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 …

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 …

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…

Welcome to Spring 1993. And, I’m sure you’ll all agree, there was only one phrase on everyone’s lips. I lick-he boom, boom down. (Checks notes) Anyway, more of that later. The legendary NOW compilation series has reached its twenty-fourth volume and is now standing proud as the finest collection of chart hits around. HITS who? And as the fourth yea…

Welcome, one and all, to the 3rd annual Back to NOW review! As is now tradition, this end of year episode of the variously compiled podcast provides us with a festive opportunity to glance back over our shoulders at the pop landscape of yet another 12 months. Let’s celebrate a dazzling year of NOW compilations that in 2023 have included something f…

They all know it’s Dynamite, And the music went on and on and on… The history books will tell us that, in theory, 1973 shouldn’t have worked. Terrorist campaigns, oil shortages, petrol rations, power cuts. Peters and Lee. However, as the saying goes from great adversity comes great art. Or was it great sitcoms? Either way, 1973 stands not just as o…

La, La, La. Autumn 2001. In many ways, it has been a challenging year. 5ive and Steps split, Hearsay don’t. Pop, just like the most boybandish of the latest boybands, Blue is (all) on the rise. The new millennium has most definitely set up its shiny new stall and is fully decked out in its cargo pants, vest tops - and that is just the boys. Mobile …

It’s a Saturday night in April 1985 and a queue is gathering outside Raffles nightclub in, well pretty much every town and city across this sceptred isle. Feverishly excited boys and girls wait and dream of Malibu and coke, Quatro and ice, whilst expectant beams of pink neon shoot out from beyond the velvet rope and the intimidating bouncers (possi…

It’s summer 1991 and school’s out which means it’s time for your latest compilation! It was probably on cassette, possibly from your local high street and most definitely slotted straight into your parent’s car stereo for that sweet-fuelled, motorway exodus to the sun! But WAIT! After NOW 19’s release in the spring, the horizon isn’t delivering the…

WARNING! This episode contains scenes of graphic and often gratuitous pop perfection. Listener discretion is advised. Summer 2004. The wettest summer in the UK for fifty years, and with it being another three years before Rihanna invents the umbrella, there is a need for something more drastic to help dodge the dampness. So where does one shelter f…

Welcome to the middle of ‘the nineties’! Sort of! Spring 1994, to be exact. And indeed, the popworld is revelling in the ‘seed of the new breed’. Again, sort of… You know the drill by now, the glorious NOW, That’s What I Call Music 27 steers you though the wonderfully choppy waters of the UK charts. Sometimes the shore is graced with the wonders of…

It’s the summer of 1992! The UK had accidentally voted in the Conservative government again but to make amends wins lots of medals at the Freddie and Monserrat Olympic Festival Sporting thingy in Barcelona, so everyone forgets for a while. Alan Shearer becomes the most expensive soccer star in the whole of history and the English FA celebrate their…

Alexa, show me 1984. If you were to ask a certain searchable device (others are, obviously available), there’s a high probability that the year George Orwell predicted would see us living in a terrifying future nightmare would instead be adorned with a wash of neon, colour and an array of sunshine pop. And the character staring back at us wouldn’t …

Welcome to 1993. Autumn, to be exact. And how was it all looking? Well, it wasn’t really baggy like 1990, or rave-y like 1991, but it wasn’t Britpoppy like 1995. It was all a bit…well, who knows? Can we say, a bit of a pop hinterland? And were there any clues across our ever reliant pop culture landscape for how ‘93 had shaped up? Well in a year th…

Welcome to this bonus edition of Back to Now! A small but perfectly formed bite-size extra serving of Festive Pop! To compliment the end of year review of 2022, enjoy a collection of previous lovely guests as they revisit some memorable Christmas hits. Or should that be December hits? Or Christmas adjacent pop? You decide, wonderful listeners! Inde…

Festive greetings and welcome to what all of the Pop Kids are rightly calling the 2nd annual Back to Now review for 2022! Can it really be a whole 12 months since we last pulled up a cosy chair, poured ourselves a large creme de menthe and ruminated on the variously compiled world of pop? Well, yes indeed and so much has happened since! We don’t ta…

Jack, jack, jack….wait? What? Who is this Jack? It’s 1987, and the future has arrived in the shape of the first No1 of the year courtesy of Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley - House Music is here! Hold up, wait a minute! As the ninth edition of the famous Now, That’s What I Call Music testified from within it’s (so 80s!) Ring binder cover, the charts were much m…

