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New year, New Order. This was a landmark release in so many ways when it came out in March 1983. Firstly because it marked the moment postpunk merged with electronic dance music, and made the link between 70s disco and 80s house music. Secondly because Blue Monday went on to become the biggest-selling 12-inch single of all time.
Here’s my last playlist of the year, for December 2023. It’s a vibrant mix of ’70s hard rock and ’80s kitsch’n’disco, vintage funk and soul and ambient house, old-skool blues and nu-soul, plus a bit of dub reggae and some festive themed numbers for Christmas recently past.
Three hundred million YouTube viewers can’t be wrong – when it’s time to celebrate, this is the song. And what better time to celebrate than the turning of a new year.
Kae Tempest and Loyle Carner teamed up to make a South London double act in 2014, blending poetry and hip hop to poignant efect in Guts.
Ever since I first heard their name, which was long after they broke up for the first time in 1991, I’ve had the idea that The Replacements were the ultimate “critics’ band.”
Obviously these are just the ones I have read, and I am a slow reader. But I enjoy a good novel, with good characters, and I try to alternate my novel-reading with the occasional non-fiction book.
Looking at the list, it’s only now I notice that while the first (The Bee Sting) is very much an Irish book about an Irish family, the next five all have themes of race.
Vivian Stanshall was one of those great British eccentrics. I came across him in my teens on John Peel’s radio show, where he regularly narrated extracts from his satirical saga Sir Henry At Rawlinson End.
There are many things I love about Sault, not least their initial anonymity, their eclecticism, and their refusal to play by the marketing-led rules of the music biz.
Here’s a trio of songs for Christmas – one for opening the presents, another for after dinner at the end of the day, and one for Boxing Day.