Pop has a pipeline problem, entirely of its own design.

The biggest song of the first three months of 2024, the song that obviously cries out for inclusion in my expanding playlist of the most important songs (lyrically, musically and culturally) on any NOW compilation, is Noah Kahan’s multi-week UK number one Stick Season. The title track of his 2022 album, which opens NOW 117, was given a boost by TikTok just before the big labels pulled all their music from the app, and by Olivia Rodrigo covering it in the Radio 1 Live Lounge when she launched her own album Guts. It includes the song Get Him Back, which will be screamed back at her in her four O2 Arena dates and across the world in 2024.

Even when Noah’s streams were ‘accelerated’ and counted for less than newer songs, he still hung around the top ten near songs by Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, which do not appear on this compilation. Also in that tier were Beautiful Things, the full-throated tune by Benson Boone in two different time signatures with its arresting ‘PLEASE! STAY!’ refrain, and by Lose Control by Teddy Swims. Teddy held off Benson for US number one and vice versa in the UK.

Written by Julian Bunetta and Mikky Ekko, who have written global smashes for One Direction and Rihanna, Lose Control proves that a great voice and a great song with a great chorus, on which the singer hits a magic note on the syllable ‘-trol’, always wins, even if like Stick Season it took months for the song to become a deserving smash.

There were few bigger breakout stars of 2023 than Tyla, whose song Water was both a TikTok trend and a perfect example of how Afrobeats has made its mark on the global sound of pop music. The Last Dinner Party pipped Tyla to the cannae-fail title of BBC Sound of 2024, and promptly had a top 20 hit with Nothing Matters, a great contemporary rock song from their excellent debut album.

After threatening to break through for several years, Atlantic Records artist Jack Harlow finally did so by sampling Cadillac Dale’s Whatever (Bass Soliloquy), a song from 1995, on Lovin’ On Me, which was swept up in TikTok virality. Ditto Lil Boo Thang by Paul Russell, which quotes Best of My Love by The Emotions and cleverly changes the placement of where in the bar the lyric falls. Whether Russell can follow it up depends on whether Arista Records want to pour millions of dollars into his career, or if they instead seek to work their catalogue, which includes Whitney Houston, Barry Manilow, TLC and Toni Braxton.

Then there’s Tate McRae, who incorporates dance breaks into her material. Her hit Greedy was based on a cycled hook that burrows into your cerebellum and stays there, just as her label RCA planned. Tate’s track follows Arianda Grande’s Yes, And?, her comeback single after time filming the movie version of the musical Wicked. Once again, it’s a Max Martin confection and it helped Max overhaul George Martin (no relation, because Max’s surname is Sandberg) as pop’s most successful producer of number one hits on the Billboard Hot 100. Only Paul McCartney has written more, which makes me think a Max-Macca collaboration would be good for both sides.

We can also count PinkPantheress and Central Cee as new stars of British music. They team up on Nice To Meet You, where Cee’s vocals are the only presence British rap has on the compilation. Jazzy stalled at number 98 with the banal Shooting Star, as the magic of her top ten hits Make Me Feel Good and Giving Me starts to wear off.

Nathan Evans is still releasing music three years after Wellerman brought the sea shanty back to prominence. The Celtic-tinged foot-stomper Heather On The Hill, which is basically Galway Girl, will appear on an album due in autumn 2024 which will form part of his deal with Universal Music. But the label are far more likely to plug acts in their catalogue like Elton John, Frank Sinatra and the Beach Boys.

Then come the cavalcade of club tracks. Having been on plenty of NOW compilations in the past few years Becky Hill reappears with Never Be Alone, produced by Sunny Fodera, while Jax Jones picks D.O.D and Ina Wroldsen for Won’t Forget You. Nathan Dawe two-times with his own track We Ain’t Here For Long and the Bebe Rexha collaboration Heart Still Beating, which was written by Eliza Rose, Ella Henderson and the two credited artists. Really it could be sung by anyone and is anonymous dance-pop of the most cynical quality. Rose and Calvin Harris team up for Body Moving, which was written with Jessie Reyez and is perfect matchday fodder for stadium PA systems.

Pierre David Guetta two-times too with On My Love, with Zara Larsson on vocals, and a collaboration with Kim Petras that borrows so heavily from a Supertramp standard that they call it When We Were Young (The Logical Song). That song had already been brought back in the early 2000s by trance act Scooter, so we are now being subjected to a second wave of interpretations of rock’n’roll. The first wave included a straight cover of The Sound of Silence by Disturbed, a recent remix of which by Cyril has brought it to new ears almost six decades after Paul and Art first whispered to their old friend darkness.

There are three examples of what I call Green Music, because melodies are recycled. Alibi pairs Ella Henderson and Rudimental on a song that uses the chanted a cappella vocals at the end of Gangsta’s Paradise by Coolio, itself a rewrite of Stevie Wonder’s Pastime Paradise. Spicy Margarita sees Michael Bublé and Jason Derulo shamelessly update Dean Martin’s song Sway, while Nicki Minaj raps verses in between a sample of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun for her tune Pink Friday Girls, returning to her Roman Holiday character created 15 years ago.

Lana Del Rey, for her part, has recorded a straight cover of John Denver’s deathless Take Me Home, Country Roads, as she shapeshifts into country music for her next trick. Country vocalist Bailey Zimmerman was matched with Jonas Brothers on Strong Enough, presumably by a boardroom executive who smelled the synergy. They give some of the copyright to the Rolling Stones just in case they think their melody is too close to that of Start Me Up (it’s not).

There were some modern pop monsters also on the Zoom call for Strong Enough: Amy Allen, Jon Bellion, Kid Harpoon and TMS, the production duo known as The Monsters & Strangerz, who have done a lot of work with Lewis Capaldi, who repackaged his second album with five new tracks including Strangers, which is high up the NOW 117 Disc One tracklist and doesn’t change the winning formula.

If Lewis’s fellow blokes Tom Walker and Calum Scott were in an identity parade, I would have difficulty picking them out. Tom provides the sad lyric/happy tune Head Underwater while Calum sings of a Lighthouse on a blah Capaldiesque ballad that, as with Tom’s song, failed to become a UK hit. James Arthur rhymes ‘bittersweet’ with ‘bitter, sweet’ on the title track of his so-so album Bitter Sweet Love, while Troye Sivan’s TikTok-friendly One of Your Girls is very contemporary.

Having posed naked for his album cover, he gives good interview copy and is unafraid to talk about sex and sexuality. As with most new stars, social media drives people to the tunes and helps them shift concert tickets where the thrill is as much in seeing them in three dimensions as it is hearing the songs.

Paloma Faith, Pink and Kylie Minogue emerged in a pre-social media world. They have now been popstars respectively for 15, 25 and 35 years and all appear on NOW 117: Paloma with Bad Woman, Pink with torch song All Out Of Fight – written with Fred Again and Ed Sheeran’s mate Johnny McDaid – and Kylie with Hold On To Now. The Australian, who became the fifth person to receive the ICON award at the 2024 BRITs after Elton John, David Bowie, Robbie Williams and Taylor Swift, also duets with Sia (who had her first hits in the late 1990s) on Dance Alone.

Raye celebrated a double hat-trick of BRIT Awards that hopefully act as the music industry’s petty apology for all the years her old label boxed her in and messed her around. Worth It is a highlight of her 21^st Century Blues album and the song takes its place on Disc Two. That disc begins with a man credited as ‘Olly Alexander (Years & Years)’, who couldn’t say no when offered the chance to sing Dizzy hundreds of times on sofas around Europe in preparation for the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö. The hope must be that he can step out of his band, now that his colleague Mark Ralph is making hits for others, and become a solo artist who acts, or an actor who sings.

Dua Lipa, whose song Houdini is the first taste of her third album, starred in the Matthew Vaughn film Argyll after her cameo in the Barbie movie, and will enjoy her 2024-25 world tour that will make her label an awful lot of money in spite of spending an awful lot of money. Well done to her and them for picking Kevin Parker aka Tame Impala as a key collaborator.

Sabrina Carpenter will spend some of 2024 on tour with Taylor Swift playing songs like Feather, a sweet confection with all the hottest production tricks written with LA pop A-Listers John Ryan and Amy Allen (again). Doja Cat continues her success with the modern slow jam Agora Hills, another top 10 hit in the US. Georgia Ku offers A Little More Lost, a bouncy pop song which could also have been a Eurovision entry thanks to its ‘woah’-ful coda.

It was written with Lewis ‘Shift K3Y’ Jankel, whose dad among other things wrote Ai No Corrida and was in Ian Dury’s Blockheads. Ilsey Juber is also in the family business: her dad Laurence was briefly a guitarist in Wings, while her grandpa produced TV shows Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch. She stands on her own merits, having written Midnight Sky and Nothing Breaks Like A Heart for Miley Cyrus, who is another woman both in the family business and on NOW 117 thanks to her standalone single Used To Be Young. Ilsey’s song No California, written with Nashville A-List writer Ben Johnson and produced by Danger Mouse, unsurprisingly sounds like a Miley Cyrus smash.

James Blunt and Take That are still making new ballads in 2024 to fit in between the other ballads in their live show, respectively All The Love That I Ever Needed and This Life, while Neil’n’Chris are approaching 40 years as Pet Shop Boys and offer the single Loneliness to prepare fans for their 15th album Nonetheless. All 15 LPs have one-word titles and all have gone top 10 in the UK, and they remain a seductive live draw and very good interview copy.

