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Johnny Sharp  |  Nov 07, 2024
Although a fixture of The Hollywood punk scene in The late '70S and early '80S, the all-female quintet also had a pop sensibility that would see their debut album topping the charts. First, however, they needed to find a label that would let them record it...

If women face all-too-familiar obstacles to achieving success in music these days, many of those barriers have at least been broken down over the years by trailblazing female artists. One such pioneering act is undoubtedly The Go-Go's, who burst out of the Los Angeles punk scene in the late 1970s and set a template for pop punk that still endures.

Johnny Sharp  |  Oct 16, 2024
The Milwaukee trio's 1983 self-titled debut album 'reinvented rock 'n' roll', according to one critic, and has since sold over one million copies despite never troubling the charts. Its secret? Brilliantly simple songs and the evergreen theme of teenage angst

If you wanted to fill a compilation album with songs of adolescent angst, you wouldn't have too much trouble, particularly if you're a fan of guitar-based rock music. Call it 'Teenage Kicks', start with the title track, and off you go. But what would you pick for its album equivalent? Is there a long-playing record that sums up the experience of being a disaffected, angry and unloved teenager in the modern world, particularly the male of that particular species?

Mike Barnes  |  Oct 02, 2024
The guitarist's first album for Warner Bros saw him put together a twin-keyboard band and dig even deeper into his fusion-jazz style. The result? A set that topped the Billboard charts and brought him a Grammy award for its only vocal performance...

Overall, I think the jazz police never forgave me for taking George Benson from the jazz area to where he became a pop artist', record producer Tommy LiPuma told jerryjazzmusician.com in 2022. 'I was always a pop music freak, but I was also a big jazz fan.'

Mike Barnes  |  Aug 31, 2024
Before embarking on a decades-long solo career, Gary Numan was the driving force behind New Wave three-piece Tubeway Army, and his electronic fingerprints are all over their sci-fi-tinged 1979 album, which took synth pop to the very top of the charts

When punk arrived in the UK in late 1976 it had its radical aspects, including questioning the relationship between audience and artist, but it was essentially a form of back-to-basics rock ’n’ roll, albeit harder, faster and more aggressive than its predecessors.

Johnny Sharp  |  Jul 28, 2024
Topping the UK charts upon its 1981 release, the Sheffield band’s debut album melded string arrangements with disco and funk, plus some Trevor Horn production magic. The result? Ten peerless pop tunes that looked at love through a cinematic lens...

Like a lot of bright, shiny things, ABC and their defining debut album, The Lexicon Of Love, were created out of something a good deal less glamorous. The grim-up-north narrative that is wheeled out as a backdrop to so much provincial punk and post-punk can be overstated, but there’s no doubt that when Stephen Singleton and Mark White’s avant-garde electronic outfit Vice Versa morphed into ABC with help from former fanzine writer turned frontman Martin Fry, they wanted to offer an escapist vision of pop for trying, recessionary times. They also rejected old school approaches to music-making.

Mike Barnes  |  May 17, 2024
Released in 1981, the third album from the UK kings of Gothic rock built upon the stark sounds of its predecessor, added even more melancholy, and contained a song that the band's leader and singer Robert Smith would later describe as 'life-changing'

From 1976, UK punk produced such a surge of energy that it was like riding a wave, both for musicians and fans alike. The Cure began in earnest in Crawley that year, as The Easy Cure, having grown out of a number of other bands dating back to their schooldays. Robert Smith was on guitar and vocals, Lol Tolhurst on drums and Michael Dempsey on bass. Their sound was sparse and urgent, fuelled by punk but with a finger on the pop pulse.

Mike Barnes  |  Apr 10, 2024
The teenage singer with the vibrato soprano shunned the commercial trappings of a major label deal to record this stripped-back collection of traditional folk songs, launching a career that would later see her performing at the White House...

In July 1959, aged just 18, Joan Baez played at the first Newport Folk Festival at Freebody Park, Rhode Island, and created an instant reaction. Coming off the stage she was approached by newspapers, the student press and Time magazine, who all wanted to speak to the unknown teenager with the astonishing pure soprano voice and who had duetted on a few songs with singer, guitarist and banjo player Bob Gibson.

Mike Barnes  |  Mar 05, 2024
The politically infused post-punk of the band's early singles morphed into meticulously crafted electronic pop for their major label debut album in 1985, although singer Green Gartside's philosophical lyrics would remain as elusive as ever...

