The best and worst double albums ever. The 50 greatest cover versions of all time. The 100 greatest British albums of all time. The greatest indie anthems ever. The 100 greatest albums you've never heard. The 50 darkest albums of all time. The 101 albums to hear before you die.

Why must we always rank rank rank these records?

Let's have a medium-sized dive on the urge to rank, whether it's helpful or not, the pluses but also the minuses.

The terminally uncool "pop" programme from the terminally uncool state TV station, BBC1. A recipe for failure, surely. And yet, everyone watched Top of the Pops. Why was that?

Take a trip back in time to the culturally hegemonic imperial phase of the programme; to a time when it was great act of subversion to play air guitar as you mimed to your hit live on air; to a time when Tony Blackburn was being driven round a lagoon by a Womble in a speedboat.

Let's find out why Top of the Pops was so uncool it went all the way back round and became cool again

In July 1979 Steve Dahl organised a Disco Demolition Night at a baseball game in Comiskey Park, Chicago. Infuriated by disco music and its chart dominance it was the latest in a growing nationwide "Disco Sucks!" campaign. That night ended in a riot. But some have argued it also ended disco as a genre.

But now, is the distrust between a liberal elite and an embittered midwest back to where it was almost half a century ago? On this episode we look at the weird and unpleasant "Disco Sucks!" campaign and ask: "Could it happen again?"

Be expertly briefed each week on a wide variety of intriguing musical topics.
Take a medium-sized dive with Vinyl Maelstrom and find out. 

Sure, we've all got a favourite carol or maybe anthem and words matter with them. Hard to imagine a hymn with la-la-las instead of lyrics halfway through.

But you know how people say "I never forget a face, but I'm no good with names." It seems to be a badge of honour for some people to say they can't be bothered with lyrics, almost as if it shows strength of character.

But do lyrics matter? What's the history of lyrics in songs? Are they becoming more popular or less? How do they fit the current zeitgeist?

Take a medium-sized dive with Vinyl Maelstrom and find out. 

Nigel Marsh has been hosting the 5 Of My Life podcast for many years now and in that time has interviewed all the great and the good, from prime ministers to rock stars, comedians to novelists, community workers to poets.

One element of his show is guests picking out a track of their life - a song that, for whatever reason, means a great deal to them.

I asked Nigel to join me and pick out 10 musical highlights from over the years, and, after much ruthless shortlisting, he did just that. And, in an EXCLUSIVE, we discover what Nigel's own choice would be, were he to interview himself.

Here's a link to Nigel's list: 

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0vH1JbXp3LzKLdP4EWLbmI?si=1d47e58cadf64f47

A few weeks ago Richard Osman on the Rest Is Entertainment podcast pointed out that only 3 bands had had #1s this decade. This was in contrast to the end of the previous century when bands dominated the charts.

Why is this? Have all bands disappeared? (Spoiler alert: no.). Why have pop bands fallen off a cliff? On this episode we investigate this new phenomenon and uncover some fascinating theories.

If you're not an Australian it can be hard to identify a distinctive Australian sound or movement. One candidate is the Aussie Pub Rock phenomenon which flourished in the 70s and 80s and out of which bands like AC/DC emerged.

One of Australia's leading copywriters joins me in the studio to explain its origins, the secret to its success and its eventual demise. A fascinating episode and one from which I personally learned a lot.

Join me, your host Ian Forth, and Michael on this episode to have your Aussie pub rock questions answered. 

Some people say there's no such thing as guilty pleasures in music. You either like it or you don't. So, own it.

Still, would it have a name if it didn't exist? 

(Well, yes, it might. There are no unicorns, after all.)

This episode seeks to understand why some people do feel a sense of guilt when they listen to certain types of music and why that should be. We cover the history of the idea, subjectivity versus objectivity, musical canons, forms of identity and so much more. 

See where we end up, if anywhere.

Some academic bod has analysed every US presidential election and worked out the Keys To Success. He claims to correctly predict every populist vote.

Can we do the same for musical success? We can have a go. This is my equivalent - The Ten Keys To Music Success. It's obligatory to say "You won't believe Number 7!", but in reality it's entirely credible.

See if you agree.

This episode is the the second of a double header. Steve Pringle, author of the classic Fall analysis "You Must Get Them All", gave us his thoughts on why the group resonate so strongly for so many in Part One. Here, he suggests to a nominal newcomer to the group's work where to get started on The Fall's vast catalogue. A handful of representative tracks from across the four decades the band flourished to get a rounded idea of where their appeal lay.

I took the liberty of adding a few of my own choice of tracks and assembled a playlist which complements the episode. There are a couple of tracks chosen by Steve not available on Spotify (New Puritan and Leave The Capitol) but they should be accessible on Youtube. Here's that playlist - and thanks again to Steve for his expert views.

If an author writes a book analysing every single, every album, every phase and every lineup change of a band, it might be a decent-sized tome.

In the case of The Fall, there's over 50 members, over 30 albums, over 500 songs and over 40 years to process. 

