUNT - "You're Beautiful"
(#1014, 23rd July 2005)“Proof that one song is all it takes” says James Blunt’s Twitter biography. He knows what he’s known for, and in his post-superstar era he’s played his hand with great skill, cultivating a self-deprecating persona on social media as an affable gent who’s as sick of his big hit as you ...
It's A Crazy Situation
I've suspended September billing (again lol), and can only apologise for the lack of updates. But here's a little preview of the "Importance Of Being Idle" Popular entry - some thoughts on the Oasis reunion...When I heard the news Oasis were reuniting, my first thought was, “thank God, an angle on the...
What I'm Up To (August 2024)
Hello! And hello to more of you than before - thanks to extremely generous recommendations from Andrew Hickey and Centuries Of Sound I have about 50 more patrons than I did a week ago. Welcome, all of you.Most of the newcomers are free members, which means they're not seeing many full posts, but your interest is st...
2PAC ft ELTON JOHN - "Ghetto Gospel"
(#1013, 2nd July 2005)The pattern for recent hip-hop Number 1s on Popular - Nelly’s pair being the best example - has been the chart-topper as a kind of medal for services rendered, generally coming an album cycle after the artist’s more vital work. Mostly that’s a function of the low weekly sales of Number 1s at...
CRAZY FROG - "Axel F"
(#1012, 4th June 2005)In 2004 I took on the worst project of my professional life; worst in the sense that it was miserable and time-consuming and also in the sense that I did it very badly. A certain mobile phone company wanted to know what their rivals were doing online to keep young customers happy and asked my boss...
OASIS - "Lyla"
(#1011, 28th May 2005)The long twilight of Oasis is reaching its end, at least in Popular terms. The 00s took them from the kings of English rock to a drab fixture and finally a running joke, bigmouths promising a return to form which never comes. This is almost the last we’ll see of the Gallaghers. But little has ch...
AKON - "Lonely"
(#1010, 14th May 2005)This is going to be one of those annoying reviews which takes the billion-view signature hit of a highly successful artist and picks away at production choices which - objectively! - have been extremely successful. “Lonely” is not a one-hit wonder; it failed to tank Akon’s promising career; ...
PREVIEW: Dan Dare And The Dame
Here's a little bit of Work In Progress for you from the first entry in the upcoming 2000AD blog. I've chosen this cos it's actually (well, tangentially) about pop music as well as comics...Everyone else in 2000AD has a direction you get right away - MACH 1 and Dredd have jobs; Harlem Heroes and Bill Savage...
Fit And Working Again aka What I'm Up To (June '24)
Hello lovely patrons!This is a catch-up post, covering present circumstances and future plans, including a NEW PROJECT and a shift I'm going to try in how I structure my blogging work (which will mean more early posts here, if it comes off). First, a personal bit.You may have noticed - do Patreon actually tell you ...
TONY CHRISTIE ft PETER KAY - "(Is This The Way To) Amarillo"
(#1009, 26th March 2005)The success of Elvis’ reissues - a promotional gimmick which actually managed to hack the charts - made a strong case that the new pop of 2005 simply wasn’t able to capture the wider public imagination. This record makes it inarguable. The best selling single of the year - the only million-s...
MCFLY - "All About You"/"You've Got A Friend"
(#1008, 19th March 2005)McFly’s biggest hit, crossing the 500k sales barrier partly because it was the official Comic Relief single. The Carole King cover is doing most of the hard work on that front, with a video involving the lads helping out in Uganda, and the song stopping for a chorus sung by the kids they meet....
What I'm Up To, March/April '24 (Aardvark Aftermath Special)
Hello friends!I was going to share one of these updates at the end of the month as usual, but it would just have been "I've been doing nothing except the fucking Cerebusblog posts" and now at least I can say "I've finished the fucking Cerebusblog posts"This took over my writing time in ways that...
BENSON BOONE - "Beautiful Things"
Part of the Patreon-exclusive set of posts looking at current No.1 hits, even though there's been another one since this.My day job involves analysing advertising, and one of the ads I ended up seeing most - cos it performed very well on the metrics we were using - was Budweiser’s Super Bowl commercial from about...
BEYONCE - "Texas Hold 'Em"
I’ve been faffing around on this one for ages - it was Number 1 for five weeks and now isn't and I still didn't write it. I finally realised I needed to just get the thing done before I listen to Cowboy Carter, which is going to move the discourse around this song, and this phase of Beyoncé’s career, forwa...
#Let5D0It - The Shortlist
I promised (myself if nobody else) that I'd post my "final 100" contenders for Arron Wright's upcoming #Let5D0It challenge on Bluesky - my 50 favourite singles from 1954 to 1976.So here they are - there's actually 101 tracks on the longlist, as something's in there that "shouldn't" b...
What I'm Up To, February '24
Hi! A monthly round-up of the activities YOUR patreon pounds are funding - and a general check-in. I'm well, happier and healthier than I was last month, and I hope you are too. Also! I went to New York for a client to help with their work on Super Bowl ads (if you thought they were nothing special, guess what? You...
STEREOPHONICS - "Dakota"
(#1007, 12th March 2005)“Dakota” has a curious reputation. A lot of music fans I know see it as Stereophonics’ best song. That in itself is hardly unusual. But many of those people also see it as the band’s only good song. Which is odder - these guys have eight UK No.1 albums and twenty Top 20 singles; they are...
Your Mom Called, I Polled Her (The World Cup Of 2023 Last 16)
With the 2023 poll nearly over I thought I’d run down the Peoples Pop Last 16, maybe even rank them. I came to almost all these new at the start of the poll so it’s just been the last month that they’ve grown and shrank on me. This is going to be live to everybody until the poll ends, then will be only for patron...
What I'm Up To, January '24
I want to do a monthly update post filling you in on where I am with various personal projects, including the ones you signed up to help me complete(!) This will hopefully be a regular check-in. Also, I vaguely mentioned ill health in various places and wanted to let people know that aside from a few recurring ailments...
NOAH KAHAN - "Stick Season"
This is the first of a series of Patreon-exclusive posts which are notes on current No.1s, intended to go up while they're actually at No.1. They won't show up on FT and I'm not prejudging myself by giving them marks or anything! Also, I apologise for the last 6 weeks' lack of content - I was ill for mo...
NELLY ft TIM McGRAW - "Over And Over"
(#1006, 5th March 2005)There are meetings between genres where creative sparks fly and new hybrid forms can be glimpsed, like undreamed-of particles in a supercollider. There are also meetings between genres which feel more like high level EU summits - whatever happens behind closed doors, the eventual communiqué is a...
JENNIFER LOPEZ - "Get Right"
(#1005, 26th February 2005)There is a 2005 single, a huge hit, which many will tell you is producer Rich Harrison’s masterpiece. On it, cut-ups of funk breaks are rearranged at oblique angles in a 21st century update of James Brown’s rhythmic modernism, building an abstract sculpture of bone-rattling beats and sliv...
