Warning this is one of my reviews where I do not actually talk about the record. The charts were released on a Tuesday lunchtime, so you came home from school then spent the afternoon talking about them at school, it was better than French. What we heard was how gorgeous George Michael was. I couldn’t stand him, he pranced about and all the girls I liked said how great he was, bloody George Michael. As I sat there with my teenage acne and too much gel how were they not noti

REM are building momentum with their debut Murmer and follow up Reckoning both delighting critics and record buyers alike. However, REM were keen to expand their sound and as fans of Richard and Linda Thompson and Nick Drake they decided to use their producer, Joe Boyd, the problem was Joe lived in England, so they came over and recorded the album in London in early 1985. They were not used to Boyd’s long hours of mixing and remixing so with this and the joy of the British

I wasn’t born for Beatlemania, I was too young for punk so the first genuine music phenomenon I can recall is Frankie Goes To Hollywood who stormed the UK in 1984, I was the perfect age, thirteen. I had already started my musical snobbery so other acts who were getting to number one, Flying Pickets, Lionel Ritchie and Jim Diamond were of no interest to me, apologies to any of their fans. A dramatic operatic voice welcomes us in before Holly speaks and laughs but this is the