Category: Popular Music
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How to write a love song – three tips for beginners from a songwriting expert
Love and romance are unquestionably the dominant lyrical themes of popular music. In fact, research in 2017 found that “love” has been the most common theme for pop song lyrics in every decade since the 1960s. If you’re trying to write a love song for the first time, you might not know where to begin,…
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New Beatles and Rolling Stones music owes much of its success to the psychology of nostalgia
Throughout the 1960s, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles were engaged in a friendly rivalry. Despite being amicable in person, they were in competition for record sales, cultural influence and aesthetic credibility. Despite their enormous popularity, however, not even the most ardent fans of either band would have expected that such a competition would still…
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As Dark Side of the Moon: Redux shows, when it comes to lyrics, less is usually more
There’s a scene in The Simpsons episode, Lisa The Simpson (1998), where Lisa is watching a jazz violinist’s performance and a man is criticising it. “You have to listen to the notes she doesn’t play,” Lisa says in the music’s defence. “I can do that at home,” the man drily replies. The scene is meant…
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How to win Eurovision: the secret code of the contest’s winning lyrics
The Eurovision Song Contest is one of the few remaining examples of event TV – and UK audiences lap it up. With 8.9 million viewers in 2022, Britain formed the largest audience of all Eurovision markets. And this time around, there’s even a bit of hope for those cheering on the home talent. Although it’s…
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Get Rich or Die Tryin’: 50 Cent’s seminal hip-hop album 20 years on
It is January 2003 – many years before I began researching popular music professionally – and I’m flicking around the music channels on TV. Disillusioned by the usual paint by numbers chart fodder and ready to call it a day, I chance upon the video for a new song called In Da Club by a…
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Spotify Wrapped: how sharing your music tastes can drive feelings of Fomo
With its eye-catching animations, it would be easy to dismiss Spotify Wrapped – which gives users a roundup of their most listened-to music of the last year – as just another example of the festive feed fodder that engulfs social media every Christmas. But there’s something more sinister in Spotify’s playful graphics – and I’m…
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Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso is the ‘song of the summer’ – but it hides a worrying trend
It’s safe to say the new princess of pop has the music world at her feet. But a peek behind the scenes suggests that she is the latest example of a female face fronting a male-dominated industry. Before going any further, though, I need to address the elephant in the room. I’m writing about gender…
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A music expert’s tips on making an unforgettable mixtape (or playlist) for your Valentine
I still remember a time when cassette was king – when the ultimate Christmas present was a pack of blank tapes, and recording your favourite songs from the radio without the interference of the DJ’s voice was a skill to be proud of. Then, of course, there was the mixtape. Lovingly compiled over weeks, dubbed…
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Glenn Fosbraey 