If this is your first time at Said the Gramophone, I hope you'll bookmark us or subscribe via RSS. Said the Gramophone has four authors: Emma Healey, Sean Michaels, Jeff Miller and Mitz Takahashi this list is all Sean's dumb doing - don't blame the others for my bad taste. We post new songs and old songs, write impressions, stories, essays, clumsy dreams of what we hear.

We don't mess about with tour-dates, videos or advertising. We try to do just two things, well: finding good songs, and writing about them. Said the Gramophone is one of the oldest musicblogs. (mirror a part 1 2 3 / please share any others) You can also download the complete 100 songs, in three parts: The things you like you can then download by right- or ctrl-clicking with your mouse.

The best way to browse this list is to click the little arrow beside each song and then to listen as you read. I follow just one arbitrary rule: that no primary artist may appear twice. These are my 100 favourite songs of 2015: songs I love more than fruitbowls, commas and national parks. Excuse the oversimplification, but these contributions can be broken down into four memorable eras: heroin-fueled bebop (1940s), the high-octane rock’n’roll sax solo (mid-1970s), elevator grooves (late-1980s), and pop music’s saxual revival (2010-present day).Please note: MP3s are only kept online for a short time, and if this entry is from more than a couple of weeks ago, the music probably won't be available to download any more.

Perhaps we need to take a page from the book of Sun Tzu’s Art Of War : “know your enemy, and know yourself.” If we can trace the origins of the loathsome horn hook and find its appeal, we might finally be able to put it to rest.įirst, it’s important that we celebrate the saxophone for its positive contributions to pop music. But, squelchy saxophone saturation is the cockroach of pop music trends-it’s big, nasty, and damn near impossible to kill. We’re not saying Ryan Lewis invented the saxophone, and we’re not saying a horn hook is always a bad thing. In a transparent attempt to ride the Mackle-man’s wave, producers started slapping annoying saxophone hooks on everything, and the horny wares of summer 2012 are somehow still being rolled out as lead singles in 2015. Ever since Macklemore’s radio leviathan “Thrift Shop” dominated the airwaves with its squawky sax riff nearly three years ago, it seems like every top 40 pop song has some kind of obnoxious horn part, designed to climb inside your brain and overstay its welcome. There’s an indefensible trend in popular music right now, and it needs to stop.

Sax and dotty repeating song