So does Liam Gallagher, who recorded a terrific chart-topping album with Stone Roses guitarist John Squire that included Just Another Rainbow, which sounded none more 1991 but with Greg Kurstin souping it up with his world-class rock production. From nowhere, we are reacquainting ourselves with the Bedingfield siblings. Daniel appeared on the BBC Breakfast sofa to promote three UK dates in April, including the Palladium, while Natasha’s song Unwritten was synched to the movie Anyone But You, which obeys the 20-year cycle to the year and rounds off Disc Two.

Jennifer Lopez has finally found her happily ever after with ex- and current partner Ben Affleck, and she put out an album and a documentary in early 2024. Can’t Get Enough aims for the sound of her golden period between 1999 and 2005 but falls well short. In the Christmas chart of 2001, J-Lo was at 31 with her recent top five hit I’m Real and Daniel Bedingfield had just topped the chart with Gotta Get Thru This.

Just behind Daniel at number four was Sophie Ellis-Bextor with Murder on the Dancefloor. In an interview with the Guardian, one of very, very few he has given since he retired New Radicals, the song’s co-writer Gregg Alexander said Murder was in the running for inclusion on the band’s album. You Get What You Give got the nod as the first single and Gregg has been counting the money ever since. It amazes him that a song that was first a hit in 2001 was, 22 winters on, ‘the most heard music on the planet’ thanks to its inclusion, at the director’s insistence, at the end of the cult hit film Saltburn.

Thus does a song from NOW 51 recur on NOW 117. Are we seeing the consolidation of old music as a way for labels to earn money, both by reworking old copyrights into new shapes and just pushing old songs back into public consciousness like Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese did?

In the early 1990s, the charts were moribund and full of old songs synched to movies and TV commercials. By the end of the decade they were full of acts targeted at eight-to-15-year-olds. In a year where there are biopics of Amy Winehouse and Robbie Williams – one dead, one whose chart career is behind him – it must be hard for people working at record companies to pretend to care about new music beyond what’s trending right this second on TikTok, which they can bring in-house and monetise to make a return on their investment.

In a case of pots and kettles, those labels are starting to think they’re getting a raw deal and pulling music from that service. This ought to mean indie acts and bedroom musicians, like Daniel Bedingfield and Benson Boone, can surprise us all with new sounds in new shapes. The music industry needs fresh talent and there is no shortage of it; there just needs to be the wherewithal to fund both the talent and the physical stages necessary to incubate these stars.

In October 2023, it was announced that Craig Revel Horwood was to direct a musical based on the Now compilation series. Touring the UK in 2024/25, the musical centres around two women attending a school reunion who come to terms with how times have passed since they listened to Rick Astley in their Birmingham homes back in 1989. Written by Pippa Evans, who pops up on Radio 4 singing songs and doing impressions, the show appears to be targeted at women in their forties and fifties who remember when Whitney was young.

The musical notionally celebrates 40 years of the compilation but it’s a jukebox musical by any other name. In fact, there’s another musical called I Should Be So Lucky which ran in Manchester this year, based on the music of Stock Aitken Waterman and featuring a deus ex machina from a hologram Kylie Minogue. The plot, such as it is, tells the story of a bride jilted at the altar but who treats her family to what would have been her honeymoon. Too Many Broken Hearts won’t deter her from being Together Forever with the ones she loves.

I wonder if in 2060 someone will write a show based on the music of 2023 (they won’t, but let’s pretend), using the artists whose tracks appear on the 116^th edition of Now That’s What I Call Music. Incredibly, Kylie Minogue is very high up Disc One with the title track of her number one album Tension, as are The Rolling Stones. When the band put out their last album of original material in 2005, Kylie was on her fourth reinvention (Slow, Chocolate, Red Blooded Woman). Disc Two opens with Angry, a song that nicks ideas from their golden period – the riff of Start Me Up, the swagger of Miss You, the long outro of Brown Sugar – and adds production from Andrew Watt, the world’s hottest producer.

In 2005, Olivia Rodrigo was two years old. Her track Bad Idea Right? is placed straight after Angry, mirroring the second position she has on Disc One where Vampire follows Desire, the latest hit from Calvin Harris, whose career was just getting going in 2005 and which features Sam Smith. In 2006, Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake did Timbaland a favour when they joined him on the song Give It To Me. The trio reunite on Keep Going Up, which is not a patch on that old tune.

There are other acts who began their careers before 2005, which proves that pop music in 2023 cannot be told purely through new or current acts. To use the term from radio playlisting, pop is recurrent nowadays. Representing acts who found fame in the 1980s are The Pretenders, who reappear with A Love, and Duran Duran, whose song Black Moonlight has guitar and production from their old buddy Nile Rodgers. ABBA’s Agnetha Faltskog concludes Disc Two with Where Do We Go From Here, a song from an updated version of her 2013 album A.

Rick Astley stopped performing for 20 years but returned in his fifties and fulfilled a lifelong dream when he opened the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury 2023. Never Gonna Stop is the lead single from the third album of his comeback, which appears to be influenced by The Lighthouse Family. In 2006, James Blunt’s song You’re Beautiful hit number one in the US and UK, meaning Blunty didn’t have to work again. He tours his seventh album, which includes the single Beside You, with dates at the Royal Albert Hall; he has also written a memoir full of scurrilous anecdotes which positions him as a Peter Ustinov-type raconteur in the making. Give him a podcast.

Blunt is probably the only act who has opened for both Elton John and Ed Sheeran, and there is an Elton connection to two songs on the compilation. Stephen Sanchez performed his torch song Until I Found You during Elton’s headline set at Glastonbury, while Brandon Flowers of The Killers, whose song Your Side of Town is on Disc Two, gave a karaoke rendition of Tiny Dancer. Tom Odell was inspired by Elton in his early days as a pianist in Chichester; the slow-burning Black Friday is his first new hit since 2016 and rides the wave of Another Love’s viral success in the last 18 months.

Three pop acts who were all over Radio 1 in the 2000s appear on the compilation with songs that will be slipped into their arena shows that remind people of their childhoods: Take That, with the dire Windows; the original Sugababes, with the great When The Rain Comes; and S Club, with the ersatz chumminess of These Are The Days. There are two X Factor graduates on Disc Two: Leigh-Anne from Little Mix drafts in Arya Starr on My Love, while James Arthur offers Blindside, a song which is 99% Seventeen Going Under by Sam Fender.

There are two stars of their respective eras, both from a time before Idol and X Factor, who were in the news before NOW 116 was released. Madonna reminded people what she became famous for when she brought her show to the O2 Arena; after their appearance on Desire, Sam Smith two-times with her on Vulgar, which was fashioned by the finest minds in pop music: Cirkut, Omer Fedi, Ryan Tedder, Jimmy Napes and Ilya.

Incredibly, this is the first time Madonna has been on a NOW compilation. Her former duet partner Britney Spears released a memoir and popped up on Mind Your Business, a poor collaboration with will.i.am. She has said music is not her main focus now she can be herself in the public eye. The man I have spent many years calling will.je.suis had success as the 2000s turned into the 2010s, much like Nicki Minaj – whose Pink Friday 2 project will feature Last Time I Saw You, on which she both sings and raps – and Sia, who returns to music with the gospel-adjacent Gimme Love.

Lana del Rey first put out Radio on her 2012 debut album; written with her Video Games collaborator Justin Parker, it follows hits by Miguel and Taylor Swift in having its moment well after its release, a so-called ‘bringback hit’. Selena Gomez has focussed on her acting and wellbeing in recent years, which made the release of Single Soon a pleasant surprise.

Like Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish has the songwriting ability of Sia and the Gen Z mania of Selena; her Barbie theme song What Was I Made For? follows Bad Idea Right on Disc Two. It may well win her another Academy Award, although my tip is Lift Me Up, Rihanna’s first new song in years and the only one of the five nominations not to come from the Barbie soundtrack.

Like Billie, many of the artists offer songs that are very on brand for them which, as with Madonna’s, were written with some of the guys who work behind the scenes and in the shadows of pop. Ed Sheeran’s collaborator Steve Mac helped out Cian Ducrot and Dermot Kennedy with Heaven and Don’t Forget Me respectively. The great Greg Kurstin helped PinkPantheress with Mosquito, while the abovementioned Andrew Watt did the same for Post Malone on Overdrive.

Jazzy’s song Feel It was co-written by Hannah Laing, who appears in her own right with the song Good Love along with RoRo. Hannah is one of two anonymous female DJs on the compilation, the other being Peggy Gou who offers the football chant It Goes Like Nanana. The lockdown-breaking Rita Ora sings Drinkin’, which was produced by both Joel Corry and MK; the man from Michigan born Marc Kinchen two-times with the pop-house tune Asking, which he produced with Sonny Fodera and which has vocals from Clementine Douglas.

Hannah Boleyn is the voice on Belfast DJ Billy Gillies’ track DNA (Loving You), which has the bounce of a trance anthem from the year 2000. Gorgon City, who had a hit in 2014 with Ready For Your Love, appear with the song Voodoo, while Chase & Status are joined by Becky Hill on the drum’n’basstastic Disconnect.

Two songs make clear that we are running out of songs: Beyond Chicago, Majestic and Alex Mills all turn Whitney Houston’s Million Dollar Bill into a modern club hit – fun fact: Alicia Keys and her husband Swizz Beats wrote it – while Issey Cross takes The Verve’s best-known song and makes it a Bittersweet Goodbye.

Happily, there are plenty of new copyrights being made in 2023. The Weekend is a fun duet between Stormzy and Raye where the pair try to fit in a meeting between their packed schedules, and Snooze is the follow-up to SZA’s enormous smash Kill Bill. Two collaborations must have come from boardroom level: Olivia Dean and Leon Bridges on The Hardest Part, and Mae Stephens and Meghan Trainor on Mr Right, which could well be the first song on a NOW compilation to use the word ‘zest’ in a chorus.

I really want to make Luke Combs’s cover of Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car the song that sums up autumn 2023, because we finally have a Nashville country star on a NOW compilation again, but really it’s a toss-up between two UK number ones. Paint The Town Red by Doja Cat steals Dionne Warwick’s Walk On By for its backing track over which Doja sings ‘I said what I said’. It gave her a Hot 100 number one in the USA.

Strangers by Kenya Grace, however, is the first UK chart-topper to be a 100%-er by any female artist; Kenya writes, produces, sings and plays every note of the song. It also sounds like nothing else on the charts, mimicking Raye’s song Escapism before it. It’s a classic break-up song tinged with melancholy; on his Radio 1 Live Lounge performance Yungblud (who is not on NOW 116) proved that you can transpose it to rock instruments.

I am sure every UK university a cappella group will work a version of the song into their 2023/24 performance schedule, and in 2060 perhaps Strangers will feature in my imaginary musical. As with those Stock Aitken Waterman hits being revived and repurposed for musicals four decades after they were originally released, the song is eternal.

By the time NOW 115 was announced at the end of June 2023, only seven songs had topped the UK singles chart that year. Two were by Lewis Capaldi, two (including one of the Capaldi songs) were written by Ed Sheeran and there were two big number ones from two of the biggest acts globally. The other, missing from the compilation, was a collaboration between Dave and Central Cee, whom the streets will never forget.

Four of those seven number ones appear on this compilation. Flowers by Miley Cyrus is perfect LA pop, with a nod to Bruno Mars and with production from the folks who brought us Harry Styles’s As It Was, Tom Hull aka Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson. Eyes Closed was a song held back from Ed Sheeran’s Divide album so it could ensure the Subtract album, an introspective set which was otherwise free of Big Pop Anthems, had at least one impact track. It became his 14^th number one as an artist, though if you can add five songs written for other acts then he is two short of Elvis.

Wish You The Best is a Lewis Capaldi by-numbers ballad where the melody ramps up for the chorus and allows sad lads to sing along. Alas, the rollout of Lewis’s second album, which includes three number one hits (one of them the Sheeran-written Pointless), was marred by vocal problems that led to cancelled shows. He is now Britain’s most famous Tourette’s sufferer, overtaking Pete from Big Brother who, fun fact, is also a musician and plays with his band LoVeDoGs.

Calvin Harris returned with Miracle, a far more boisterous track than anything on his Funk Wav Bounce album which had soundtracked my journey to my brother’s wedding in August 2022. It spent eight weeks at number one and features both Ellie Goulding and a beat which could have come off a NOW compilation in the early 2000s. It was now so far distant in time that Eurotrance could return to the charts and feel nostalgic and retro. Ellie’s iffy album of dance-pop was delayed twice through distribution issues and was totally overshadowed by the success of Miracle. By The End of the Night is one of the better songs on it and it appears on Disc Two.

Eurovision provides four tracks among the 50 on the compilation, all of which benefitted from the Contest’s sponsorship deal with TikTok. I still think Sweden only won – thanks to Loreen mucking about in a sandpit and singing a ballad called Tattoo – because the jury was bribed with tickets to see the ABBA Voyage show while they were in the UK (allegedly but credible). Although the band have denied it, I am positive their Golden Jubilee would have looked better when celebrated in their home nation. Next year in Malmö!

Sweden pipped the public favourite to the win but Kaarija will turn up at fan parties every year until he gets bored of them thanks to his pounding Cha Cha Cha, whose choreography on the night included a centipede formation after he broke out of a cage. It made for good TV, unlike the UK’s entry I Wrote A Song by Mae Muller, which sits on Disc Two in all its blahness. I imagine everyone watching Norway’s entry, Queen of Kings by Alessandra, did two things: 1) shout ‘GAME OF THRONES!’ because of her crown; and 2) sang along to the operatic chorus which is still lodged in my head weeks after first hearing it.

Sam Ryder, who of course found initial fame thanks to TikTok too and really ought to represent the UK from now until the end of time, performed his new single Mountain as part of the half-time show with Roger Taylor on drums. He strengthens his Queen connection by bringing in Sir Brian May (although he doesn’t have the knighthood on the NOW credits) for Fought & Lost. The very Queenesque track features in TV show Ted Lasso – indeed, Sam performed it with star of that show and host of Eurovision Hannah Waddingham – and it ends Disc One.

Might Sam replace Adam Lambert as the latest karaoke Freddie as Queen continue to play arenas into their sixth decade as a band? Adam himself appears on Disc Two with a remake of gay disco staple You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) which is reimagined with Sigala. Staying on the dancefloor, Becky Hill had her 17th hit with Side Effects, a sticky dance-pop confection. Make Me by Borai & Denham Audio borrows the same track that Strike nicked for U Sure Do back in 1995: Serious by Donna Allen. Giving Me by Jazzy, meanwhile, sounds like Make Me Feel Good Part Two, and why change a winning (and financially successful) formula?

Cian Ducrot, who dropped out of the Royal Academy of Music where he was studying the flute, offers Heaven, which was written with Steve Mac, who is probably still getting enormous cheques for writing Flying Without Wings and never has to work again thanks to the biggest (and the fastest written) of Ed Sheeran’s 14 number ones as an act, Shape of You. Cat Burns’s track Live More and Love More failed to hit the top 40 and she risks being a one-hit wonder unless her label gets behind her. Stuart Price, who has worked with Take That, The Killers and Pet Shop Boys, adds his magic production dust over it. Industry pros like Steve and Stuart will get work regardless of an act’s success.

Look at the names behind some of the songs on NOW 115: Can’t Tame Her by Zara Larsson was written by MNEK; How Does It Feel by Tom Grennan was written by One Director collaborator Jamie Scott and produced by Max Martin’s mate Carl Falk; and Heart Wants What It Wants by Bebe Rexha had input from Bonnie McKee, who wrote a lot of Katy Perry’s early smashes. From out of nowhere, David Kushner had a surprise smash with Daylight, a gloomy song sung in a deep baritone that got a TikTok push in the spring and was stuck behind Calvin and Ellie. It was produced by Rob Kirwan, the guy who masterminded the sound of Hozier’s debut album.

The Irish songwriter is one of many big acts – in his case, Eat Your Young – putting out songs that stick to what they do best and don’t frighten any horses. There were also bankable American stars returning to the charts in 2023: the genre-agnostic Post Malone’s pop song Chemical plugged his greatest hits collection while Maroon 5 go acoustic with Middle Ground; Meghan Trainor has become a mum and her song Mother will appeal to other mums in her fanbase; and OneRepublic come back with Runaway, which is perfectly fine.

I was enraptured by Waffle House, a song by Jonas Brothers which paid tribute to their ‘headstrong father and determined mother’ even though those adjectives are tautologous. They needed eight other writers to help them with the track, including the mighty Daniel Tashian, whose star rose thanks to his work with Kacey Musgraves. I wonder if Lana Del Rey would dare to bring in outside help these days, perhaps from Taylor Swift; after releasing an album which is entirely devoid of choruses, an outtake from her 2014 album Ultraviolence written with Rick Nowels called Say Yes To Heaven took her back into the Top 10 as a solo artist.

Along with Lizzie Grant’s creation of Lana Del Rey, representing what counts as rock music in 2023 are Nothing But Thieves, who have had three top 10 albums but have not troubled the top 40 in the slightest; Welcome To The DCC only crept into the Top 100. The 1975 have had five number one albums out of five but no top 10 hit. Oh Caroline became their 12^th Top 40 hit in spite of Matty Healy’s Marmite-y public persona. I suppose you can make the comparison that, aside from their appearances on We Are The World, neither Bruce Springsteen nor Bob Dylan topped the Hot 100 as artists.

In the dying days of the rock era, major labels, to their credit, are still trying to launch acts into a world where they compete with every track ever made. Some of them nick from those songs, as FLO do with Fly Girl which borrows Missy Elliot and quotes a line from her song Work It. It stalled at 38. It’s followed by Dive, a song by BRIT School graduate Olivia Dean, who got her start with Rudimental. The crate-digging South Londoners come back with Dancing Is Healing, a top 10 hit that already sounds sped-up. It features Charlotte Plank and Vibe Chemistry, who is the most famous person to come out of the Northamptonshire village of Deanshanger.

Otherwise there are a posse of old X Factor stars still making music: Niall Horan offers the chantalong Meltdown, Leigh-Anne Pinnock from Little Mix drops her surname for Don’t Say Love and Olly Murs still has a career and put out I Found Her, a single from his seventh album which he promoted with an arena tour for people too young to have seem Robbie Williams in his Imperial Era.

It is a measure of how the music industry are trying to promote their heritage brands that at least seven of them appear on NOW 115. Shania Twain helps Anne-Marie launch her new album with a country-tinged tune called Unhealthy. P!nk’s album Trustfall promoted her Hyde Park shows in a way that will stop people going to the bar when she plays her new ones, such as the title track. Belinda Carlisle was handed a set of songs by Diane Warren for an EP which will stop people going to the bar when she isn’t doing the hits. Big Big Love is a Radio 2-friendly air-puncher.

Biggest of them all is the act who will headline Radio 2’s festival in Leicester in September, returning to her adopted home after in turn going back to her original home of Australia. Kylie’s fans have powered Padam Padam to enormous success: it’s quite an iffy song which mimics a heartbeat, but I reckon its chances were not hurt by coming out bang in the middle of Pride Season. The passing of Tina Turner is marked by the appearance at the end of Disc Two by, simply, The Best.

Pretenders (drop the ‘the’, just ‘Pretenders’) played Glastonbury as well as Hyde Park, slipping in their new single Let The Sun Come In among the hits they have to play, which still hold up four decades on. Arrogantly, they could leave out Brass In Pocket, their only original number one (they had three) which came out in a time Before Now. Fatboy Slim also popped up at Glastonbury and he probably had no hesitation in saying ‘show me the money’ when Rita Ora – who broke lockdown rules twice and had to go to Australia as punishment – asked to borrow almost all of his smash Praise You for her single Praising You. It will appear on her third album, which comes out fully 11 years after her debut.

Jess Glynne is also preparing her third album, eight years after her first, although her slinky song Silly Me didn’t chart, threatening her record of two chart-topping albums out of two. She has had several number ones both on her own and as a featured vocalist, and she was launched the same way Sam Smith was. Sam’s so-so album Gloria featured Lose You, which was not one of the album’s four singles but is an impressive Eurovision-type dancefloor-filler produced by Cirkut and written with five of the best anonymous songwriters in pop music: Jimmy Napes, Ilya Salmanzadeh, Henry Walter, Blake Slatkin and Omer Fedi.

Following Jess and Sam are a host of ‘top-line vocalists’ on big dance tunes: Ella Henderson does the honours for 0800 Heaven, credited to both Nathan Dawe and Joel Corry; Caity Baser two-times on Dance Around It, another Joel Corry jam, and Feels This Good, which piles up Sigala (them again), Mae Muller (her again) and Stefflon Don. Two other female rappers, Ice Spice and Nicki Minaj, join up for Princess Diana, which got to number four on the Billboard Hot 100. It is perhaps the biggest hit in the drill genre of rap.

With BTS absent, FIFTY FIFTY step in to fill the K-pop void with their perky pop song Cupid. It hit the UK top 10, the US top 20 and was gigantic on TikTok thanks to a sped-up version. Nobody could have expected an unknown South Korean girlband to break into global consciousness among the Mileys, Lewises and Becky Hills, but that’s the nature of music in 2023.

Welcome to Now That’s What I Call…NOW!

NOW That’s What I Call Music aka NOW 1: Culture Club – Karma Chameleon

NOW 2: Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Relax

NOW 3: Grandmaster Flash ft Melle Mel – White Lines (Don’t Do It)

NOW 4: Lionel Richie – Hello

NOW 5: Scritti Politti – The Word ‘Girl’

NOW 6: Queen – One Vision

NOW 7: The Housemartins – Happy Hour

NOW 8: Aerosmith vs Run DMC – Walk This Way

NOW 9: Bon Jovi – Livin’ on a Prayer

NOW 10: M/A/A/R/S – Pump Up the Volume

NOW 11: Kylie Minogue – I Should Be So Lucky

NOW 12: The Timelords – Doctorin’ the Tardis

NOW 13 (XIII): The Art of Noise ft Tom Jones – Kiss

                 

NOW 14: Neneh Cherry – Buffalo Stance

NOW 15: Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers – Swing the Mood

NOW 16: De La Soul – Eye Know

NOW 17: Primal Scream – Loaded

NOW 18: Sinead O’Connor – Nothing Compares 2 U

NOW 19: The KLF – 3am Eternal

NOW 20: Enya – Caribbean Blue

NOW 21: Shanice – I Love Your Smile

NOW 22: Utah Saints – Something Good

NOW 23: George Michael – Too Funky

NOW 24: Lenny Kravitz – Are You Gonna Go My Way

NOW 25: REM – Everybody Hurts

NOW 26: Radiohead – Creep

NOW 27: Ace of Base – The Sign

NOW 28: Wet Wet Wet – Love is All Around

NOW 29: Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry – 7 Seconds

NOW 30: Portishead – Glory Box

NOW 31: Pulp – Common People

NOW 32: Blur – Country House

NOW 33: Oasis – Live Forever

NOW 34: Spice Girls – Wannabe

NOW 35: Babybird – You’re Gorgeous

NOW 36: Placebo – Nancy Boy

NOW 37: The Cardigans – Lovefool

NOW 38: Meredith Brooks – Bitch

NOW 39: All Saints – Never Ever

NOW 40: Baddiel & Skinner and the Lightning Seeds – Three Lions ‘98

NOW 41: Stardust – Music Sounds Better With You

NOW 42: Fatboy Slim – Praise You

NOW 43: New Radicals – You Get What You Give

NOW 44: Britney Spears – Baby One More Time

NOW 45: Artful Dodger featuring Craig David – Re-Rewind When the Crowd Say Bo Selecta

NOW 46: S Club 7 – Reach

NOW 47: U2 – Beautiful Day

NOW 48: Hear’Say – Pure & Simple

NOW 49: Outkast – Ms Jackson

NOW 50: Kylie Minogue – Can’t Get You Out of My Head

NOW 51: Daniel Bedingfield – Gotta Get Thru This

NOW 52: Sugababes – Freak Like Me

NOW 53: Ms Dynamite – Dy-Na-Mi-Tee

NOW 54: Girls Aloud – Sound of the Underground

NOW 55: 50 Cent – In Da Club

NOW 56: Beyonce ft Jay-Z – Crazy In Love

NOW 57: Britney Spears – Toxic

NOW 58: Estelle – 1980

NOW 59: Lucie Silvas – What You’re Made Of

NOW 60: McFly – All About You

NOW 61: Gorillaz featuring De La Soul – Feel Good Inc

NOW 62: Kelly Clarkson – Since U Been Gone

NOW 63: Jose Gonzalez – Heartbeats

NOW 64: Gnarls Barkley – Crazy

NOW 65: Amy Winehouse – Rehab

NOW 66: Take That – Patience

NOW 67: Rihanna featuring Jay Z – Umbrella

NOW 68: Leona Lewis – Bleeding Love

NOW 69: Timbaland presents OneRepublic – Apologize

NOW 70: The Ting Tings – That’s Not My Name

NOW 71: Coldplay – Viva La Vida

NOW 72: Lily Allen – The Fear

NOW 73: Beyonce – Halo

NOW 74: Black Eyed Peas – I Gotta Feeling

NOW 75: Lady Gaga – Bad Romance

NOW 76: Robyn – Dancing on my Own

NOW 77: Bruno Mars – Just The Way You Are

NOW 78: Jessie J – Price Tag

NOW 79: Adele – Someone Like You

NOW 80: Lana Del Rey – Video Games

NOW 81: David Guetta featuring Sia – Titanium

NOW 82: Carly Rae Jepsen – Call Me Maybe

NOW 83: Taylor Swift – We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together

NOW 84: The Lumineers – Ho Hey

NOW 85: Daft Punk featuring Pharrell Williams – Get Lucky

NOW 86: Lorde – Royals

NOW 87: Pharrell Williams – Happy

NOW 88: Sia – Chandelier

NOW 89: Hozier – Take Me to Church

NOW 90: Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars – Uptown Funk

NOW 91: Little Mix – Black Magic

NOW 92: The Weeknd – Can’t Feel My Face

NOW 93: The 1975 – The Sound

NOW 94: Viola Beach – Boys That Sing

NOW 95: Clean Bandit ft Anne-Marie and Sean Paul – Rockabye

NOW 96: Sigrid – Don’t Kill My Vibe

NOW 97: Luis Fonzi featuring Justin Bieber and Daddy Yankee – Despacito

NOW 98: Dua Lipa – New Rules

NOW 99: Stormzy featuring MNEK: Blinded By Your Grace (Part 2)

NOW 100 – The People’s Choice

NOW 101: Marshmello & Bastille – Happier

NOW 102: Keala Settle – This Is Me

NOW 103: Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus – Old Town Road

NOW 104: Kygo & Whitney Houston – Higher Love

NOW 105: Matt Lucas – The Baked Potato Song

NOW 106: Michael Ball, Captain Sir Tom Moore & The NHS Voices of Care Choir – You’ll Never Walk Alone

NOW 107: Cardi B ft. Megan Thee Stallion – WAP

Now 108: Olivia Rodrigo – drivers license

NOW 109: Russ Millions & Tion Wayne – Body

NOW 110: Elton John & Dua Lipa – Cold Heart (PNAU remix)

NOW 111: The Cast of Encanto – We Don’t Talk About Bruno

NOW 112: Kalush Orchestra – Stefania

NOW 113: Tom Odell – Another Love

NOW 114: Raye ft 070 Shake – Escapism

NOW 115: FIFTY FIFTY – Cupid

NOW 116: Kenya Grace – Strangers

NOW 117: Sophie Ellis-Bextor – Murder on the Dancefloor

Another 50 tracks from the end of 2022 and the first four months of 2023 show us the pulse of pop.

Disc One Track One comes from Lewis Capaldi. In April 2023, he brought out a Netflix documentary directed by the guys who gave us Bros: After The Screaming Stops and the story of Harry Potter with no mention of JK Rowling. Ed Sheeran helped Lewis write Pointless, a song which sounds exactly what Ed Sheeran writing a Lewis Capaldi ballad sounds like, including the fun zeugma of the opening line ‘I bring her coffee in the morning, she brings me inner piece’. Or is it ‘brings me in a piece’ of toast?

Three songs by blokes on Now 114 are right in the Sheeran/Capaldi tenor. Cian Ducrot’s song I’ll Be Waiting sounds like Love Island in musical form, the Kid LAROI’s Love Again is a sad acoustic ballad written with super producers Cirkut and Omer Fedi, and Dean Lewis’ How Do I Say Goodbye is about his dad, whose terminal cancer diagnosis forms the emotional core of the song and the music video, where it is revealed Dean’s dad had a stem cell transplant that saved his life. A number 23 UK hit, Dean played the Camden Roundhouse as part of a world tour.

