Word In Your Ear
Detalls del Canal
Word In Your Ear
Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "Rock On", "Whistle Test" and VH-1.Over thirteen years ago, when working on the la...
Episodis Recents
977 episodis
Joan Armatrading, Tom Robinson and the great music meltdown of Summer ‘76
The blistering heat of 1976 burnt various things onto the memory – standpipes, strikes, Entebbe, ‘Confessions’ movies, Jeremy Thorpe – but most of all...
Prefab Sprout - a tale of mystery, eccentricity and pop’s most famous motorbike
Nige Tassell fell in love with the literary allusions of Prefab Sprout when at school and his new book ‘Truly Gifted Kids’ tells their unique and insc...
Madonna smoking, the first indie PM and have we just witnessed the nadir of pop?!
Tapping the barometer of news to see what’s blistering or stormy, which this week includes …
… “The Man can’t bust our music!”: the crim...
Gary Numan’s reality check – ‘I’m essentially a guy who wears make-up for a living’
Seven hundred fans have contributed to ‘Gary Numan: A People’s History’, a lavishly published compendium of memories of discovering, hearing and watch...
David Gray’s priceless memories of lessons learned the hard way
David Gray went through the roof with his White Ladder album in 2000 and he’s toured and recorded ever since, ending this summer’s loop at Latitude. H...
Why George Michael’s life is a movie plus Syd, Kirsty, Gorillaz & the worst album title ever
Digging deep in the icebox of news to choose the following lightly chilled refreshments …
… 500 Miles, Wonderwall, Yes Sir I Can Boogie(...
Peter Frampton – ‘the Face of 1968’ looks back!
Peter Frampton, for goodness sake! Part of our lives at Word In Your Ear since we were teenagers. Played guitar on national telly when he was 14. Join...
Paul Simon’s Graceland and how the masterpiece was made
‘Graceland’ was an almighty gamble for Paul Simon, a costly, high-risk departure from the music he’d been making and a complex international venture....
Kate Mossman has strong feelings about rock stars past their prime
Kate’s an old pal of ours from Word magazine who writes scintillating columns and profiles for the New Statesman and Observer. We loved her book ‘Men...
Pop stars’ weddings and why Noel Gallagher’s right about World Cup music
Amid much parping of vuvuzelas, the week’s news stories sprint onto the pitch. And these make it to the quarter-finals …
… Dua Lipa’s me...
Dave Balfe remembers the Teardrops, Blur and a very big house in the country
Dave Balfe was a key player in late ‘70s Liverpool, joined Big In Japan and the Teardrop Explodes, co-founded Zoo Records and, later, Food who signed...
Star Ratings - do we love/hate/need them? Five-star debate here! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Star Ratings are now ubiquitous and inescapable and it’s not just music, films and books. Everything we encounter tends to be rated which colours our...
Brian Epstein & the Beatles - what he did and what he hid
Philip Norman has written books about the Beatles – and John, Paul and George - and now turns the spotlight on the man who launched them and the extre...
Are we nearing Beatles Overload? plus the rock star with the most children (41!)
When the pedalo of perusal cruised the lagoon of news this week, it paused to inspect the following ...
… the particular magic of the la...
The glorious story of Funk from James Brown to Off The Wall
Old friend of the podcast Lloyd Bradley wrote Bass Culture, the defining account of reggae, and he’s now turned his attention to funk, from its deepes...
Leo Sayer has met everyone – rock legends, sport superstars, future presidents …
Leo Sayer burst onto national telly in 1973 dressed as a Pierrot with the Show Must Go On launching a 50-year career in colourful company – songwriter...
Songs about sweltering heat, Willie Nelson’s braids and is vinyl now ‘luxury goods’?
Chasing the shade and slapping the Sunscreen on this week’s overheated news, we pour a tinkling drink and reflect upon the following …
…...
How Daniel Lanois made those adventurous records with Dylan, U2 and Willie Nelson
Daniel Lanois built a studio in his basement in Quebec and began producing local acts when a teenager. Through work with Brian Eno, he went on to reco...
Siouxsie, Nico, Cocteaus, Shangri-Las, Bobbie Gentry … a celebration of the sound of Goth!
Cathi Unsworth was a teenage Goth, enthralled as much by Joy Division and the Banshees as by the Brontës, Bram Stoker and Aubrey Beardsley. We loved h...
