Dear Cat & Fi, Hello! Your little bro Alex here. I thought today's blog post could potentially be the start of something new. Obviously, both of you, my twin sisters, live miles away from me now and I may not get to touch base with you both as much as I'd like to - some … Continue reading Dear Cat & Fi: The One Where I Get a New Favourite Band
All the acts from 2008-12's great British pop renaissance either suddenly flopping hard in the charts and/or launching solo careers of varying degrees of amazingness this year, has led me back to reminiscing on the last time that happened. And when I sat down to work it out this week, I reasoned it must have … Continue reading Rachel Stevens’ “Come & Get It” at 10: celebrating a great lost pop classic.
Most of you who read this blog - or at least, I hope most of you - will know that away from here, I'm also a budding writer. All of you reading this will also know that I am a fan of the weekly vlogs on YouTube by the Fletcher posse - Tom, Giovanna and … Continue reading Inspiration: how do you get yours?
The year is 1945. VE Day marks the end of World War II, actor Martin Shaw and singer songwriter legend Van Morrison are both born. And in May of that year, on exactly this week, the first in a new series of books for children called 'The Railway Series', charting the lives of a team … Continue reading ‘The Railway Series’ at 70: still crossing the points to new generations
Apologies for being slightly late to the #AwesomeBoresome-ness this week. Blame this on the fact that I am currently fending off a sore throat and thus have the energy and attention span of a fruit fly. Being slightly ill isn't one of my #Boresomes though, but there are a couple of things that are. So … Continue reading #AwesomeBoresome (Week ending 19/04/2015)
Mark Ronson has long been a DJ and producer I have admired the work of for many years. But there's a caveat. Just very occasionally, a record of his will be the most universally loved thing in the world and yet, without wishing to sound like a douchebag, I'll be completely resistant to its charms. … Continue reading 5 songs by Mark Ronson that are better than ‘Uptown Funk’
In what I hope to be a new feature on this blog, I thought it might be a cool idea to tell you a little bit more about what I'm enjoying and what's really been irritating me this past week. I'm calling it *drum roll please*... #AWESOMEBORESOME That's right. It'll be a list of about … Continue reading #AwesomeBoresome (Week ending 12/04/2015)
I've spoken on previous blogs before, about how my taste in music has been inherited from various different sources over the years. Quite a lot of that is thanked in part to my parents. Some of it I'm happy to admit a love for (Simon & Garfunkel, The Beatles), and others I'm partly cautious to … Continue reading #BringBackEnya – why it’s time for the 2015 return of a pop enigma
The post pop group solo career is a tricky, some might say unforgiving mistress to navigate. For every success story - Beyoncé, Robbie or Justin selling out stadiums and shifting albums by the bucketload, there's a thousand Abz, Lisa Scott-Lees or Appletons starring in Z-list reality shows and being dropped like hot potatoes from their … Continue reading Beating again: the rebirth of Marvin Humes
Netflix. NowTV. Sky+. LoveFilm. A TiVo. Series Record. Amazon Prime. iPlayer. 4OD. On Demand. It seems that with the growth of technology in just the last two decades alone that we are being bombarded ever more with impossibly new ways - and new devices and contraptions - to do the thing our humble TVs were … Continue reading TV top trumps: is watching the box now a battle for trend supremacy?
Alex's Blog (still Crazy, still Stupid)... 