Someone praised P!nk as an artist whose career started in the CD era, ran through the download era and is still active in the streaming age. Her so-so album Trustfall was produced with Greg Kurstin and included the fluffy lead single Never Gonna Not Dance Again, written with Max Martin. Adam Lambert took the P!nk song Whataya Want From Me into the top ten in America – it features in the musical & Juliet – and has spent the last few years touring the world with Queen in his role of the new Freddie Mercury. Lambert’s impressive album of covers called High Drama included his version of Billie Eilish’s song Getting Older. In the promo video, he ‘gets older’ with the help of prosthetics.

Raye had a number one with Escapism, a very strange track which sounded like nothing else she or anyone else had done. The narrative surrounding Raye’s single Escapism concerned Polydor Records dropping her at her public protestations in June 2021: ‘I’ve done everything they asked me. I switched genres. I worked 7 days a week…I’m done being a polite popstar. I want to make my album now…I have waited 7 years for this day and I am still waiting.’

The album My 21^st Century Blues came out in early 2023 and featured Escapism, a very strange track which sounded like nothing else she or anyone else had done. It feels like a suite.  It was propelled to number one via fan goodwill and is the track that makes my Now That’s What I Call Now playlist which picks the song that best captures its moment.

In February, Raye performed the song on US television for The Late Show, starting at the piano and backed by the show’s horn section. Rapper 070 Shake, a New Jersey rapper signed to Def Jam’s GOOD imprint, joined her, as she does on the studio recording. Escapism peaked at 22 on the Hot 100, which is tremendously impressive for an independent artist.

SZA’s modern r’n’b has been compared to Sade (she’s not even close) thanks to her huge hit Kill Bill, whose hook ‘I might kill my ex’ had to be edited for radio. PinkPantheress was stuck behind Miley Cyrus’ Flowers (not on NOW 114) with her hyperpop song Boy’s a Liar, which is high up the Disc One tracklisting. Ditto Made You Look by Meghan Trainor, an ugly song which mentions brand names (Gucci, Versace, Louis Vuitton) and then boasts ‘even with nothing on, I made you look!’ Does she want expensive things or not?!

A strange trend in 2023 was the ‘bringback’, when an old song somehow came back into fashion. Die For You was the sixth single from Starboy, an album by The Weekend, and Ariana Grande’s voice was added to turn it into a hit all over again. It was in the top five at the same time as Sure Thing, a track by Miguel which was the second single from his debut album in 2010. It topped the R&B/Hiphop charts back then and was a top 40 hit in the States, but for some reason it leapt back into prominence. It may well have been engineered by his record label, which has now waited six years for a follow-up to Miguel’s fourth album. The music sync team of the Netflix hit Wednesday knew exactly what they were doing when they used Bloody Mary, a track from the Lady Gaga album Born This Way, for a dance sequence on the show. The song duly appears at the end of Disc One.

Even more strange was Creepin’, a track which reused I Don’t Wanna Know and brought together Metro Boomin, The Weeknd and 21 Savage. Grandmaster Flash’s seminal The Message is the basis for Players, a top 10 hit by 070 Shake’s fellow Jersey rapper Coi Leray that was big on TikTok thanks to its ‘girls is players too’ hook. Wouldn’t you believe it, she is a ‘nepo baby’ whose dad Ray Benzino owned rap magazine The Source and is a star of Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta.

Years & Years, meanwhile, faithfully covered the Crystal Waters dance anthem 100% Pure Love which was synced to Target’s Christmas 2022 ad campaign. Ella Henderson’s latest vocal appearance is on React, a dancefloor filler produced by Switch Disco which borrows from the late Robert Miles’ anthem Children. Central Cee must have given Passenger a nice cheque to use the hook of Let Her Go for his own song Let Go (‘I rarely get this in depth!’). We are, after all, running out of songs.

Lizzo, who headlined the O2 Arena as part of a European tour, is quite correctly on Disc One with the title track of her album Special. She has ascended to A List status in recent years, joining a major-label contingent including Lady Gaga and Lana Del Rey. The lady born Lizzie Grant continues her run of solo non-hits with the opulent title track of her ninth(!!) album Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, which includes the line ‘f— me to death’ that was scrubbed from the radio. It is strange that her own songs barely dent the Top 40 but collaborations like her Taylor Swift duet Snow on the Beach (not on a Now) do. Perhaps she considers herself more of an albums act anyhow, although it was bad form of her to complain about her initial placement on the Glastonbury poster. Equally bad was that she said she had turned them down three times.

Another performer due to play the O2 in 2023 is Sam Smith, whose disco-divaesque I’m Not Here To Make Friends was accompanied by a video that showcased Sam’s fun new direction and brought Calvin Harris and Jessie Reyes to the party. The Jonas Brothers, meanwhile, lined up a gig at the Royal Albert Hall to promote their 2023 album (called The Album). It features the bouncy two-minute vignette Wings, which was written by 10 people including The Monsters and Strangerz, who have helped make Lewis Capaldi’s sound.

Younger talent on Now 114 include Caity Baser, whose song Pretty Boys is basically a TikTok Kate Nash, and Mae Stephens, whose great pop song If We Ever Broke Up caught the attention of scrollers at the end of 2022, perhaps because it sounds like three Dua Lipa songs squished together. D4vd is a chap called David Burke who turned 18 a few weeks before Now 114 was released. His tremolo-heavy track Here with Me gave him a top 40 hit, thanks to Interscope Records signing him.

Venbee x Goddard’s equally radio-friendly drum’n’bass track Messy In Heaven leapt up the charts after the Christmas hits had dropped out of the Top 40. The original version opens with the line ‘I heard Jesus did cocaine on a night out’, which you cannot say on the BBC, so the edited version went for ‘I heard my mate lost his mind on a night out’. Oh Baby is a hyperactive dancefloor filler by Nathan Dawe and Bru-C, which features Nottingham rapper Bshp and Issey Cross. Her name became a running gag on Greg James’ Radio 1 Breakfast Show: ‘Issey Cross [is he cross]?! He’s fuming!!’

Sub Focus aka Luton-born Nicolaas Douwma took his own drum’n’bass to Wembley Arena in March, where the setlist featured Ready To Fly, which sits on Disc Two of Now 114 and will be on his album Evolve. Skrillex put out two albums in two days in February, one of which included Rumble, a typically dance-y track which is credited to him, rapper Flowdan and the man who finished second behind FLO in the BBC’s Sound of 2023 poll: Fred Again.

Then there’s the host of blokes: Niall Horan with Heaven, the perky first track from his album The Show; Tom Grennan, two-timing with his song Here and a duet with Joel Corry called Lionheart (Fearless), whose title seems to indicate a compromise and whose melody rips off at least ten other tracks; and Calum Scott, who brings his voice to Jax Jones’ recent by-numbers chart hit Whistle, which employs a whistling hook.

There is, as always, a strong contingent of black performers, many left to Disc Two. Stormzy and Debbie offer the introspective Firebabe, on which both acts sing. They performed it as part of a BBC performance at Abbey Road to help promote Stormzy’s third album This Is What I Mean; the song is on Disc One because Stormzy is an important figure in British life, never mind music.

Elsewhere, self-proclaimed ‘Afrorave’ star Rema is there with his hooky hit Calm Down, which benefitted from an appearance from the World’s Most Followed Person on Instagram Selena Gomez. Libianca appeared on The Voice in 2021 and in the UK top ten in 2023 with People, a hypnotic slice of Afrobeats which uses words like ‘paranoia’ and asks people to ‘check on’ others and ‘really know’ them.

KSI’s Wikipedia page lists him as Youtuber and boxer who also owns an energy drink, vodka brand and restaurant chain called Sides. In his spare time he puts out music on Atlantic Records; the hooky Voices featured in an Amazon documentary that he also had time to work on. Sweat that brand, JJ!! That song featured Oliver Tree, who was the lead artist in the shockingly popular Miss You, which was co-credited to producer Robin Schulz. Tiesto’s top 10 hit 10:35 was co-written with LA pop writers Scott Harris, Amy Allen and Ryan Tedder, and vocals are provided by Tate McRae.

McRae is one of many post-Eilish singers, four more of whom are present in the Now 114 tracklisting. Lizzy McAlpine offers Ceilings, a top ten hit which sounds like a three-minute number from a teen movie (and a lot like Driver’s Licence) that has the line ‘it’s not real and you don’t exist’. beabadoobee has Glue Song, which sounds like a two-minute number from the same teen movie that has the line ‘I’ve never known someone like you’.

Mimi Webb ignores plenty of Red Flags on a tune produced by Cirkut, and Sabrina Carpenter sings Nonsense, which ends with her bursting into laughter, which is relatable. Island Records are looking after her and they’ll certainly make a return on their investment, which started by pairing her with Julian Bunetta, best known for his work with One Direction, on Nonsense. John Ryan, another member of the 1D team, is also a key figure in shaping Sabrina’s sound as she leaves the familiar Disney setting and embarks on a portfolio career mixing acting and singing. Having already gone out with Ariana Grande, I think she’s a cert to open for Miley Cyrus (who, again, is not on Now 114 despite having a nine-week number one).

As ever, bringing up the rear at the end of Disc Two, we get a smorgasbord of elder statesmen with songs that were playlisted on Radio 2. Simply Red offer Better With You, which sounds like Rod Stewart at his most anodyne; Noel Gallagher and his High Flying Birds have Easy Now, which sounds like solo tracks by at least three Beatles and includes a typical bit of doggerel – ‘your destination comes without a fare’; Ellie Goulding, one of the many independently wealthy popstars locked into a recording contract, offers Like A Saviour as a teaser from her fifth album Higher Than Heaven (fun fact: the song was written with Tom Mann, who was part of the boyband Stereo Kicks in the 2014 edition of The X Factor).

