Classic Pop
Classic Pop is a bi-monthly magazine, published in the UK, specialising in the pop music of the 1980 and after, including New Wave, synth-pop, indie, ska and the New Romantics.
41 articles
List of articles in the library
Duran Duran: Looking Back to Planet Earth and Beyond: Five Decades of Duran Duran
Retrospective and Interview by Wyndham Wallace, Classic Pop, December 2012
Please, please tell me now! As John Taylor publishes his autobiography, In The Pleasure Groove: Love, Death & Duran Duran, Wyndham Wallace accompanies him through ...
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark: From Kraftwerk to Craftsmen
Retrospective and Interview by Wyndham Wallace, Classic Pop, May 2013
They were just "two guys with a tape recorder and a name as long as the stage they were standing on", but Orchestral Manoeuvres In ...
Live Review by Kate Allen, Classic Pop, June 2013
The Mrs Carter Show rolls into town, but does the queen of pop justify the hype? The answer is yes and no. ...
Retrospective by Kate Allen, Classic Pop, October 2013
Looking like a gothic kewpie doll and sounding like an operatic vocal virtuoso, Klaus Nomi was an unlikely New Wave icon. Thirty years after his ...
Retrospective and Interview by Wyndham Wallace, Classic Pop, November 2013
A new book, Martin Aston's Facing The Other Way, tells the story of a label that scored just a single number one hit during the ...
Talk Talk: Classic Album: Talk Talk's Spirit Of Eden
Retrospective and Interview by Wyndham Wallace, Classic Pop, November 2013
Twenty five years ago, Talk Talk's fourth album was spurned upon its release, lasted only five weeks in the British charts and led the band ...
Live Review by Kate Allen, Classic Pop, January 2014
WITH BRUNO MARS having released two, noticeably short albums (both clock in at around 35 minutes each), I go into to tonight's gig worrying how ...
Robbie Williams: Swings Both Ways (Island) ****
Review by Kate Allen, Classic Pop, January 2014
BELIEVE IT OR NOT, 2001's Swing When You're Winning is Robbie Williams' best-selling album to date. Who knew? So with actually quite a lot to ...
Michael Jackson: Xscape (Epic) ***
Review by Kate Allen, Classic Pop, August 2014
FIVE YEARS after his passing, Michael Jackson already has his name to posthumous album #2. ...
Britney Spears: Piece Of Me: The AXIS, Las Vegas
Live Review by Kate Allen, Classic Pop, October 2014
SEEING BRITNEY SPEARS LIVE holds every possibility of being an ugly affair. But seeing her play show number 32 as part of her Las Vegas ...
It's Immaterial: Living in an Immaterial World
Retrospective and Interview by Wyndham Wallace, Classic Pop, October 2015
Emerging from the punk and art school scene of 1970s Liverpool, It's Immaterial are the band that time cruelly forgot. Despite one enduring big hit, ...
Thomas Dolby: Godfathers of Pop: Thomas Dolby
Retrospective and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, June 2016
BEFORE HE EMERGED as a pioneering figure of electronic music in the 1980s, Thomas Dolby wrote Lene Lovich's single, 'New Toy', appeared on the Thompson ...
Morcheeba, Skye|Ross: Skye | Ross
Profile and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, October 2016
Morcheeba, helmed by Paul Godfrey's immaculate production, Skye Edwards' ethereal vocals and Ross Godfrey's luminous guitar, mapped out their own singular sonic territory in the ...
Retrospective by David Burke, Classic Pop, December 2016
WE CAN TALK about the ephemeral magic of pop music. About the quick fix, the instant buzz, about getting off or becoming blissed out on ...
Mike + the Mechanics: Engineering a New Future
Profile and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, April 2017
It may have begun as a side project away from Genesis while Phil Collins tried to sort out his marital difficulties, but Mike + the ...
Profile and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, August 2017
HE WAS A pioneer of the British soul movement of the 1990s, alongside Brand New Heavies, Young Disciples and Jamiroquai, but Omar claims the genre's ...
Stevie Wonder: Sound and Vision
Retrospective by David Burke, Classic Pop, October 2017
STEVIE WONDER had reached the summit with the wildly ambitious 1976 double album Songs in the Key of Life. It would become the best-selling and most ...
Debbie Gibson: All-American Girl
Retrospective and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, November 2017
DEBBIE GIBSON feels as though she's in a Tina Turner moment at this stage of her career, on the precipice of a midlife renaissance. ...
Luke Haines: Godfathers of Pop: Luke Haines
Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, November 2017
LUKE HAINES has fronted the Auteurs, Baader Meinhof and Black Box Recorder, released 13 albums under his own name, composed the soundtrack for Paul Tickell's ...