1991. It was the first palindromic year since 1881, and to be honest I’m not really up on the hits of that particular Victorian number. (Newsflash: Bruckner’s 6th Symphony was pretty hot that year) Fast forward to the 2nd year of the ‘nineties’ as we called it, and there are plenty of other newsflashes abound. War in the Gulf dominated the spring (…

1990. Well it certainly was time for the guru, but as the first year of the new decade was drawing to a close, it was time - a little time, if you will - for so much more. And as always, our favourite compilation series was there to capture it all. So volume 18 provided us with the NOW albums second numbered album of 1990 in the shape of big ballad…

‘One goal, one mission…one vision!’. November 1985, and the latest poptastic edition of NOW kicks off with the unifying cry from Freddie and the boys, after an unforgettable summer when music really did seem to change the world from London to Philadelphia and beyond. But how representative of those wonderful UK charts is Now, That’s What I Call Mus…

Welcome to the end of the eighties! Pop’s greatest (it was, wasn’t it?) decade was getting ready to pack away it’s shoulder pads, leg warmers and Rubik’s cubes (not being too stereotypical are we?) and was heading at breakneck speed towards the nineties, and the latest edition of the Now series absolutely represented the change ahead! Well, sort of…

Welcome to Autumn 1996. Royal divorce, Mad Cow disease, Take That helplines, TFI Friday. But it wasn’t all bad news, oh no – the pop charts were continuing to dazzle and amaze the CD buying public! Indeed, if we weren’t snapping up those hits on £5 CD singles (both one and two, to complete the set) we were most definitely picking up a copy of the l…

It's Autumn 1992! Damn, Would I Lie To You? What an interesting time for the UK singles charts. Is it fair to say the decade was at some sort of apex point? Well, the tracklist for November’s NOW, That’s What I Call Music 23 album was certainly not giving us a clear a view of what the next big thing was going to be. Or was it? Whilst the start of t…

Enjoy this trip. And it is a trip! What a poptastic year 1988 was turning out to be at NOW HQ! As the 80s were speeding their way towards a dayglo regeneration into the 90s, the charts were chock full of a glittering arrays of sensational delights and 7” wonders! The first instalment of NOW That’s What I Call Music – Volume 11 in April – had delive…

For this episode I am joined by award winning film director Grant McPhee. Amongst Grant’s films are Big Gold Dream, which tells the story of FAST Product and Postcard Records, two of Scotland’s most loved independent record labels and Teenage Superstars the story of what happened next in the uncompromising world of Scottish indie music, featuring m…

Can 1996 really be over a quarter of a century ago? Yes it can, and this is where we find the hot hits of summer as sizzlingly delivered in NOW34! The charts as ever, were serving up a veritable feast of genres, hits and headlines. The feelgood factor was in full swing, in part due to the excitement of Euro96 but also a UK culture scene that was em…

Welcome and indeed the most festive of greetings, as the back to NOW podcast brings 2021 to a close. And from a variously compiled world of pop viewpoint, what a fabulous year it has been! For this special end of year episode, like the most treasured of Christmas present annuals nestling under the Christmas tree, we unwrap the last twelve months of…

Welcome to summer 2006! And things were, indeed, Crazy. That top selling nine-week run at No1 was significant for not just featuring (the not crime fighting rodent) Dangermouse but for being the first UK chart topper to make it there purely on downloads (remember them?) alone. But of course, you knew that chart fact already, didn’t you, pop pickers…

So, where were you in 2004? The pop charts were as fast moving as Dame Kelly Holmes in Athens and every week brought another selection of shiny pop hits. 29 tracks topped the charts across the twelve months as pop buyers rushed to purchase the newest CD singles from their latest favourites. And unless you were the sparring, fall-out potty mouthed p…

Summer 1999. The End of the Century beckons. As we prepared to send the clocks back to zero, millennium bugs threatened our very existence. David Bowie foretold us (well Jeremy Paxman, at least) that we were on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying and what this new Internet was going to do was unimaginable. Party over, oops out of time…

The podcast that celebrates the variously compiled world of pop is one year old.Over the past twelve months, thirteen wonderful guests have joined me to open up gatefold sleeves, slip out cassette inlays and flick through CD booklets of their chosen compilation albums.And in doing so, we’ve not only shared some great musical memories, we’ve also ex…

