Which Decade Is Tops For Pops?

Ballet class nostalgia, pop merchandising's 19th century roots, problematic cover art, a songwriting team of 26, techno as a pejorative term, and a questionable quest for self-discovery.YouTube playlist // Spotify playlist // extra tracks & bonus bitsBonus playlists: Kim Fowley tracks // Kris Kross samplesTo join in with the voting, please submit your 1st, 2nd and 3rd favourites, plus your "most bad and hated" selection, to:The Patreon Supporters Club // X: @whichdecadetops // Facebook // whichdecadeistops@gmail.comThe voting deadline for this episode is 6pm UK time, Tuesday 23rd July 2024.

Sian Pearce becomes our first ever female guest on the podcast, joining Mike, Nick and Trev for a thorough dissection of the latest set of voting. Did Dizzy beat Dizzee? Did anyone like Cliff? Did anyone have anything to say about Shanks & Bigfoot? How did ska-punk lead to the Muppet Show? And should we be filling our bladders with lean? Only one way to find out...

If it hadn't been for that pesky Jason Donovan, all these Number Two hits would also have been chart-toppers. Dizzy meets Dizzee, Angela Trimble has lost her cat, Sir Cliff scores a century, UKG struggles to travel north, and country's new Golden Age starts right here.YouTube playlist // Spotify playlist // extra tracks & bonus bitsTo join in with the voting, please submit your 1st, 2nd and 3rd favourites, plus your "most bad and hated" selection, to:The Patreon Supporters Club // X: @whichdecadetops // Facebook // whichdecadeistops@gmail.comThe voting deadline for this episode is 6pm UK time, Tuesday 25th June 2024.

In which we look back at the 60 tunes that featured in Season Three, counting down the final totals on the Master Scoreboard, and seeing where this leaves our cumulative Mother Board.Playlst for Season Three, in chronological orderWe'll be back with Season Four at the end of June.

With no guest and no Master Scoreboard, we thought this would be a quick one. But then we got talking about periods when pop treads water, and the democratisation of its means of production, and the She Drives Me Crazy thwock, and the baffling 2006 disdain for Bridge Over Troubled Water, and communal/collective pop vs introspective headphone music, and cats in panto, and pretending to be gay in strip clubs... and, well, let's just say that things escalated.

A demobbed King reclaims his crown, the Wichita Lineman crew triumph again, the sound of 1976 reappears in 1980, a choreographer jives with a cat, the Cosmo Smallpiece of millennial R&B plays fast and loose with co-writing credits, and a player gets played right back.YouTube playlist // Spotify playlist // extra tracks & bonus bitsTo join in with the voting, please submit your 1st, 2nd and 3rd favourites, plus your "most bad and hated" selection, to:The Patreon Supporters Club // X: @whichdecadetops // Facebook // whichdecadeistops@gmail.comThe voting deadline for this episode is 6pm UK time, Monday 13th May 2024.