Back to NOW‪!‬ Pop Rambler

“What we’re gonna do right here is go back, way back!”
If you were really down with the cool kids in 1984, you would have most definitely have been passing around the school prized C90 cassettes featuring much copied Streetsounds compilations. And somewhere in there was Kurtis Blow’s AJ Scratch track with those immortal sampled words from the Jimmy Castor Bunch in 1972. Straight out onto The BMXs and down to throw some funky worm shapes on that strip of lino!
Or, in this writer’s case, 1984 was mainly spent in a bedroom hovering over the play and pause button to catch a clean edit (without Simon Bates) of Two Tribes, still at number one after 5 weeks! But which mix would we get this week? Now, THIS was anticipation, pop kids!
1984. A pop year of decadence, contradictions, conflict, controversy and coming of age. A year that authors (and the BBC) told us would feature impending, inevitable Armageddon. Annihilation, it turned out, came in the shape of a plethora of 12” mixes, plastic smiles, snoods, 808 drum machines, hairspray, neon and (red) balloons. How was it for you?
In the third decade of the 21st century, a time surely we wouldn’t (a) remember 1984 or (b) still be around to remember 1984, the team at NOW Music HQ presented the second in a (now) glorious series of curated Yearbooks. And what an album (and accompanying extra volume!) we have to rediscover. The sun is most definitely shining brighter than Doris Day!
So for this special episode we’re joined by two poptastic friends of the show to take a deep dive into 1984. Journalist, DJ and author Ian Wade and journalist, author and broadcaster Jude Rogers.
Jude can be found contributing musings and writing about music, culture and much more in The Guardian, Observer and The Quietus amongst many others. Her first (best selling!) book, The Sound of Being Human: How Music Shapes Our Lives is available through White Rabbit books.
Ian has written for Classic Pop, Record Collector, The Quietus, Official Charts, Sunday Times Culture as well as doing time at such titles as Smash Hits and The Face many years ago. He has worked as a PR on BBC’s Later… with Jools Holland and occasionally DJs at Spiritland and Duckie. And his debut book 1984: The Year Pop went Queer is published by NineEight Books in July 2024.
And whilst we don’t take a forensic look at every one of the 80 tracks on the 1984 Yearbook (and the further 60 on the extra volume) we instead provide you with an opportunity to explore the sights, sounds, culture, music, genres, tribes and (school!) fashion that makes this year so thoroughly iconic for so many reasons.
Join us then, as we turn up the neon and dance through mutually agreed destruction in celebration of 1984! 

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August 1989.
The final year of ‘the finest pop decade ever’™️ is moving along quite nicely thank you very much. 
There’s most definitely a change in the air, and we don’t mean the launch of the FOUR channel Sky TV network. Relax everyone, UK Gold and TOTP reruns are coming in three years!
No, real change was coming. The second summer of love in 1988 (sorry Danny Wilson, probably a year out) as witnessed on the utterly imperial NOW 11, 12 and 13 had demonstrated that the 90s were calling and they would be decked out in dayglo. And most importantly a new positivity was being felt in the air, across the airwaves and through the pop we were all immersed in.
And let’s not beat about the bush, folks, 1989 was a seismic year for music. Let me indulge you listeners:
Disintegration, Three Feet High and Rising, Doolittle, Technique, Club Classics Volume One, Raw Like Sushi, The Stone Roses, , Like A Prayer, Hats, The Seeds of Love, Flowers In The Dirt, Paul’s Boutique, The Raw And The Cooked…
And of course Neither Fish Nor Flesh (A Soundtrack of Love, Faith, Hope & Destruction).
And so, to our favourite compiler of variously compiled pop. 1989 saw four (yes, as many as that!) new NOW, That’s What I Call Music albums. Why four, I hear you cry? Well, because the summer was adorned with the first new dance volume since 1986, an album that, NOW fans will know, featured Love Can’t Turn Around by Farley Jackmaster Funk - the first House track to break the UK. And 1989 was time (not for the guru, that’s 1990 of course) to celebrate how dance was back, Back, BACK!
And this additionally delicious dance volume enabled the BIG summer fifteenth volume to go deeper into the year’s genres. So step forward delights including Soul II Soul’s era defining classic, Paul McCartney’s Hofner bass-adorned celebration of TV dinners, Swing Out Sister’s mind-bending, sumptuous sixties throwback and De La Soul’s daisy-age makeover of Hall and Oates (the ultimate backward nod to the outgoing 80s?).
What a time to be on the edge of seventeen (deliberate Stevie Nicks nod, there) as this listener was!
And joining me for this sepia-tinged and frankly tear-stained 1989 nostalgia fest through NOW 15 is the music journalist and author of the 33 1/3 book on George Michael's Faith, Matthew Horton.
Discover how homemade mixtapes (his mums AND his own) inspired many a house party and achieved (almost) legendary status. Which cassettes were stuck in his Walkman at the outdoor Lido pool, why goth stars and American soap operas need to come together, which rapper performed for Matthew (and others, obviously) at Bristol University and (YES!) why the love for Fish and Flesh will never go away.
And amongst these glittering 1989 delights, experience the moments when I actually say positive things (almost) about our friends from the north The Beautiful South and Hue and Cry.
Join us on the glorious beach (best cover ever™️ - Jude Rogers) as we head back to NOW15. 
I think it’s going to be alright.