In 1985, Scritti Politti had enjoyed chart success with their second album, Cupid & Psyche 85, and had achieved hit singles both in the UK and the US. And with his dreamy demeanour, honeyed vocals and dyed blonde mullet, lead singer and occasional guitarist/keyboard player Green Gartside had become a bona fide pop star.

Mike Barnes  |  Feb 02, 2024
Take the inventive, 'un-linear' musical approach of charismatic frontman Don Van Vliet, add the guitar skills of a youthful Ry Cooder, and you get this groundbreaking 1967 debut album that throws blues, rock, soul, doo-wop and more into the melting pot

Few groups have a history as complex and convoluted as that of Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band, not least because of the tendency of vocalist Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, to imaginatively embellish aspects of the story. In that respect we can start right back at the group's name.

Johnny Sharp  |  Jan 16, 2024
Arriving just a year after their 1986 debut Please, the British electro-pop duo's second album solidified their chart-topping status, thanks to a bigger production influenced by ZZ Top, a guest appearance from Dusty Springfield, and some classic tunes...

It's a malaise almost as old as pop music itself. Second album syndrome – the crisis faced by an artist writing the follow-up to a hit debut LP, when they realise that after having had their whole lives to come up with the contents of their first offering to the world, they now only have a few months to rustle up a fresh batch of equally strong material for the follow-up.

Mike Barnes  |  Dec 15, 2023
Not content with being part of the 'rock 'n' roll revival' of the early 1970s, this Canvey Island-based band took inspiration from Detroit's MC5 and the Delta Blues to develop a unique sound that would be captured in all its glory on their 1974 debut album

Dr. Feelgood grew out of a 1960s teenage skiffle band who played in Canvey Island, Essex, at the edge of the Thames estuary. The members included John 'Sparko' Sparkes on guitar, while Lee Collinson – who later became Lee Brilleaux – was originally on banjo but became the band's vocalist by default. The reason? He was the only member who could remember the words to the songs.

Johnny Sharp  |  Nov 03, 2023
A spot of R&R in Jamaica, followed by a lakeside recording set-up back in Blighty, was all it took for a disillusioned John Martyn to recapture his music mojo. The resulting album, released in 1977, mixed folk, electronica and the sound of geese...

For much of the '70s it was customary for bands or recording artists to retire to a rural bolthole for a spell, hoping the country air would help them get their head together. Disillusioned and burnt out from recording and touring, in 1976 John Martyn tried this himself. But in his case the destination was another country, halfway across the world.

Mike Barnes  |  Oct 03, 2023
Led by singer-songwriter Mike Scott, The Waterboys honed their 'big music' sound on this 1985 album where rock guitars were joined by saxophone, piano and celeste to create an expansive work that was epic yet spiritual, and at times even political...

On the song 'The Big Music', from The Waterboys 1984 album A Pagan Place, Mike Scott sang 'I have heard the big music/And I'll never be the same' – and he wasn't kidding. Nowadays, the 1980s might be more readily associated with glossy, primary coloured pop but it also opened the doors to something quite different – an earnest, yearning, expansive rock music drawn with broad brush strokes, but with enough space for some fine detail. The Waterboys exemplified the desire to make this 'big music', as did contemporaries such as Echo & The Bunnymen, U2, Big Country and Simple Minds.

Johnny Sharp  |  Sep 08, 2023
Released in 1987, with a new producer in tow, this album saw the one-time post-punks leaning into radio-friendly rock, albeit without airbrushing their left-field instincts. The result was the beginning of a decade of commercial and critical success for the group

There comes a time in every band's career when the only way is pop. Having slowly built a loyal cult fanbase and a burgeoning critical reputation on the back of three albums (and an early EP) that intertwined artful post-punk and lopsided, Paisley Underground-adjacent guitar rock, by 1987 R.E.M. were ready to paint with broader strokes, albeit while retaining a pronounced polemical edge and one foot firmly in an angular, left-field musical lineage.

Mike Barnes  |  Aug 09, 2023
Powered by twin guitars, pop-style melodies, hyperactive drumming and unusual song structures, this debut album from the youthful Manchester punks – now signed to a major record label – showed they were a force to be reckoned with...

When punk broke in the UK in 1976, much was made in the media of the confrontational 'us and them' relationship between this New Wave and the old wave of progressive rock and big stadium acts. But more importantly, it prompted the rapid growth of independent record labels, with some groups even financing and making their own records. And with the establishment of a closer relationship between bands and their audience, local scenes began to blossom, with the spotlight turning away from London. Manchester band Buzzcocks played an important role in both respects.

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