Echo & the Bunnymen: Shooting from the Lip
Retrospective and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, January 2018
STEVE EARLE ONCE said he'd stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table and declare his mentor Townes Van Zandt the best songwriter he'd ever heard. ...
Michael McDonald: The Godfather of Pop — Michael McDonald
Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, January 2018
In a career spanning more than 40 years, Michael McDonald has been a member of Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers, sang with Ray Charles, ...
Alexander O'Neal: The Resurrection of Alexander O'Neal
Retrospective and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, February 2018
He was sacked by Prince, only to find fame and lose it all in an orgy of decadence. Now adopted Mancunian Alexander O'Neal is back. ...
Kim Wilde — Close Encounters of the Wilde Kind
Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, March 2018
"I always figured that the music world and my voice were connected and that was my destiny," says Kim Wilde. And she wasn't wrong. Now ...
Retrospective and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, June 2018
IT WAS A PARTY staged to express solidarity with the world's most famous political prisoner, while concurrently expressing vehement opposition to an overtly racist system ...
The Special AKA: When Pop Went Political: Nelson Mandela's 70th Birthday Tribute Concert
Retrospective and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, June 2018
IT WAS A party staged to express solidarity with the world's most famous political prisoner, while concurrently expressing vehement opposition to an overtly racist system ...
Swing Out Sister: Pledging Their Allegiance
Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, July 2018
They broke the Top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic with 'Breakout' in 1986, recorded with Jimmy Webb and made it big Japan. Now ...
Dannii Minogue: Stepping Out of the Shadow
Profile and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, August 2018
Fifteen years ago, Dannii Minogue reinvented herself as a dance icon with Neon Nights, a classic of the genre which bears favourable comparison with big ...
David Byrne: Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Live Review by David Burke, Classic Pop, August 2018
ALL THE SUPERLATIVES you've heard or read about David Byrne's American Utopia tour are true. ...
Retrospective and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, September 2018
Level 42 embark on a 19-date Eternity tour of the UK this autumn. But don't expect to hear anything new. "I'm as dry as granny's ...
Candi Staton: The Godmother of Pop: Candi Staton
Retrospective and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, September 2018
CANDI STATON is set to release Unstoppable, her 30th album of a 50-year career, and hoping to score a sixth hit in as many decades. ...
Toyah Willcox: Toyah: Forever Free
Retrospective and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, September 2018
1977 and all that may have come and gone, but Toyah brought the punk aesthetic into '80s pop music with her radical sense of style ...
Martin Stephenson & The Daintees: The Godfather of Pop: Martin Stephenson
Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, October 2018
THE NOW-DEFUNCT Sounds magazine reckoned Martin Stephenson "one of the finest and grossly underrated singer-songwriters this country has given birth to". ...
Dionne Warwick: Birmingham Symphony Hall
Live Review by David Burke, Classic Pop, November 2018
THE VOICE MAY have withered with age – the range not so extensive, the lung capacity not so voluminous – but Dionne Warwick remains a ...
Johnny Hates Jazz: Clark Datchler: The Jazz Singer
Retrospective and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, December 2018
"I SHOULD HAVE been more patient, but I just wanted to get on with the next thing," is how an older, wiser Clark Datchler reflects ...
Howard Jones: Breaking Down Barriers
Retrospective and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, December 2018
MUSIC HAS always been a tribal thing, and the music press – Classic Pop excepted, of course – has always derived a certain sadistic pleasure ...
Joe Jackson: Don't Look Back in Anger
Retrospective and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, February 2019
JOE JACKSON doesn't strike you as someone who's all that bothered about anniversaries, preferring to remain in the present rather than return to the past. ...
Bronski Beat: The Godfather of Pop: Steve Bronski
Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, June 2019
SEMINAL SYNTHPOP outfit Bronski Beat – Steve Bronski, Jimmy Somerville and Larry Steinbachek – unwittingly became a mouthpiece for gay issues with their 1984 debut ...
Junior Giscombe: The Godfathers of Pop: Junior Giscombe
Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, June 2019
JUNIOR GISCOMBE cut his teeth as a backing vocalist with Linx before enjoying success as a solo artist with 'Mama Used to Say', a 1982 ...
Men at Work: Unfinished Business: Men Back At Work
Retrospective and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, June 2019
Fronted by a Scottish native who relocated down under in his teens, Men At Work glimpsed greatness before it all became a bit Spinal Tap. ...
Retrospective and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, June 2019
Reggae may have been born in Jamaica, but it grew up in '80s Britain at a time of evolving multiculturalism, finding an unlikely ally in ...
Five Star: And Then There Was One…
Retrospective and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, October 2019
At their '80s peak Five Star lived the high life in a Berkshire mansion and drove a fleet of supercars. But then the hits dried ...
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