That is exactly what Steve Pringle undertook to carry out and he achieved his aim magnificently in his definitive 650 page chronicle on the group entitled "You Must Get Them All".

It was a pleasure to talk to Steve and drill down on what made the Fall the wonderful and frightening group that they were. This is the first of two podcasts with Steve and in the second he'll be revealing where to start for those new to the group and their work.

Oasis are reforming for a reunion tour. Have you heard?

What marks out Oasis as so different from their contemporaries? It's hard to believe it's their musical sophistication or their profound lyrics. But something makes them incredibly popular.

We also take a look more broadly at why people get so misty-eyed about the 90s. Is it just harking back to a non-existent recent golden age, or is there something specific about the 90s themselves? Something to do with technology or society that was very different from now?

Join me, Ian Forth for an entirely reasonable discussion.

On our previous show, Paul Burke proposed that punk was unimportant at the time, left no lasting musical legacy and the reason people still bang on about it is because the middle classes act as its gatekeeper in the media that we all read and watch.

In this riposte, while not dismissing all of Paul's points, I'll try to put punk in its cultural context and show how profound its influence has been, not just the music, but in design, a DIY spirit, female inclusivity and racial integration. 

"If you were born after 1970 and don’t remember punk, you’ve almost certainly been misled by people who do. You’ve probably been told – through countless paean-to-punk retrospectives, documentaries and newspaper culture pages ­– that it was a glorious, anarchic revolution that swept all before it. I can tell you first-hand that it wasn’t.

Punk was as middle-class as a Labrador in a Volvo. Far from being hugely influential, punk was a passing fad that made little impression on the charts and left the lasting legacy of a spent firework."

So says Paul Burke, novelist and columnist.  Paul has the conch for this episode, then I'll follow up next week with a counter blast on why punk was really rather important, after all.

What even defines indie?

It used to mean something way back when. Groups that were on independent labels with a DIY approach and a different take on the world.

But in a world where Lana Del Rey and Billie Eilish with their billions of listens are indie - even Taylor Swift - does indie mean anything at all any more? How did we get to where we are now?

Join me for a short history of independent and indie music.

That lime green colour. That blurry font. And now BRAT has been picked up by the Kamala Harris campaign (this is August 2024).

Is this something worth finding more about or will it all blow over by the autumn, like Gangnam Style and Barbie did? Almost certainly yes. But, it is intriguing and is, I believe, worthy of analysis.

If nothing else, you can outwit your nephew and niece - or your sceptical mother and father - by sounding incredibly well-informed on the subject. You are, as ever, most welcome.

Turn on commercial radio and what time signature are you 95% likely to hear in the first song? 4 beats to the bar, that's what. Is that just the natural pace of music or is something else going on?

In fact, if you went to a dance in the nineteenth century, it would most likely be in 3 time, or a waltz. Travel to, say, Burundi, Bulgaria, Bengaluru or Bursa and outside of commercial radio, local time is quite different - 11/8, to take one example.

So how did 4 time come to dominate? Was it the classical composers? Radio managers? The Romans? Join me for a discussion of how we ended up with the ubiquity of 4 beats to the bar.

Why do sports fans chant? Is it just to support their team or is there more to it than that? (Spoiler alert: there is more to it than that.)

Join me in a spirited discussion which will take in the Chip Butty Song, organic living folk traditions, secular rituals, the Maori hakka, Sufi whirling dervishes, the Covid effect, Pat Nevin, various professors, Posh Spice and the origin of language.

Then, finally answer the question - Why do sports fans chant?

Poet and author Paul Feldwick arrived for the first day of school in 1963 just as The Beatles were starting their domination of the decade. As Paul made the journey from awkward 11 year-old to a sixth-former on the cusp of entering the adult world, The Beatles embarked on a journey of their own, from lovable Merseyside mop-tops to conquerors of the world.

Paul takes us through what it was like growing up in sync with a band that was producing the most astonishing collection of pop songs witnessed before or since. He also expands on the other cultural changes of that decade, some familiar, many unexpected, from long hair and kaftans to the death of the steam train.

I've put together a playlist of songs name-checked in the episode, all of them by The Beatles apart from the first by Peter and Gordon.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2GLqeuCn3RK0qBy7dlSCNb?si=d894f20eb818441e

Paul is a consummate raconteur, as well as being my first boss in London, by which time he had rather shorter hair. This is an episode rich in detail and reflection, not to be missed.

By the end of her 131 date worldwide Eras tour, Taylor Swift will have generated an additional $5 billion for the economy. Other artists have been phenomena before, but surely never before have we seen an artist have this sort of effect. No artist, let alone a female country singer, has ever been Time Person Of The Year before.

She seems to be at the heart of every conversation - music, creativity, streaming, relationships, empowerment, writing, celebrity gossip, business. And now because of her new boyfriend she's also in the middle of sports conversations as well. And you may ask yourself - how did this happen? Granted she's an outstanding songwriter singer, but is that all there is to it?

That is indeed very much not all there is to it. Join me, Ian Forth, as I attempt to unravel exactly what lies beneath the Taylor Swift phenomenon