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It was the wise prophet and occasional flower impersonator Peter Gabriel that said, 
‘I don’t remember, I don’t recall,
I have no memory of anything at all.’
Do you remember 2008?
Yes, it's only (!) 16 years ago, so I’ve no doubt you still have packets in the kitchen cupboard that are older, but do you also remember how the pop landscape of 2008 was mapping out? 
Indeed, what on earth was going on in your life eight years into the 21st century?
You see, this writer (it’s, me IAIN!) has quite a glitchy view back of his shoulder to this year. Life had thrown a few curveballs (listen in, it’s kinda revealed) meaning that pop memory has become patchy. Perhaps for you, dear listeners, 2008 is similarly harder to initially grasp hold of. 
Fear not! The world’s finest compilation series (as always) is on hand to jog memories, restart downloads an piece together for us what was selling, streaming, rising and falling up and down the hit parade that we call “The Charts’. 
It’s NOW, That’s What I Call Music 69!
And crikey, what a mix we had!
Torchsongs, soul songs, Neo-soul songs, Soul-dance songs, Northern soul songs! Songs that weren’t soul soul songs but would like to be!
Big pop statements from Britney, Robyn, Girls Aloud!
Slightly smaller pop statements from Shane Ward and Leon Jackson!
We also had some huge ghosts of pop pasts resurfacing thanks to the likes of Rihanna, Duffy, Kylie and others. And some iconic artists that would stay with us through some era defining tracks. Because sometimes pop is the only thing that helps us when things aren’t OK (but will be OK). 
Our special guest for this episode is author of the frankly wonderful Don't Stop the Music - A Year of Pop History, One Day at a Time, and lifetime pop fan Justin Lewis.
AND, if all of this wasn’t enough (and don’t forget Basshunter is in there too), find out where Joe Fagin fits in, who the Kajagoogoo of NOW69 is, which group may (or may not) have their own day time quiz show, how Justin grew up with Tom and Annie on Radio One and grew back in love with music in 2008 through some of these songs, and also which tracks deserve 10 out of 10. And of course, why pop is still so important for making sense of the world around us, in any decade!
All of this, and I’ve managed not to say anything negative about Scouting for Girls!
Oh no, wait…

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It's November 2023, and the world's most successful compilation series is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Five decades of compiling the latest hits, the occasional miss, but always the songs that soundtracked our lives. Always there, always democratically and expertly sequencing the music that the UK buying (downloading/streaming/swiping) public were grooving to, laughing to, dancing along with, or crying about (add in your own band or artists here).
What else is still with us from 1983? And still having such an impact?
Breakfast Time? Well, certainly not Frank Bough.
The Ford Sierra? Taxi!
£1 coins? Down the back of the sofa.
Kajagoogoo? Hush hush, as they say. (One for the older listeners)
So, as our friends at NOW rightly celebrate the past through a stunning array of special albums and even see podcasters pop up across several TV programmes waxing lyrically about the famous compilation series (well, no-one else will talk about it, will they?) the numbered series that started it all in November 1983 continued to do exactly what it set out to do; bring together the songs of NOW.
Perhaps no longer just the Top Chart Hits, that tag line that emblazoned the front cover of earlier volumes, but now taking into account the various ways we actually DO consume music in the third decade of the 21st century.
NOW 116 - The Best of the Best.
47 tracks. Tik Tok stars, Film soundtrack anthems, legendary decade surviving artists. Pop, rock, dance, soul.
All present and correct, all breathlessly exciting, all taking that snapshot in time of pop culture. And as we know, an invaluable window into the soundtrack of our lives.
Where, indeed, Agnetha, do we go from here?
To understand the past and the future, we always need to be in the NOW. (Take a note of that line, its a good one: Ed)
And joining me to make sense of this dazzling volume of the world famous compilation series is award winning writer, journalist and NOW fan David Quantick.
David explains why he wanted to get in 'at the deep end' and why he thinks that NOW116 highlights that pop is in a fine healthy state in. We explore what actually is a 'hit' in 2023/24, why short songs are always an indication of great songs, why NOW continues to keep getting it right and how the compilation series is Top Of The Pops in exile.
Along the way, discover who David describes as 'the Dr. Who of Pop', who are 'The Strokes for Queen fans (or was that the other way around)' and what a bad AI version of George Michael may look (and sound) like. We also revisit why Pop continues to Eat Itself (yes, David came up with that one!), why the female artists are leaving the boys behind, who the 'ASDA Madonna' is and who the real Madonna is.
And did Chris Lowe really offer Tracey Chapman a lift in 1988?
We really do (watch what I do here) Paint The Town Red!
Jump in, buckle up and remind yourself why pop is still very, very important.


