Friday 29th July Pop music, like Pop Art, was designed to be expendable. In February , Newsweek predicted that the The Beatles would probably "fade away". But pop has proved to be remarkably durable, with a good song outlasting much of the other cultural ephemera of its time. Pop music should mirror the society in which it's made, although throughout the last 60 years, society has changed rapidly, meaning what is au courant today may be obsolete tomorrow. Occasionally, you'll catch a line in one of your favourite songs that suddenly seems terribly anachronistic. Most millennials could probably hum Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl , but might be left wondering what the hell a "transistor radio" is. And turn off the jukebox, Adam Ant? We would, if anywhere still had jukeboxes rather than infinite streaming playlists. Here are 11 more examples of tracks where attempts to capture the spirit of the times have been left looking a bit old hat.

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Or that is at least the case when they transcend mere bubble-gum and strain for grandeur. Here, then, is a thoroughly unscientific but completely from the heart list of the greatest lyrics ever. They run from the clever to the overblown, the gritty to the gaudy. What they all have in common is the ability to make you stop dead in your tracks and feel as if your world has briefly been tipped head over heels. Yet their slower songs have become unjustly obscured as the decades have rolled by. Six months later, Cobain would take his own life.
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Follow Billboard. All rights reserved. Pop music's best wasted no time getting into formation this year, with major releases from a galaxy of our brightest stars cluttering the calendar's opening months. But even with so many established huge names taking up space on the marquee, what really made the last twelve months in pop special was how they also found room for the lesser-known little guys; a Desiigner for every Drake, a Kiiara for every Kanye. Soundtracking a period of seemingly limitless real-world disagreement and strife, these artists big and small provided us with rare moments of much-needed unity, ones we all would've actually wanted to freeze time on. Here are the pop songs that pulled us closer in Note: Songs were considered eligible for this list if they were either released in or peaked on the Hot during that time — unless they already appeared on our list.
Thursday 21st July The pen is mightier than the sword, the idiom dictates, and used well words can hurt just as much as sticks and stones. The history of popular music is awash with lyrics that kicked up an almighty stink and often with very good reason. Sometimes, though, a controversial lyric achieves little more than brisk business for a song. Frankie Goes to Hollywood must have been delighted when Radio 1 DJ Mike Read took offence to the chorus of their single Relax, helping it to shoot up the charts to No. And if, as Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols said, "Actually, we're not into music; we're into chaos," why not release a song called God Save the Queen on Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee in , ruffle the establishment's feathers and enjoy a hit at the same time?