In 2002, I read The Fellowship of the Ring for the first time. Being a particularly dedicated eleven-year-old, and having seen the film several times by that stage, I read it in less than 12 hours, a feat which continues to stagger me. In the first few months of 2026,
Two songs of experience here, songs that very pointedly deal with the lived experience of a relationship over and above abstracts (indeed, one of them, as we’ll see, is contrasted explicitly by its writer with a song of abstracts). A lot of popular music, certainly since the advent of
Well, 'tis the season of love. And as it happens, the playlists from which this project grew began life as a Valentine's Day project, growing out of a radio show a decade ago. So to mark the occasion, a double-helping of posts - number 13 today, on
My A-Side/B-Side distinction is, I admit, an arbitrary and at times a tenuous one. Sometimes whether a song is “positive” or “negative” is impossibly subjective, sometimes it depends from what angle I approach it. And so this time, I’ve gone for two edge cases, from a broadly similar
Many love songs are about a relationship, a specific connection between people, often a reciprocal one (although possibly one that’s come to an end). But there are some that are about a very different experience of love; that of yearning, daydreaming about the possibility of a relationship. Songs of
Two things I love are lists and spreading the word of cultural phenomena that I enjoy. So every year I like to combine those two into one beautiful whole. Let’s celebrate 2025 with all it brought us (well, me). Top 5 Games That I’ve Played This Year 1.
Apologies for the two-week delay on this one; I've been away for two successive weekends, and have forgotten to schedule the post on both occasions. In a way, it's fitting, though, given that the A-Side here in particular has to do with delay and deferment. This
Today we’re in a broadly indie sphere, in a genre sense rather than distribution etc. – the kinds of songs you might hear played on radio stations that devote themselves to the nostalgia of 30- and 40-somethings. Indie is stereotypically associated with sensitive young men (and the occasional woman) subjecting
One of the first creepypastas (creepypasta? Not a word I ever expected to pluralise) I can remember sticking with me is a lurid story about a person buying a strange-looking copy of the 2000 game The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, and slowly coming to realise, through a series
Some love songs, as we’ve seen, live on details, on specifics, about a particular scene or the way someone looks or similar. Others are more abstract, and that’s the case in different ways with these two. One is about a beginning, or even the space before a beginning,
The following will contain spoilers for both Hades and Hades 2 at least up to the end credits of both. Hades 2 is one of those sequels that is, at base, evolutionary rather than revolutionary, to use a critical cliché. Its basic gameplay loop is much the same as its
Here, two songs that came out within a year of each other, something that seems to happen more often than one might expect given that these songs are mostly chosen randomly. Both songs are from pivotal mid-90s albums, which were lauded at the time but have only grown in stature