This really shouldn't need saying in 2026 but apparently does: if you have a problem with the "revealing" outfit a woman pop star wears to the Grammys, that is exclusively, 100% your problem and 0% hers or anyone else's.

This is what would have happened if the waxworks on the cover of Sgt. Pepper had.replaced the actual Beatles for the next three years.

Rejoice*, for the latest episode of THREADS is here! This time our theme is FAMOUS BUT UNDERRATED - big (or biggish) names in music who don't get the artistic credit or the cultural cred they're due. Link in reply, natch.

Who wore it better?

GARY LARSON WAS RIGHT

TIL that AI engines will not create an image of a Japanese Mayor Quimby for you, because it would violate The Simpsons' intellectual property.

"He was a moral writer from the outset, as is Dostoevsky, whose life is not there to be emulated, or Tolstoy. Yet we tend to forgive them in ways we refuse to forgive Roth.” Steven J. Zipperstein tells me about his excellent new book on Philip Roth in @jewishchron.bsky.social . (Link in reply.)

New year new THREADS. The first episode of 2026 is up (link in reply), and now playtime is over, it's all about FINEST WORKSONGS - the tunes you hear in your head or in your headphones when getting things done. Now grease yourselves up and go in, you guff-speaking work-slackers!

"Have you found Sir Keir yet?" "Er... no, Prime Minister." "Well, keep looking, he has to be in here somewhere. Have you tried the meter cupboard?"

No new THREADS this week on @slackcityradio.bsky.social via @totallyradio.bsky.social: the studio was closed for business on Boxing Day, and so was I. BUT! You can, if you care to, hear an improved edit of this seasonally appropriate repeat to bring in the new year: SONGS OF RENEWAL. Link in reply.

I'm calling it: time of political death: 10 am, Friday 19th December, 2025.

Ruh-roh.

At last, you can stop holding your breath - here are my ten favourite albums of the year for @metro.co.uk, in alphabetical order, featuring @cmatbaby.bsky.social, @immersionhq.bsky.social, @gweniferraymond.bsky.social and @theweatherstation.bsky.social.

"In many ways The Effingers is a traditional family saga. In one particular way, it is quite unlike any other, and that is in the way it has to end." I reviewed a new translation of Gabriele Tergit’s magnificent 1951 roman-fleuve of German Jewish life for @jewishchron.bsky.social. (Link in reply.)

The final new THREADS episode of the year is up, on @slackcityradio.bsky.social via @totallyradio.bsky.social, and there's nothing complicated about the theme: ICYMI: 2025 - a roundup of my favourite new music of the year. Link in reply, for them as wants it.

"Melancholia bathes Wish You Were Here like cold moonlight. It is so very sad, and so very lovely." I revisited the album I consider Pink Floyd's true masterpiece for its 50th anniversary edition, in Metro.

Well, I'm glad he's cleared that up at last, the uncertainty was starting to eat away at me.

>Nobody so exactly represents the evolution of mainstream American pop from 1960s teen bubblegum to 1970s singer-songwriter introspection, because nobody else ever stood at the pinnacle of both. I reviewed Jane Eisner's illuminating Carole King bio for @jewishchron.bsky.social: link in reply.

Enjoying the byline of this article's author. Presumably Kate Busset, Alex Khachatrain and Mike Onyabike were busy on other assignments.

No new THREADS on @slackcityradio.bsky.social this week coz I is sick innit and not in the good way. BUT! You can hear a new, improved edit from the archive, care of @totallyradio.bsky.social, if you care to, on the theme of ANIMALS. Link in reply, natch.

Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen

Happy Black Friday, y'all.

The budget will cost my necessarily frugal household money we could well use, but I won't be complaining, because I'm not 12, I can grasp that a functioning country needs paying for, and I can understand the difference between something that isn't fair and something I simply don't like.

Ninja-level trolling by the Guardian picture desk to find a photo where he appears to have had a Social Justice Warrior hairdo.

It's not very lifelike. Just the one face, and it stays pointing the same way.

