Journalists seem determined to make lists about everything these days.  It’s a simple and really rather lazy way to fill column inches whilst kicking off a debate amongst readers and self-appointed authorities on everything down the  pub.  There’s even a bloody magazine now which is based on what’s the best this that and the other.  Writers used to write and leave the countdown to Fluff Freeman.

In many ways, music is the most important art form there is.  It’s more accessible to the punter than any other means of expression, and our reactions to it are arbitrary, reactive and formed largely without the need for learned or knowing discourse on the form.  The award of Best This That And The Other is, therefore, a meaningless – if occasionally entertaining – distraction.

So, to wade onto these pages and declare that Richard’s Hawley’s new single – the first to be taken from the Truelove’s Gutter album – is the record of the year is effectively an opinionated and personal objective opinion without actual true bearing.  But it very probably is.  Fact. Continue reading →