This is our 12th issue. That's right, we've been producing regular monthly magazines for a whole year. Hoorah! Happy Birthday! So now, bugger the pop stars, this is what we like to hear.

The Office

"Dancing In The Street" Martha and the Vandellas
"Every Breath You Take" The Police
"I Need Your Love" Chic
"Windmills Of Your Mind" Noel Harrison
"Theme Tune To Indiana Jones" John Williams

1 Irresistible. All conversation WILL cease in the pub when this is on. Perfect, absolutely perfect from its swaying, uplifting melody to the world's most understated brass line.

2 Apparently only the second most successful single ever, but still a masterpiece. So simple, so straightforward and completely captivating. Melts the most resolute icy stares. The lion of musicianship caged in a pop song.

3 Takes the gold medal for the greatest note in the history of music. Sultry, enigmatic and unstoppable funk, cartwheeling around that one, ludicrous Bernard Edwards bass note.

4 Sometimes it's the non-musicians who break the best rules. This spiral staircase of a tune should never work. It always does.

5 Five minutes of this and I can tackle anything – pygmies, snakes, Nazis, falling rocks and Brookside. John Williams is one of the few film score writers who can orchestrate speed. One Two Testing is one of the few music papers that doesn't take it, by the way.


"In My Life" The Beatles
"Knee Play 3" Philip Glass
"Change Of Guard" Steely Dan
"Sayonara" Yukihiro Takahashi
"Symphony No 5" Ralph Vaughan-Williams

1 One Beatles track? Impossible. But this has their best elements: an emotive Lennon song with a tugging melody, and some George Martin invention attached (via Bach).

2 Not the typical undulating-keyboard Glass, but a mesmerising set of a-capella gasps from 'Einstein On The Beach" that makes the Flying Pickets sound like the Flying Pickets.

3 The best band from the worst period of pop: this has the most explosive guitar solo ever recorded, from Jeff Baxter, a sly melodic turn to the whole, and soaring vocal harmonies. Yummy.

4 Can't understand a word of it, but the warmest use of synths yet (from Yuki T and Kohji Ueno), and a lesson to us all. Tunes that burn into the memory.

5 This bloke seems to have come to terms most successfully with the obvious and yet oft-overlooked potential of the orchestra: dynamics and texture. This scores brilliantly in both areas.


"Want fi goh rave" Linton Kwesi Johnson
"The Boy Wonders" Aztec Camera
"The Passenger" Iggy Pop
"My Baby Just Cares For Me" Nina Simone
"The Big Rip Off" Augustus Pablo

1 Leonard Cohen, strumming along to his ditties, was very nice beside babbling brooks in Essex but LKJ seemed more relevant in Deptford. There's a lot of broken glass there.

2 Roddy. From this I gauge he must be such a nice fellow. His voice and playing are 'wundershoen'. A truant from the 'Volume: 10'; 'Tone: 10' school.

3 If you've ever travelled the Nomadic routes across the southern Sahara you'll find this very good droving music. (I have not.)

4 Her voice complements the rhythm perfectly. Perhaps I'm working for the wrong book, but I do like acoustics. A voice designed for the telephone.

5 Augustus Pablo is from Africa. I am not. This has something to do with the fact that I like this tune. I also read i-D.


"Pale Blue Eyes" The Velvet Underground
"Past, Present and Future" The Shangri-Las
"Starman" David Bowie
"Shaking Through" REM
"11 O'clock Tick Tock" U2

1 When Armageddon finally arrives, the Velvets will have the only residency in Heaven and Hell. Lyrically and physically untouchable – a seminal sound. An Oscar for Mo Tucker's drumming please.

2 Kitsch in a prom dress, with tearful eyes and an unforgiving heart. Shadow Morton's monstrous production encapsulates, well – love, hurt, relationships and probably teenage angst and acute acne. Shall we dance?

3 From the yearning golden melody through to its ultra-polished pop construction, this precious gem has all the hallmarks of perfection. Swoon to the world's only true cabaret artiste.

4 Byrdsian in concept, Olympian in execution. Dig this new breed – no image to sell, just an adrenalin rush of verses, chorus, middle-eight and a pause so good that... oh, wet 'em.

5 Signalling the return of Great Rock Music (sans blubber). An anthematic ditty containing the Edge's most spine-tingling moments inside a desperate, dynamic shell. And Jesus would never know.