Cancel your appointments, hold all your calls, bring in the dog and put out the cat: the new THREADS is up, on @slackcityradio.bsky.social via @totallyradio.bsky.social, and the theme this time is BAD BOYS. Link in reply innit.

Stop personally attacking me with this relatable content, I just had a heavy weekend, is all.

By a remarkable coincidence, that's the exact reason I had no intention of going anywhere near a Morrissey show.

ME: "Vandalism of artwork for any reason whatsoever is a selfish and unjustifiable attack on our collective cultural heritage and should always be dealt with sternly." ALSO ME: "Could we not give this lass a grant tho."

The latest THREADS is here, on @slackcityradio.bsky.social via @totallyradio.bsky.social, and its theme is LAWSUIT TUNES: songs that prompted (or pre-empted) claims of plagiarism. You can hear it via the link in reply. Alternatively, you can not do that. You pays no money and you takes your choice.

I wonder* if all the dog-whistlers who make it their business to circulate any and every criminal act committed by an evidently non-white or non-Anglo person will be rushing to give this story the same exposure. (*I do not, in fact, wonder.)

Yet another example of how red tape in this country stifles growth.

Our weed-loving next-door neighbours whose fumes periodically permeate our home last night managed to fill our hallway with a stench so ungodly I started to wonder if they were smoking an actual skunk.

"A reminder that Jews – justly frightened and appalled by the left’s own antisemitism, and its advocacy for the Islamist variety – would be unwise to seek illusory protection in the opposite direction." Me on Nick Lowles' How To Defeat The Far Right, for @jewishchron.bsky.social. Link in reply.

The latest episode of THREADS, the radio show about musical connections, is up on @slackcityradio.bsky.social via @totallyradio.bsky.social, and this time the theme is EXCEPTIONS: a personal selection of songs I like by artists I don't - plus suggestions from friends of the show. (Link in reply.)

BRB just pitching the WSJ on how while Queen and Pink Floyd get all the kudos, nobody but me, an intellectual, gives enough credit to under-regarded art-pop combo The Beatles.

All the while screaming, "IT'S F***ING GREY! NOT PACHYDERM SEACLOUD! NOT WISTFUL MIST! NOT ANTHRACITE DEMILUSTRE! F***ING GREY, DAMN YOU!"

Mmm, must buy tinned ears.

Stop Grading Hens

What I infer from Jeffrey Epstein's "birthday book" is not that most of his eminent friends were conspiring with him to traffic and exploit underage girls, but that almost all of them knew exactly what he was doing and considered it an endearing quirk. Which is not a whole lot better.

As the season starts to turn, why not welcome it in with the latest THREADS, on @slackcityradio.bsky.social via @totallyradio.bsky.social, which is all up in your autumn? (The question is rhetorical; please do not actually tell me why not.) Mellow fruitfulness guaranteed. As ever. Link in reply.

British politics never ceases to surprise me. I would never have guessed before this week that anything could make me sympathise with Angela Rayner.

Farewell to Giorgio Armani.

When people on the other side of the argument behave the way Gr*h*m L*n*h*n has reportedly done (and they do), there are many - me included - who would say it's vicious and unacceptable and deserving of legal consequences. And if that's true when they do it, then it's true when he does it.

August brought cracking albums from CMAT, Nova Twins, Adrian Sherwood and Earl Sweatshirt. If you want to read what I wrote about them in Metro, here ya go.

Bertolt Brecht: "I have a solution to deal with unruly voters." Jeremy Corbyn: "Brilliant idea, thank you!" Bertolt Brecht: "Remind me just who it is that doesn't understand irony?"

Facebook, tell me I'm 108 years old without telling me I'm 108 years old.

Due to illness, no new THREADS @ 10 tonight on @slackcityradio.bsky.social (via @totallyradio.bsky.social). But my ongoing effort to improve the audio on earlier episodes continues, so there's a repeat of SILVER SCREEN, looking at how pop music draws inspiration from the movies. Link in reply.

Not sure you can blame them for that tbf.

Gonna go out on a limb here and say no matter how cute it is I don't think we should encourage it to eat babies.