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Confidence, they say, is a preference for the habitual voyeur of what is known as…
…1994, darlings! 
And of course, as perceived wisdom now dutifully dictates, we were all completely mad for it, lemon hooch in hand, union jacks draped around our football tops, waving two fingers to those damn yanks. Go home!
Except, of course, the truth couldn’t be further away from the, er truth. Whilst it definitely maybe was 1994, there was so much more than just cigarettes (and alcohol). And we were all the better for it, pop kids!
Our favourite compilation series was not only celebrating nearly turning 30, it was also sporting a new slimline 2CD cover - swanky, and soooo nineties! Goodbye fat boxes, this decade of NOW was neater, fitter and certainly in full swing.
So, what could you expect from this sparkly, starshaped selection of 38 Top Chart Hits?
Pure, glistening pop from the likes of Michelle Gayle and Sophie B Hawkins!
Boyband phoar-dom (is this a word?) from the top flight teams of FC Take That and East 17 United!
Swoonsome songstress Lia Loeb positively not missing the knocks of Ethan Hawke (reality will bite)!
And huge slices of europop at every provincial nightclub turn! Another Saturday (rhythm of the) Night folks! Mine’s a Pernod and blackcurrant and chip butty!
And of course we had a selection of those most poppy sounds of the Brit persuasion, courtesy of blur (no capital!) and Oasis. Swagger, confidence and NOW on the money as always. 
All of this and much, much more awaits - including SPARKS! Yes, actual Russell and Ron Mael on a NOW album!
Join Anna Doble - broadcaster, journalist and author of ‘Connection is a Song: Coming Up and Coming Out Through the Music of the 90s’ - as we head down some fascinating rabbit holes and unearth not just a year of memories, but a whole decade of emotional and personal stories, interwoven by the power of music. And as always, NOW serves as the perfect snapshot of pop bringing it all back home.
AND we pose some of 1994 biggest questions:
When did Britpop actually begin?
Which band followed Anna around Leeds on a bus? (well, not actually)
Is 2wo Third3 the first ever case sensitive password?
Are Shampoo the centre of the pop universe?
Ultimate KAOS - why?
Join us for NOW29 - it’s SO GOOD and INCREDIBLE! (Enough puns - Ed)

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Pop. The way that we process everything.
So, it's the summer of 1993. According to meteorological 'experts', the UK experienced its lowest maximum temperatures since 1972. Only 4 days were officially classified as 'HOT'.
Well, I would argue, pop fans, that is UNLESS you had a swingorilliant copy of NOW, That's What I Call Music 25!
(We'll take this quite frankly, cheesy line out in the edit - Ed.)
Yes, indeed, the blue sky and wistful clouds that adorned the glorious cover of the latest variously compiled snapshot of pop invited us into a summer spectacular of hits, Hits, HITS! Some of them even reaching as high as No69!
Actually, there were plenty of chart topping sounds. George and Queen were raising the (non roof) of Wem-ber-lee, Ace of Base were confusing us all about wanting babies (possibly), Gabrielle was setting chart records and certainly not mentioning fast cars and Freddie Mercury was rewizzled and jigging away. And outwith these HUGE No1s we had Tina Turner getting a leg up from Lulu, Sade not getting a leg up from Lulu, Louche Lou and Michie One channeling Lulu. Yes, the variety was indeed...(enough! Ed)
(Turns page)
Big IMPORTANT 90s acts such as REM (stuck in traffic), New Order (stuck in Baywatch), Duran Duran (stuck in, well, being bloody brilliant).
Big DANCE choons from Sybil, Robin S (not that one) and 2 Unlimited (diminishing returns ahoy!) were keeping the frugging youngsters (and those on revolving dancefloors on boats!) moving.
And Dannii and Kim were having a right old 70s revival karaoke style ding dong. Oo-er!
Oh, and the campaign to completely rediscover the utter brilliance of the No42 AMAZEBALL that is 'Somewhere' by Efua starts RIGHT HERE.
Join Scots pop superfan, Foyle's Bookstore's very own Niall McMurray (he's been waiting in reception) as he revisits an eventful and personal summer soundtrack; songs, music and memories that (in his own words) take him back to 'the year he will write a book about'.
Along the way discover the power of provincial (and often quite terrifying) Scottish night clubs, how music always sounds better in a Fiat Panda, the song that Niall most hates in the whole world, the allure of a sinister pop flute, which NOW25 pop star is immortalised as a cardboard cut out in Iain's attic.
And try to work out why it's impossible to remember the 90s when D:Ream are about!
Oh, and of course, why Linda Perry, Joey Lawrence and Richard Darbyshire (and, quite frankly a few others) absolutely won't be returning our calls.
(PS - the wonderful quote at the start - that's oor Niall X)



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