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Word In Your Ear

Light Entertainment for Dark Times

Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "R
Latest Episode3/29/2023

Is U2’s new Songs Of Surrender album just plain *wrong*?

Ep. 516
Whistling, clicking our heels, swinging round lampposts and lobbing the odd shiny florin to a flaxen-haired child, this week’s free-wheeling navigation of the rock and roll boulevard alights upon the following hot topics … … why Indie music is like student drama. … what the Beatles achieved in “the 585 most productive minutes in the history of recorded music" (aka the recording of Please Please Me) and the albums released the same day every decade after.  … Death & Vanilla, Frightened Rabbit and – to deafening applause – the welcome return of the Stackwaddy game. … albums performed as ‘plays’ (by musicians who didn’t make them). A band featuring Clem Burke and Glen Matlock has just toured playing Lust For Life in its entirety. What others would work as well? The Band’s second album? Liege & Lief? The Ramones? Hot Rats? … unappetising song titles. … what Bob Dylan did so “my mother would finally think I'm somebody”. And how his Mum reacted to his success.   … and why bands end sets with Country Roads, Mustang Sally and Twist And Shout.Grab your EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal by going to https://nordvpn.com/yourear to get up a Huge Discount off your NordVPN Plan + 4 months for free! It’s completely risk free with Nord’s 30 day money-back guarantee!-----------Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon to receive early and ad-free access to all our content!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
3/29/2023

Is U2’s new Songs Of Surrender album just plain *wrong*?

Ep. 516
Whistling, clicking our heels, swinging round lampposts and lobbing the odd shiny florin to a flaxen-haired child, this week’s free-wheeling navigation of the rock and roll boulevard alights upon the following hot topics … … why Indie music is like student drama. … what the Beatles achieved in “the 585 most productive minutes in the history of recorded music" (aka the recording of Please Please Me) and the albums released the same day every decade after.  … Death & Vanilla, Frightened Rabbit and – to deafening applause – the welcome return of the Stackwaddy game. … albums performed as ‘plays’ (by musicians who didn’t make them). A band featuring Clem Burke and Glen Matlock has just toured playing Lust For Life in its entirety. What others would work as well? The Band’s second album? Liege & Lief? The Ramones? Hot Rats? … unappetising song titles. … what Bob Dylan did so “my mother would finally think I'm somebody”. And how his Mum reacted to his success.   … and why bands end sets with Country Roads, Mustang Sally and Twist And Shout.Grab your EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal by going to https://nordvpn.com/yourear to get up a Huge Discount off your NordVPN Plan + 4 months for free! It’s completely risk free with Nord’s 30 day money-back guarantee!-----------Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon to receive early and ad-free access to all our content!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
3/15/2023

Genuinely rotten albums by brilliant artists plus the band that started cancel culture

Ep. 513
Sauntering in carefree, conversational mode down the rock and roll bridleway this week, pausing briefly to lean against a tree and tootle upon a mouth-organ, we came across the following … … bands with no original members left - Lynyrd Skynyrd, Motorhead, the Crickets, the Ramones, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Drifters … any more? … things musicians are obsessed with. … albums by acts we love without a single redeeming feature – Blondie’s The Hunter? Bob Dylan’s Saved? The Dead’s Built To Last? It’s Hard by The Who? … the night – exactly 20 years ago – we saw the Dixie Chicks make their career-capsizing comment about George Bush. … the hilarious left-right shift in Russell Brand’s brand values.   … the main reason some people go to Glastonbury. … can you love an act as much if you don’t own their records or CDs and just stream them? … a Northern Soul DJ’s £250,000 box of singles being stolen from his home after a gig. … and Mr Inbetween, the Australian crime drama that’s like Saxondale meets Reservoir Dogs.Grab your EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal by going to https://nordvpn.com/yourear to get up a Huge Discount off your NordVPN Plan + 4 months for free! It’s completely risk free with Nord’s 30 day money-back guarantee!----Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon and receive every future Word Podcast early, and ad-free!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
3/2/2023

Was the pop boom of 1996-2006 a comedy or a tragedy?

Ep. 510
The teenage Michael Cragg was obsessed with the “glorious shiny ludicrous pop” of the period that began with the Spice Girls, included Hear’Say, Five, Steps, Atomic Kitten, Blue and countless others and ended with the closure of Popworld and Smash Hits ten years later, a tale less about music than the media that covered it and the machinations of the industry. All the key leading players – bands, managers, songwriters, critics – are interviewed in his sparkling and soon-to-be-published account of it all, Reach For the Stars, and our conversation with him includes … ….. why Chris Morris should make a film about it. … why there are no groups anymore. … Russell Brand auditioning for Five. … the secret of the Spice Girls’ success. … which is more cynical, the worlds of TV or music. … why pop stars needed “bullet-proof exteriors”. ... the band that couldn’t go to gigs or football matches without security to protect them. … why Blue would never have survived in the age of social media. … why pop stars were like contract players in 1930s movies. … how TV drained the fun and frivolity. … whether girl groups appeal to 100 per cent of the audience and boybands to only 50? … the extraordinary fall and rise of Whole Again by Atomic Kitten. … and the band mistakenly delivered by private jet to Donatella Versace. @MichaelCragg Reach For The Stars …https://www.waterstones.com/book/reach-for-the-stars/michael-cragg/9781788707244Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon and receive early access to every future Word Podcast!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear