We’ve dealt a lot with ideas of presence and absence in songs we’ve seen so far. Absent lovers are a constant obsession in B-Sides, but even some A-Sides are built on the anticipation of seeing the lover again (including, in different ways, the first two that
Last time, we touched on the idea that to be in love makes it feel like you’re separated from the world. A corollary to that is that there’s no shortage of love songs catering to people who already feel like they’re outside of the norm in one
For a project writing about depictions of romantic love, I actually haven’t overtly covered sex very much. This is surprising not only because sex is, for many people, an enormous part of a romantic connection, but also because popular music is in some ways built around sexual appeal, whether
It's been a busy couple of months, so this project has fallen by the wayside a little, but here it is, back up on the road, with an entry I've been looking forward to for some time, no less. Love is, to some degree, inherently counter-
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
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
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
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)