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

The American accent in pop and rock music is ubiquitous. It has become the default accent for any aspiring artist to sing in, to the extent that it's virtually taken for granted and no one finds it odd.

But it is a bit odd. This episode attempts to unravel the question as to whether singing this way is physiological or sociological. In other words, is there something about the accent which uniquely lends itself to pop and rock; can you decide to sing in your own country's accent; do young singers feel the weight of cultural exceptions to sing this way; and is it all forms of singing or do other genres have an American accent issue also.

Join me for a medium-sized dive and an entirely reasonable debate

Short stories in songs and music in stories. An episode of two halves, which coincidentally is the name of one of the tracks mentioned.

In the first half, I choose ten of my favourite "short story songs" - tracks which form a more or less complete narrative. To give you a flavour, I also read out some sample lyrics from each. Then in the second half, a discussion on music in books, drama and even ads with the brilliant award-winning Melbourne crime novelist, Sarah Bailey.

"Why don't young people write protest songs any more? It's not like the 1960s when we cared about the world and weren't glued to a screen."

You might have heard this argument. Protest songs are usually thought to have disappeared or at the very least dwindled in their power and influence. But is that true?

A careful examination reveals a quite different story, of an art form that not only never went away but evolved into something less visible to many but still vibrant and compelling.

Join me, Ian Forth, on a quest to discover whatever happened to the protest song.

“It is not just that Kraftwerk invented the future of music; it is that a startling amount of the music you hear today, from the most obscure indie rock to the most mainstream pop to literally everything in between, bears the impression of their invention.

None of this is is meant to diminish The Beatles' leviathan achievements; it’s just to say that although the pop century has been dominated by the goliath shadow of Mount Beatle, they are no longer the most influential pop band in the Western world. Kraftwerk are.”

Is the journalist right? And what exactly were The Beatles' "leviathan achievements"? Join me to discuss who really is the most influential group in musical history.

Film aficionado James Hillhouse takes us through his choice of the ten maverick soundtracks which changed the movie rules for good.

Here's a link to a Spotify playlist you can put on while the episode is playing: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0t4H136MSakdexG78CO8Ip?si=b34ada315bfd4072

Join James and me to find out the reasons behind his choices.

Spotify. All the music, all of the time. That's got to be a good thing, right? Not everyone agrees. Join us for a discussion on the rights and wrongs of the world's most popular streaming platform.

A discussion on the Band Aid and Live Aid phenomena. They save thousands of lives in Ethiopia. So, case closed? As ever, it’s far more complex than that. Despite the best of intentions, we ask did Live Aid in the end do more harm than good.