Shania Twain’s song Giddy Up! was a Radio 2 Record of the Week which will slot nicely into her arena set in September alongside all the songs people pay lots of money to hear. Jessie Ware was A-Listed on Radio 2 with Pearls, a catchy yet chromatic melody which previews her fifth album That! Feels Good! That melody was written with super melodist Sarah Hudson (cousin of Kate) who wrote Levitating and Physical with Dua Lipa.

The Rock Band is represented too on Now 114. Paramore are Running Out of Time, which has one of the compilation’s best choruses, while CHVRCHES, who were nominated as Best Band in the World at the 2022 NME Awards (losing to Fontaines DC) offer Over with its meme-friendly hook ‘wake me up when it’s over!’. They wrote it with Oscar Holter, a Swede who was one of the masterminds behind Blinding Lights and has helped to sculpt the sound of The Weeknd.

Maybe Raye will put in a call to him, although I don’t think she needs him!

Let’s start at the end of the compilation, which was released the week that a football World Cup kicked off in a desert where you risk arrest for holding hands with someone of the same sex.

It’s a famous story in NOW lore that Queen would tell Virgin, who put out their material and the NOW CDs, to always lead off with their tracks. In a natural inversion of things, an unreleased Queen song called Face It Alone closes NOW 113; it’s fine and its very existence is greater than how it sounds. It will appear on a collector’s edition of their album The Miracle, which came out in 1989 and included the smash hit I Want It All.

With Adam Lambert replacing Freddie Mercury, Queen can headline the O2 Arena. So can Robbie Williams, whose best-of collection titled XXV copies Kylie Minogue’s idea of recording a catalogue with an orchestra, repackaging it to make money from old copyrights. Lost, a new song, is co-credited to Chris Heath, collaborator on Robbie’s memoir! Elton John can pack them into Greenwich too; he helped Britney Spears step back into the charts on a really miserable reworking of Tiny Dancer called Hold Me Closer. That song kicks off Disc Two.

Front-loading Disc One of this compilation are five of the biggest acts in the UK not called Adele. Lewis Capaldi got to number one with Forget Me; Sam Smith followed with the dull Unholy, a duet with German trans (not trance) act Kim Petras; Stormzy previewed his third album with Hide & Seek; Ed Sheeran farted out another lighter-waver called Celestial; and George Ezra crooned his way through Dance All Over Me.

The interloper at the start of Disc One is Ryan Tedder, or his band OneRepublic; knowing the name of any other member of the band will get you a Pointless answer. I Ain’t Worried was featured in Top Gun: Maverick and clambered into the UK Top 3 in autumn 2022. Lil Nas X’s next trick was Star Walkin’, the ‘World Anthem’ for video game League of Legends. KSI, who shot to fame playing video games for an enthralled public, had a big hit with Not Over Yet, featuring Tom Grennan. It sounds like pop music in 2022.

KSI, who appears with the mournful Summer Is Over, and Tom both two-time on NOW 113. Tom has All These Nights, another song which sounds like pop music in 2022, with his great voice is surrounded by music made ‘in the box’ by studio wizardry. Whooshes and woahs make it perfect for any kind of playlist. NOW’s celebrated playlist has room for Olly Murs, a Maroon 5ish tune called Die of a Broken Heart; The 1975, a piece of candy floss called I’m In Love With You, produced by Jack Antonoff; and two tracks written and produced by the great Stuart Price, Boy by The Killers and Ghost of You by Mimi Webb.

There’s also Josh Bruce aka Bru-C, a British multi-hyphenate who signed to Def Jam and put out the melodic drum’n’bass track No Excuses, and the London trio FLO, who performed their song Cardboard Box on TV shows as diverse as Jimmy Kimmel Live and Later with Jools Holland. A clue to their success is the presence of MNEK, who wrote and produced a break-up song that sounds good next to Go by Cat Burns. Cat is also on NOW 113 with the quirky People Pleaser, which begins with the line ‘I hate confrontation’.

In autumn 2022 I had a go broadcasting in the weekday mid-morning slot on Vibe 107.6. The playlist (which I sometimes ignored) was full of Top 40 hits, many of which make it on to this compilation. I joked that we were never too far away from Joel Corry and Becky Hill, whose song History was bouncy and good to exercise to; ditto Hot In It by Tiesto and Charli XCX. I also rotated Ferrari by James Hype and Miggy Dela Rosa; I Like You (A Happier Song) from Post Malone’s woeful album which featured some purring from Doja Cat; and the latest poolside jam from Calvin Harris, whose Funk Wav Bounces Volume 2 project was led by a slinky song called Stay With Me featuring Halsey AND Pharrell Williams AND Justin Timberlake. ‘Four for the price of one’ was my regular line.

For some reason, we didn’t have the US number one hit Bad Habit by Steve Lacy on the system, which takes its place on NOW 113. We did have a pair of UK number one singles that were popular in the clubs and on radio. Eiffel 65’s Blue was brought back by David Guetta and Bebe Rexha and retitled I’m Good (Blue), while Eliza Rose and Interplanetary Criminal were the Baddest of Them All.

Aitch joined Anne-Marie on a Hallowe’en-friendly tune with a five-note riff called Psycho, which borrowed heavily from Mambo Number 5. The 20-Year Cycle strikes again, as the tunes by Lou Bega and Eiffel 65 were both huge hits in 1999, two years before Aitch was born. He Wasn’t Man Enough by Toni Braxton came out in 2000 and includes a lovely quivering riff that anchors Last Last, a song by Burna Boy that ruled summer 2022. Big City Life was a number 15 hit by Mattafix in 2005 written by Mabel’s half-brother Marlon Roudette (ie they share a father); Luude picked that song to give the same treatment he gave Down Under and people still like the shtick enough to push it into the top ten.

I joked on air that we’re running out of songs, but thank goodness for Ed Sheeran, who sings the hook on My G, a song about Aitch’s sister, and who takes a verse on a remix of Peru, the Afrobeats anthem by Fireboy DML, and who appears on a Burna Boy song called For My Hand. Four-timing is as rare as scoring an albatross on the golf course but such is Ed’s dominance that he doesn’t need to sing the whole track to get a hit song in 2022.

NOW 113 was released the same day as Nothing But Space, Man, the debut album by Sam Ryder. In an environment where new stars are hard to come by unless you sound like Ed Sheeran, Sam tweaks the Sheeran formula. A falsetto voice and love of hard rock makes Sam the breakout star of 2022: following Space Man’s success in spring, his unity anthem Somebody was a great song to play on air during the autumn. He also provides pitch-shifted vocals on Living Without You, a plodding tie-up between DJs Sigala and David Guetta.

His TikTok followers will know his talent but this year has been spent germinating songs as if Sam is a lab experiment for how to grow a popstar via Eurovision exposure and a decent social media following. He will be the star performer in Liverpool for the 2023 Contest and I suggest he sings an Ed Sheeran song as the UK entry. Who else is available: James Blunt?! Three-timing on NOW 113 will push people to Nothing But Space, Man, before Stormzy dominates the narrative the week afterwards. We will hear and see Sam Ryder an awful lot, perhaps more than ‘Big Mike’ (aka Stormzy) in 2023.

Rosa Linn finished 20^th for Armenia at Eurovision 2022 with her song Snap, but she enjoyed a bounce after the competition and finds a way on to a cosmopolitan Disc Two. As well as Burna Boy, his Nigerian compatriot Oxlade makes it with his song Ku Lo Sa (A Colors Show). Benzz, a teenager from West London of Moroccan descent, is the latest star of the streets to get on to a NOW compilation with Je M’Appelle, which is driven by the Calabria horn riff, which was also used on 21 Reasons by Nathan Dawe.

Ella Henderson featured on that track and joins Cian Ducrot on the piano ballad All For You. Rita Ora (who, remember, broke lockdown rules twice and was sent to Australia to escape tabloid disdain) is the vocalist on Barricades, a dance-pop song written by Stargate and credited to her and Netsky. Pink returns with a politically charged song called Irrelevant, written with Ian Fitchuk and filled with rage for the Supreme Court justices who allowed the Roe v Wade ruling on abortion to be struck down in several states. It didn’t chart in the UK or the USA but songs don’t have to be hits to hit home in 2022. The song Never Gonna Not Dance Again was released in November 2022, written with Max Martin and Shellback, proving that she does still want hit songs after all.

From Texas there’s Lizzo, whose song 2 Be Loved (Am I Ready) was co-written by the great Swede himself (Maz) and features a hilariously euphoric key change, plus the lyric ‘he call me Melly, he squeeze my belly’. LF System represent Scotland with their follow up to Afraid To Feel, which is called Hungry (For Love). Dermot Kennedy from Ireland offers Kiss Me; like Tom Grennan, he has added a contemporary beat to his Sheeranesque voice.

From LA, Billie Eilish returns with TV, another song with her trademark quiver which was quietly released over summer, while Panic! At The Disco have – really has because Brendon Urie is the only member of the group with any profile – enlisted pop genius Mike Viola on their/his new album Viva Las Vengeance. The magnificent single Don’t Let The Light Go Out was playlisted on Radio 2; the title track is perhaps my song of the year. Naturally it missed the UK and US charts. Not that Brendon minds; he’s booked for the O2 Arena in March 2023 the week of Country2Country.

So, with all these new tunes, why have I picked a Tom Odell song that was a hit in 2013 to go forward into the playlist of songs that are the most important on any given NOW? TikTok, of course.

For some reason, the algorithm has decreed that Another Love is worth bringing back in a big way. Tom released a poor album in October 2022 while his biggest copyright returned into the popular sphere. His gig at the British Country Music Festival ended with Another Love, which a drunken young person jumped around to. Tom, once heralded as an Elton John in the making, may well end up as a cultural footnote.

It’s how pop culture works today: whether the melody was written in 1999 or 2013, it can still influence people in 2022. I handed in my notice at Vibe the week that NOW 113 was released. It’s for the best.