It’s autumn 1989 and a decade where pop has transformed itself into an all encompassing mass culture is drawing to a spectacular close. Ten years have seen huge growth in music sales and an explosion of genres, with rock morphing through glam metal and beyond, disco had danced through electro towards a new house, and hip hop had grown from the stre…

Autumn 1987 and the pop world is at a crossroads. Some of music’s Big Names are in need of some inspiration, trends were fast moving and the decade that brought us a plethora of pop glitz and glamour was looking for some direction to the next chapter.As always, the NOW! team were on hand to gather up all that was happening across the charts and NOW…

It's November 1988, and the latest chapter in the successful NOW compilation series is launched - and looking at the cover, it really is heading out of this world! And what an interesting period Autumn 1988 was! Shiny pop classics from the likes of Yazz, Erasure and Brother Beyond rubbing shoulders with seasoned artists rediscovering the glories of…

Every story has a beginning and in November 1983, EMI and Virgin came together to create their own piece of compilation history. And so it was, that a poster of a certain pig signalled a change in how various artists would be viewed and consumed from NOW on. As the first Now That’s What I Call Music LP curated thirty of the years biggest hits, the …

It’s Autumn 1986 and the charts are once again filled with a glittering array of colourful, confident pop. The post-Live Aid landscape of 1985 has enabled its stars and supporting cast to build their singles and album popularity. Shiny new CDs are ensuring an aspirational digital era is on the way. But the singles chart still manages to reign supre…

It’s Spring 1988 and pop music is BIG once again!And as always, NOW That’s What I Call Music is there to capture the charts in all of its late 80s bombast as symbolised by Volume 11 and THAT wonderful, mirrored skyscraper cover.The Pet Shop Boys are reigning supreme in their imperial phase, the girls are conquering the charts from Kylie to Belinda …

For this special episode, I am joined by musician, writer, DJ, and film producer Bob Stanley.Bob is a founder member of Saint Etienne, and a regular contributor to amongst others, The Guardian, The Times and Record Collector. Bob has compiled and produced an enviable collection of compilation albums for his own record label Croydon Municipal and wi…

It's Christmas!!!In this episode we shamelessly deck the halls, crack open the eggnog and pass around mince pies in honour of NOW - The Christmas Album. Cue, sleigh bells!Join pop pundit & musician Ian Wade and I as we celebrate the classic festive compilation. From Band Aid to Bing Crosby via Slade, Macca and a dazzling array of hits, the first of…

In 1984, it wasn't George Orwell's Big Brother that was beaming out of our TVs, it was (to quote Rick Astley), the Ruddy Big Pig.As the year began, the first NOW LP was dominating the charts, but its successor was not far behind. As sequels go Now, That's What I Call Music 2 was pretty spectacular, bagging the top spot in the LP charts for five wee…

Joining me for this episode is RTS Nominated TV Production Designer Richard Drew. As well as ‘creating the magic’ for, amongst many others, The Inbetweeners, Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and most recently After Life, Richard describes himself as a self confessed Pop Fan since he can remember. Richard and I explore the pop landscape of autumn 198…

1985 - a positive jamboree of pop and a fascinating year for the increasingly competitive compilation LPs. As NOW! faces stiff opposition from the record companies in the shape of HITS & OUT NOW! amongst others, the gloves were off for a slice of the various artists market. At the centre of the year sits the Big Pig and NOW 5. But how did this expa…

1990 - A new decade dawns and with it comes a genre-bursting variety of pop opportunities. Dance, Indie....Indie dance!Whilst the top of the artist album charts celebrated classic artists such as Phil Collins, Elton John and the Carpenters, the first full year of the compilation chart was exploding with an eclectic mix of dance -and the Top 40 sing…

For this episode I had the great pleasure of chatting with author and publisher with Nine Eight Books Pete Selby. Amongst other accolades, Pete has co-authored two official books on the history of Now That’s What I Call Music", and as Head of Music for Sainsburys, launched the exclusive ‘Own Brand’ vinyl record label with Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanle…

Welcome Back to NOW! A series of podcasts that celebrate all things related to the variously compiled world of pop. As we open up the gatefold vinyl sleeves, unfold the cassette inlays or slip out CD booklets, we will also consider the wider world of pop culture and how our favourite compilation albums shaped our lives at and now fondly stand as ti…