Talking Pop Category

In this installment of Talking Pop, author Carlo is talking about his love for Florence And The Machine. How she’s been haunting him since her first single and why music is always so closely connected to ones own biography. I’m sitting in my parents living room in 2009. The tv is on, and a Swiss television station is running. It’s sometime in the afternoon and instead of sitcoms or talkshows, they are showing music videos. There’s this one video with flowers in front of a white backdrop. A red hairedRead More

By Alex, Carlo & Daniel A couple of weeks back, we talked about female bedroom producers and how they are the hottest stuff right now. We are still certain that that is true. And someone from the Independent must have read our article too, prompting this copy cat thing to pop up two days after our post. But the article got us thinking here at the WWATA-HQ: where else are female artists leaving their mark these days? So we dug into our own music catalogues looking for the same thingRead More

Scandinavia, you beautiful endless reservoir of great music. Scandinavia, I love you for making the sun disappear for a few months each winter making young people stay in their own homes with too much alcohol, their instruments and their creativity. Women of music, I love you because you grace us with so much talent and music that I feel like an incredibly dull little boy with my acoustic guitar and my stupid teenage songs about my sad sad love life. This article is a dedication to the girls in popRead More

I know that we haven’t talked about pop music in quite a while. I mean, we all do love our indie, punk, noise or whatever influenced bands that play the crappiest venues all to be able to release some tunes recorded in their bedrooms or garages via bandcamp or on small run vinyl. But from time to time there is an urge and a void that can only be filled by massive pop tunes. Tacky hooklines that block your ears for days and nights, one-liners that make you long forRead More

Summer 2006. I spent the summer in Barcelona in a desperate attempt to improve my Spanish. I ended up going out a lot more than I ever did before, I probably drank a lot more than I should have, I didn’t sleep as much as one should have over the course of my time there and I probably improved my English more than my Spanish. But I also met a lot of great people. This trip was the reason for me to go to study in the UK and forRead More

Sod all the other polls and tip sheets out in January – if you want something to pore over and actually get you excited about music in 2014, then read this. So here we go again then. The wonderful english music tabloid NME has once again found the ones to watch for the new year. Here’s our take on the bands they think will make it big. Are they worth it? Should you care? Is there anything in there that’s exciting at all?Read More

Sod all the other polls and tip sheets out in January – if you want something to pore over and actually get you excited about music in 2014, then read this. So here we go again then. The wonderful english music tabloid NME has once again found the ones to watch for the new year. Here’s our take on the bands they think will make it big. Are they worth it? Should you care? Is there anything in there that’s exciting at all?Read More

I’m sure everyone knows these really bad looking posters advertising some big time event in your town. Mostly they are sponsored by big brands, speak about sensational stuff that actually just bores you to death. Even worse are the looks of these ads. A recent example here in Berlin is a concert called „Die neuen Deutschpoeten“ or „the new German poets“. It is sponsored by public broadcaster Radio Fritz – for the younger audience. So when a radio announces a show like that, especially a mainstream format radio, it raisesRead More

What became of the likely lads? I read a few interesting articles recently that had nothing to do with music really, but made me think. The first article, published by the online version of UK broadsheet the Guardian, was talking about the once promising footballer Kieron Dyer. His career never really took off due to his injury prone body. Despite him only playing just over 300 games during his 17 year-long professional career, he managed to become a lavishly paid player. Author Barney Ronay argues that Dyer was actually aRead More

It’s our party we can do what we want When I was at school, our arts teacher used to tell us that the best paintings are the ones that make your imagination run lose. She told us to imagine we’d be in a hospital bed for a year without anything but a painting hanging across the room. She asked us whether we thought the painting should depicture reality as good as possible or if we did not prefer a very abstract painting with shapes, contrasts and uncertainties. A fair question,Read More