Music doesn’t matter as much as safety does. In the Hierarchy of Needs, I would put music as a Need rather than a Want, but when it comes to food, shelter and a right to enfranchisement, for most people, life can continue without it. In the modern world of symbols and statues and flags, music can cross borders and languages and make the world a better place for three minutes. Remember the little Ukrainian girl who sang Let It Go and hammered home the point that war, to quote Boy George, is stupid.

Such is the role of Eurovision, which was won by a folk-rap act from Ukraine who weren’t even the original entrants for the 2022 iteration, held in Turin. Sam Ryder, helped by his label BMG and writers including Ed Sheeran’s friend Amy Wadge, did brilliantly to come in second with SPACE MAN (all caps), a proper pop song brilliantly sung and staged on the night. A win for Ukraine, however, was never in doubt. Had Russia not invaded, perhaps they would have come in the top ten, but the public vote pushed Kalush Orchestra into the lead at the last.

NOW 112 was released in summer 2022 at a time when UK politics was fractured too. A combination of former bankers and career politicians were gunning for the leadership of the ruling party while inflation soared and petrol hit £2 per litre (back in the days of 2000, it was around £1/litre). Paul McCartney headlined Glastonbury, the Rolling Stones and Elton John played stadiums or parks and Kate Bush ran up to number one with a song from 1985 brought back by a TV series which sold the idea of the 1980s around the world.

There is no place for Kate on the compilation, which packs in 48 tunes including those two Eurovision entrants, plus 2021 winner Maneskin’s odd tune Supermodel, written with Max Martin and 100% Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana. They are booked into the O2 Arena as part of their European tour in 2023, which I hope they can fill.  

New names on the compilation include Cian Ducrot, whose heartbreak ballad All For You fills in the gap before Lewis Capaldi returns with new music, and Benson Boone. Having appeared on American Idol, he was spotted by the bloke from Imagine Dragons. In The Stars is produced by Jason Evigan, a big player in the LA pop scene. Benson has a superb voice which will serve him well as his label tries to turn him into the next global superstar targeted at people born after the year 2000 who scroll through TikTok all day when they aren’t watching Netflix. They may well be fans of Hearstopper, a drama whose soundtrack includes Colours of You by Baby Queen.

These days, half the acts are placed on a NOW tracklist and then the songtitle is added when it comes out. Thus we have the usual perfunctory appearances from Steps (Hard 2 Forget, which is 100% yaas queen), Sigala (Stay The Night, with vocals from Talia Mar) and James Arthur, who lends his voice to the Lost Frequencies track Questions, which was written by Dan from Bastille and sounds like James is singing over the demo.

Mabel, Jax Jones & Galantis ALL contribute to Good Luck, which has a top line written by both Camille Purcell and MNEK for maximum hit potential. Mabel’s second album is a priority Q3 release, as is the Sigrid album How To Let Go, which features the anthemic Bad Life (‘it’s just a bad day, not a bad life’) with, of all people, British rockers Bring Me The Horizon. Elsewhere, we get Diplo & Miguel asking Don’t Forget My Love, and Camila Cabello offering what most people think Latin music sounds like on Bam Bam. Bad Bunny, the real Latin superstar of the era, is absent.

Another Q3 release is the second volume of Calvin Harris’s series Funk Wav Bounces. Once again, he has recruited plenty of talent: Halsey, Offset, Busta Rhymes and, on Potion, both Dua Lipa and rapper Young Thug. Five years on from the success of volume one, volume two will soundtrack plenty of pool parties this summer and beyond.

Like Calvin, David (Pierre!) Guetta is ageing gracefully, an elder statesman of commercial dance music. He unites both Becky Hill AND Ella Henderson on Crazy What Love Can Do, another slice of dance-pop with a nagging hook that is basically Head and Heart redux. The tunes share a writer in Rob Harvey. Ella also appears on her hit 21 Reasons, where the lead artist is Nathan Dawe, while Becky exercises her larynx on Run, produced by Galantis. Dance Bloke + Female Singer still equals hit.

The Big Movie Theme kicks off Disc Two. Lady Gaga must have recorded Hold My Hand, a song of companionship, in 2019 when Top Gun: Maverick was being made. After two years in the can, Tom Cruise finally got to do his own stunts while a ballad played on the radio to implore people to see him do it. It’s very 1998.

In order to free up space on NOW 112, there are no Harry Styles songs, probably due to the same metric that kept Adele tracks off several compilations: everyone owns them already. Instead we get The Joker & The Queen by Ed Sheeran and Something To Someone by his Irish equivalent Dermot Kennedy. There is also When You’re Gone by Shawn Mendes, a song with beige in every aspect.

Far more exciting is Maybe You’re The Problem by Ava Max, which is VERY CLOSE INDEED to As It Was by Harry Styles, and Big Energy by Latto, a massive American hit that was co-opted by Mariah Carey, who had herself co-opted Tom Tom Club’s Genius of Love. We’re now so far into pop music as a cultural entity that acts are sampling the samplers.

We’re also getting a new trend of Women Singing The Hook, as three songs demonstrate. Jack Harlow takes Fergie’s Glamorous and turns it into a Drake pastiche called First Class. Aitch borrows Ashanti on Baby and Tion Wayne enlists La Roux on IFTK, which samples In For The Kill. The woman adds the hooky bit while a bloke raps nonsense over the top. Is this the future of pop music, or just an easy way to make money? Nicking from Lambada, Tion two-times on Night Away (Dance) by A1 x J1, which at least does something new with the sample.

Interestingly, a straight cover gets a place on Disc One. Miley Cyrus’s take on Madonna’s Like A Prayer leaps out of the Attention show that she released on disc in spring 2022. She also covers songs by Fleetwood Mac, Pixies, Blondie, Prince (via Sinead O’Connor) and her godmum Dolly Parton. No longer trying to have hits, Miley is a proper Artist now. I wonder if Harry Styles is modelling his career on hers.

Paolo Nutini, who is still known as a quirky popstar from the James Blunt era, has also turned into an Artist. Through The Echoes comes from his first album in eight years, which topped the UK charts. Album acts with perfunctory singles on NOW 112 include Florence + The Machine (My Love, written with Dave Bayley from Glass Animals), Sam Smith (Love Me More, a smooth Stargate production) and Sam Fender, who is Getting Started. Tom Grennan’s song Remind Me has mighty production to match his vocal delivery, while Chase & Status, today an album act, offer Mixed Emotions.

It is weird to see Take That members turn 50. Gary Barlow is taking a one-man show across the UK in 2022, while at a mere 48 Robbie Williams is putting out yet another greatest hits set (incredibly, his third), this one a series of reworkings with the famous Metropole Orkest. He tours in the autumn. Mark Owen, who turned 50 a year after Gaz did, is targeting his music at a Radio 2 audience who want to hear their teen idols grow into lovely middle-aged men. Knowingly, Mark launched his new album with You Only Want Me (‘for my good looks’), another song in the key of bland.

Liam Gallagher, 50 in September and needing a new hip, sang of Better Days on his third solo album which he promoted by going back to Knebworth. George Ezra, born in summer 1993 when Take That were dancing on the beach in the video to Pray and Oasis were feeling Supersonic, takes prime position on the compilation with a song he performed for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations. Green Green Grass has a buoyant major-key feel but a chorus, edited for the show, which told people to ‘throw a party on the day that I die’.

Take That had broken up for the first time by the time Cat Burns, Mimi Webb and Lauren Spencer-Smith came into the world. Go, Goodbye (a piano ballad written with the great Ross Golan) and Flowers are their respective offerings on NOW 112. Cat’s single was the little engine that could, kept off the top by Harry Styles but charting at number two. The song that overtook Kate Bush was a twist on I Can’t Stop (Turning You On) by Silk, sped up then slowed down then sped up again by two blokes from Glasgow who will forever be the Afraid To Feel guys even if LF SYSTEM do happen to repeat their trick.

Youth music is here in the form of BMW by Bad Boy Chiller Crew, Cooped Up by Post Malone & Roddy Ricch and Thousand Miles by The Kid LAROI (with two megaproducers, Louis Bell and Andrew Watt, involved). Justin Bieber was in the news in 2022 for cancelling a tour due to a health issue, but he still had a hit called Honest with Don Toliver, which comprises a boring beat with some chuntering over the top of it.

For no reason at all (I can guess, but I’ll hold judgement), N-Dubz come back with the autotune-tastic Charmer. On a more solemn tack, The Wanted mark the passing of their member Tom Parker with Gold Forever, written by A-List trio Claude Kelly, Steve Mac and Wayne Hector. It hit number 74 in the charts but that’s not the point. The song is an I’ll Be Missing You for 2022 which will have consoled his family, bandmates and fans. Tom died of cancer at the end of March at the age of 33. He was six months younger than me.

Music doesn’t matter but it can really give catharsis and make you think about life and stuff.

Spring 2022 brought war, rising energy costs and the end of the Kermode & Mayo Film Programme on BBC 5Live, which was first broadcast in 2001 around the time of NOW 50. 20 years before NOW 111 came out, Coldplay were beginning to have hits, Billie Eilish was a foetus in her mummy’s tummy and we couldn’t get Kylie Minogue out of our heads. There was also war in Afghanistan and high petrol prices. History just repeats itself over and over again.

You’ve got your Coldplay, your Eilish and your Kylie on NOW 111 but Disc One track one is notable as the song with the most vocalists to have ever been credited to any UK chart-topper. As well as the cast of Encanto, there are solos for Stephanie Beatriz (Mirabel), Carolina Gaitan aka La Gaita (Aunt Pepa), Mauro Castillo (Uncle Felix), Adassa (cousin Dolores), Rhenzy Feliz (cousin Camilo) and Diane Guerrero (sister Isabella). Incredibly, the song about anti-hero Bruno whom ‘we don’t talk about, no no no!’, was a bigger hit than the movie’s intro song The Family Madrigal and Surface Pressure, Jessica Darrow’s aria as sister Luisa.

