Before they became famous, Radiohead set out to make Pablo Honey. This is the story of their hit song Creep and how an act of sabotage and a secret recording led to the band’s international success, one of their most defining songs, and one of the greatest slacker anthems of […]
On paper, Pet Shop Boys are an unlikely pop behemoth. A former pop journalist and an architecture student, their first hit, “West End Girls,” had their thirty-year-old middle-class British frontman embodying Grandmaster Flash. Starting off as what could’ve quite easily remained a one-hit wonder, they defined British synth pop in […]
Watch Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World on PBS: https://www.pbs.org/show/fight-power-how-hip-hop-changed-world/ Let’s dive into the world of beatboxing and discover how this vocal art form stacks up against traditional drumming. Linda Diaz teams up with the remarkable talents of The Beatbox House, a collective of world-champion beatboxers who […]
R.E.M. is one of the most important alt rock bands to come out of the early 1980s, and much of it comes down to their unique sound, blending jangly pop melodies with punk and post-punk sensibilities. But there’s a little told story in how they got that sound, and it […]
There was a time when the British Music Press had absolute power. Punk, C86, Madchester, Grunge, Britpop, and The New Rock Revolution were all invented and made famous within the pages of NME, Sounds and Melody Maker. But trends are fickle. Once the press got bored of a certain sound […]
Linda Diaz explores the global phenomenon of Sierreño music through the lens of Gen Z musicians. She sits down with the Latin Grammy-nominated band Yahritza Y Su Esencia a band poised to take the Sierreno genre to new heights with their fresh perspective and unique sound. In Watsonville, CA, Linda […]
For a brief moment in the late 90s and early 2000s, Nu Metal ruled the airwaves. With releases such as KoRn’s Follow the Leader, Limp Bizkit’s Significant Other and Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory, the genre had commercial clout, but critically fared less well. However if you were a teenager at […]
Follow us on Twitter, Instagram & Tik Tok: @moremiddle8 We all know Nirvana, right? They brought alternative rock to the mainstream with their groundbreaking album “Nevermind” and the iconic single “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” But what if I told you that Nirvana actually stole their sound from another band? In […]
Blue Monday was a joke. A mistake. New Order never intended for the song to be a hit. In this week’s episode of Poetic Wax, Andy pulls out the 1988 pressing of Blue Monday. This is the surprising history of the song that blended alt rock, new wave, and electronic […]
At first, Blur were a band that prided themselves on their Britishness. They wrote keenly observational pop songs about 18-30 Holidays, The Shipping Forecast, Sunday Lunch and the Quiet Frustrations of Everyday British Life. In Britain, it made them heroes. But in the US they were nobodies. So it was […]