Blondie and Clem Burke remembered by devoted pal Kathy Valentine of the Go-Go’s
Clem Burke joined Blondie in 1975. He started writing his memoir 20 years ago and just managed to finish it before he died in 2025, encouraged and ass...
Nick Lowe’s miracle payday, Rock feuds and a giant inflatable Jarvis
Panning for gold in the murky waters of this week’s news, we found the following …
… is Sabrina Carpenter’s aunt the voice of Bart Simps...
The Damned at 50 and the memories (and regrets) of Rat Scabies
The Damned are – yes! - 50 years old with three of the originals still onboard. And just starting a world tour. In this immensely funny and touching p...
Shoegaze, slackers, ‘noise chasms’ and the 10-year reinvention of rock
A whole new age of psychedelia kicked off in the mid-‘80s, of dream-weavers and glorious underachievers, a complete rejection of the standard rock app...
Famous rock locations, His & Hers records and weird things thrown onstage
This week’s news gets a thorough shake-down to see what falls out of its pockets. Which includes …
… cupcakes, mobiles, rubber ducks, a...
Brian Eno’s restless creative adventures with Roxy, Bowie, U2 and Talking Heads
For nearly 60 years, Brian Eno has been a “proud non-musician” who changed the way people thought and sounded while inventing whole new ways of record...
The Who, Floyd, Led Zep and the great college circuit that launched 1,000 bands
Cheap tickets, warm beer, draughty halls and refectories, a whole new cobbled-together rock circuit was born in the ‘60s for an audience who watched a...
Paul Simon, Bad Bunny, how songwriting changed & the scourge of Blue Dot Fever!
It’s polling day for this week’s news and these are the stories that got our vote …
... Pussycat Dolls, Meghan Trainor and how ‘Blue Dot...
Pleasure Gardens, cabaret, nightclubs, rave & 350 years of the Big Night Out
Mass commercial nightlife began in a Japanese Pleasure Garden in 1657 and it’s blossomed ever since – via Victorian Vauxhall, cabaret Paris, jazz-driv...
Andy Earl’s memories of photographing Prince, Madonna and Johnny Cash
Andy Earl helped create the new dawn of colour photography in the ‘80s pop video age and went on to shoot a series of unforgettable portraits, album s...
Talk Talk, a deep-dive tale of mystery and imagination
Talk Talk made just five albums, all written and recorded unconventionally and no-one’s entirely sure how they did it. And in the last two decades of...
The Clash, the Cramps and Penny Kiley’s teenage punk diaries
Penny Kiley moved to Liverpool in 1976, ran into punk rock and “became the person I’d never been allowed to be”, as vividly remembered in her memoir,...
Van Morrison’s agent writes crime fiction as the music business sleeps
In the 70s Paul Charles wrote lyrics for an Irish prog band. Now he writes mystery novels. Inbetween he’s been agent for Tom Waits, Nick Lowe, Van Mor...
Can the Michael movie reboot Jacko? & how social media changed festivals
This week’s news stories charge out onto the pitch but which are heading for promotion? In the running at the final whistle …
… “a ghoul...
Andy Kershaw & Dylan’s jar of jam plus the things people do to get gigs
Be glad for the pod has no ending! Now in our 20th year and, this week, ruminating fondly on the following …
… the “underhand” selling o...
The story of Wild Thing and whatever happened to World Cup songs?
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on as we voyage to the far side this week to take a picture of …
… the Kanye West & Wireless...
No Sex Pistols in Manchester? ‘No Smiths, Nirvana, indie rock.’ Discuss!
Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley read a review of the Sex Pistols in February 1976, borrowed a car, drove to London, asked the NME where they’d find the...
The Keith Moon story is a movie in waiting, both a comedy and a tragedy
The life of Keith Moon can be seen as Animal from the Muppets or as a dark, psychological odyssey. And the two co-exist in Tony Fletcher’s magnificent...
The shameless age of Britpop in ‘the wildest year of the 90s’
Dominic Mohan saw Britpop on the inside from the showbiz desk of the Sun in the days when it sold 4.5m copies, a series of heated memories recorded in...
Who hasn’t had ‘work done’, how to spot AI and the stupidest thing we ever did
A seasonal egg-hunt in the rock and roll backyard finds the following conversational confectionary …
.. Wild Bill Hickok? Valentino? Bob...
How Tony Visconti keeps the Bowie flag flying
Tony Visconti left Brooklyn for London in 1967, began working with the Move and Marc Bolan and formed a life-long friendship with the teenage David Bo...