Ideas, experiments, imagination.So, what was the optimum Britpop™️ year? Academics, thinkers and BBC documentary makers have wrestled over this question for many a year. Possibly even as long as it takes to listen to Be Here Now.1993 - Yanks, g

NOW Yearbook ‘81: ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK

Sep 16th, 2024 1h 2m

Dylan Jones once described the Eighties as being shaped by ‘a new type of bohemianism, one empowered by a certainty and an optimism that was only fleeting back in the sixties.’ *Moreso, K.Tel records importantly reminded us that home taping was

NOW - The Summer Album - July ‘86: Tim Worthington

Aug 19th, 2024 1h 5m

We’re going where the sun shines brightly,We’re going where the sea is blue…1986 really was very Cliff. He had celebrated his first No1 of the 80s with the cast of The Young Ones, featured in some devastating billboard action in the (rerun) fin

NOW Yearbook ‘84: Ian Wade and Jude Rogers

Jul 15th, 2024 1h 4m

“What we’re gonna do right here is go back, way back!”If you were really down with the cool kids in 1984, you would have most definitely have been passing around the school prized C90 cassettes featuring much copied Streetsounds compilations. A

NOW 15 - Summer ‘89: Matthew Horton

Jun 17th, 2024 1h 13m

August 1989.The final year of ‘the finest pop decade ever’™️ is moving along quite nicely thank you very much. There’s most definitely a change in the air, and we don’t mean the launch of the FOUR channel Sky TV network. Relax everyone, UK Gold

NOW 69 - Spring '08: Justin Lewis

May 21st, 2024 1h 12m

It was the wise prophet and occasional flower impersonator Peter Gabriel that said, ‘I don’t remember, I don’t recall,I have no memory of anything at all.’Do you remember 2008?Yes, it's only (!) 16 years ago, so I’ve no doubt you still have pac

NOW 116 - Autumn '23: David Quantick

Apr 15th, 2024 57m 24s

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 d

NOW 29 - Autumn ‘94: Anna Doble

Mar 20th, 2024 1h 19m

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

NOW 25 - Summer '93: Niall McMurray

Feb 2nd, 2024 1h 16m

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

NOW 24 - Spring ‘93: Sam Lidicott

Jan 5th, 2024 1h 11m

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

The Back to Now Review - 2023

Nov 30th, 2023 1h 32m

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 ano

NOW Yearbook ‘73: Mark Wood and Pete Paphides

Oct 25th, 2023 1h 17m

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 go

NOW 50 - Autumn ‘01: Lee Thompson

Sep 18th, 2023 1h 18m

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 sh

NOW Dance: The 12” Mixes - Spring ‘85: Tim Worthington

Aug 28th, 2023 1h 6m

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, whil

Back to Awesome! - Summer ‘91: Johnny Kalifornia & Ian Wade

Jul 25th, 2023 1h 4m

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, mo

NOW 58 - Summer ‘04: Michael Cragg

Jun 22nd, 2023 1h 14m

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 umbr

NOW 27 - Spring ‘94: John Aizlewood

May 15th, 2023 1h 32m

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

NOW 22 - Summer ‘92: Catrin Lowe

Apr 1st, 2023 1h 16m

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 S

NOW 3 - Summer '84: Mark Savage

Feb 24th, 2023 1h 25m

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

NOW 26 - Autumn ‘93: Will Hodgkinson

Jan 19th, 2023 1h 20m

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 th

Bonus

Back to NOW Christmas Flexidisc 2022

Dec 19th, 2022 17m 22s

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

The Back to NOW Review - 2022

Dec 6th, 2022 1h 12m

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 rumin

NOW 9 - Spring '87: Will Harris

Oct 28th, 2022 1h 23m

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,

NOW 19 - Spring ‘91: Niall McMurray

Sep 16th, 2022 1h 12m

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’ a

NOW 18 - Autumn ‘90: Lucy Bright

Aug 23rd, 2022 1h 7m

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