All three were UK Top 10 hits and brought Disney back into the charts for the first time since The Greatest Showman had a lock on culture in 2018. Smart speakers being ordered to PLAY ENCANTO! were probably behind the popularity of the soundtrack. For anyone who hadn’t seen the film, which came to Disney+ over Christmas 2021, a Latin pop song outlining the mysterious nature of Bruno, who predicts the future whether it is good or bad, was a strange song to break out from the movie. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s genius was to tie together four vocal strands in an operatic style and, having triumphed on Broadway with Hamilton, his work finally hit the top of the UK charts too. There must be an Encanto sequel in the works.

Otherwise, winter 2021/22 was a familiar story. Ed Sheeran fought a court case while Shivers (Disc One track two) hung around after more or less replacing Bad Habits at number one. Justin Bieber (Ghost), Jax Jones & MNEK (the No Mercy homage Where Did You Go?) and Joel Corry & Mabel (the itchily addictive I Wish) kept up their hot hit streaks. Lost Frequencies got into the top five with Where Are You Now, a boring dance-pop tune about a girl who is like a dance-pop tune ‘going round and round my head’ sung by Calum Scott.

The Weeknd three-times on NOW 111, with his own hit Sacrifice, Post Malone collaboration One Right Now (for the streaming numbers rather than to make great art) and a vocal on Moth To A Flame, the comeback smash for Swedish House Mafia, who have houses to afford. Otherwise the blokes are back: fresh from a BRIT Award, Silk Sonic (aka Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak) are Smokin Out The Window; George Ezra’s perky first taster of his third album Anyone But You is the third track on Disc One; and Shawn Mendes laments his break-up with ballad It’ll Be Okay.

Liam Gallagher, who is 50 years old later in 2022, readies his third solo album Cmon You Know with a Dave Grohl co-write called Everything’s Electric. Liam backs up his old mate Richard Ashcroft from The Verve on a new version of Richard’s solo track C’mon People (We’re Making It Now), which was playlisted on Radio 2, as was the dull track Let Somebody Go by Coldplay and Selena Gomez, who were put together for the streaming numbers rather than to make great art.

The BBC’s home of Adult Contemporary music has also spun songs by Tears for Fears (Break The Man), Westlife (My Hero, their take on drill music…nope, it’s another ballad, written by Ed Sheeran), Michael Buble (I’ll Never Not Love You) and Elton John & Stevie Wonder, from Elton’s lockdown collaborations album (Finish Line). Elton turned 75 years old on March 25, while Stevie is 72 in May; as they ease into retirement, their legacy will only grow. We still hear Your Song and Superstition two generations after they were written, and we’ll hear them in 2070 too.

I reckon Yola has a chance of being played then; notionally a country act, the Bristol-born singer is now based in Nashville and has Radio 2 supporting her second album Stand For Myself, which features the wonderful single Dancing Away In Tears. If anyone hasn’t yet heard of Yola, they soon will as she’s in the Elvis biopic which finally gets a release this summer.

It seems unfair to ask if, in 2070, we will hear NOW 111 selections by Bastille (Shut Off The Lights), Ella Henderson (Brave), Foals (Wake Me Up) and Doja Cat (Woman), which are all key releases by major labels in Q1-Q2 2022. Summer Walker and SZA are paired up on the dull, beat-driven No Love while Craig David and MNEK join forces on the far more melodic Who You Are, which had regular rotation on Radio 2 even though MNEK is more usually found on Radio 1. I think they could put on a great show together and I would commission an album if I were an executive.

In the Faceless Dance Act section are Tiesto with The Motto, featuring the bored vocals of Ava Max, and Sigala with the song Melody. This is a bit of fluff with lyrics delivered by a nameless vocalist in the modern triplet-y cadence and it should really be called Nirvana because that seems to be the key word in the chorus. Alesso borrows Katy Perry from her gig hosting American Idol while raising a young baby on When I’m Gone, and Meduza ropes in Hozier on Tell It To My Heart, which is a waste of the talents of the Irish vocalist who was last heard on a version of the Maren Morris ballad The Bones.

Two club-friendly Top 10 hits are high up the tracklist. ACRAZE sample Cherish’s r’n’b number Do It To It, speed it up and stick a beat underneath it to have a hit, while Colin Hay’s vocal is set to a drum’n’bass loop by Luude to bring Down Under back into the charts. Irish dance duo Belters Only use the voice of Jazzy, who sidles up to a guy in the club and asks her to Make Me Feel Good. The song is two minutes too long.

There are certain pop songs from the start of 2022 that should have been much bigger hits. Charli XCX and Rina Sawayama combine on Beg For You, which peaked at 29, and Charlie Puth’s Light Switch (number 31!) is almost a present to his fans, who have been clamouring for him to put out the song that uses the switch sound as a hook. The man is a genius and he’ll make a lot of money, even as he may never again have a top 10 hit.

Since 1999, Muse have been doing what they do, guitar-saturated synthpop, to a core fanbase who buy their albums and fill stadia to see their spectacles. Those who are still interested will enjoy Won’t Stand Down, which is track 25 on Disc One. Track 23 is Enemy, by Imagine Dragons and JID, from the series Arcane League of Legends, proving that video games are helping bands sell concert tickets too. Interscope Records know where the wind is blowing.

Interscope also run the career of Billie Eilish, whose Bond theme No Time To Die finally makes it onto a NOW compilation. Aptly, there are songs from the young ladies who get major-label funding to make hay (and return on investment) where Eilish’s sun shines. There’s Lauren Spencer-Smith (Fingers Crossed), Mimi Webb (the pulsating House On Fire), Gayle (who had a number one with abc) and Tate McRae (the electro-pop rush of She’s All I Wanna Be); good luck telling them apart in a police line-up.

Britain’s answer to Eilish or to Olivia Rodrigo, who spent 2022 preparing for a world tour, is Holly Humberstone, whose song London Is Lonely is so close to Driver’s License that Olivia may take her to court. Willow Smith, recording as Willow, teams up with The Anxiety and Tyler Cole on the quirky, hook-laden Meet Me At Our Spot. I wouldn’t have put money on Will Smith’s daughter leading the pop-punk revival, but nothing is predictable about modern life any more.

The most interesting song by any of these young women is Go by Cat Burns, a kiss-off with an acoustic guitar bed. Cat is a dark-skinned black woman who came through the BRIT School with a strong voice and a big TikTok following who is, according to her online bio, ‘helping you get through shit one song at a time’. There’s a lot of swearing on Go, which is cleaned up on NOW 111, and Sony Music should throw money at Cat Burns to make her the same sort of superstar as Arlo Parks and Little Simz, who are critical darlings with the same sort of independent spirit.

The BBC Sound of 2022 is PinkPantheress, the daughter of a Kenyan carer and an English stats professor. Through a combination of Soundcloud and TikTok, the buzz behind her led to a record deal with Elektra Records. Just For Me, which sounds like 2022, makes it onto NOW 111, which does not contain any of these promising British rappers or rapper crews: Kojey Radical, Bad Boy Chiller Crew, Hazey, Central Cee, A1 & J1, Aitch, Dave, Stormzy or D-Block Europe. Representing them all is Brighton rapper ArrDee, whose song Flowers (Say My Name) samples the 2000 hit by Sweet Female Attitude which, significantly, purchasers of the compilation may know.

Years & Years, now an Olly Alexander solo project akin to Bon Iver or The Divine Comedy, team up with Galantis for the phenomenal sugar rush of Sweet Talker. The fact that it only got to number 26 is a travesty, but Olly can still sell out Wembley Arena. Olly himself two-times on NOW 111 with Hallucination, another hit from Kosovo’s top DJ Regard, while his mate Kylie in turn uses the talents of Jessie Ware on her disco-funk throwback Kiss of Life.

Kylie’s career stretches back to 1988, and she has outlasted the soap opera where she first came to prominence. Neighbours ends later in 2022 having not found a network to broadcast on. Maybe Netflix will pick it up…

Do we need 49 tracks on a NOW compilation?

With streaming and even vinyl having displaced CD sales, NOW decide to make the 110^th edition the biggest yet. Even without Adele, whose album 30 hit physical and digital shelves the same day NOW 110 was released – November 19, International Men’s Day – and even without anything from ABBA’s Voyage LP, the compilation is still full of big hitters.

Easy On Me, an Adele song for Adele fans, ruled the radio at the end of 2021, a time when music venues were praying for a decent winter and when the UK Top 10 was almost entirely British for the whole month. This is an odd state of affairs, perhaps borne out of a smaller budget for international promotion, but it’s only a good thing for UK music as a whole.

Among those Top 10 tunes was Bad Habits by Ed Sheeran, the ten-week number one which opens NOW 110. ‘My bad habits lead to you, ooh-ooh ooh-ooh’ mixes an irresistible melody and Ed’s documented problems with the high life (‘Ed: My Drink Hell’ in tabloidspeak). His 2022/23 tour will include a live band for the first time and will be a hot ticket across the world in a time when UK acts are finding it harder to tour abroad due to Brexit paperwork.

As if trying to protect their profit margins in a year without live music, the big labels have reached back to Heritage Acts. Elton John, who DJs on Apple Music and used to work in a record shop, made some calls to his friends and put together The Lockdown Sessions in lieu of his farewell tour. For the first time since Tupac sampled Indian Sunset on his number one Ghetto Gospel, Elton was at the top of the singles chart with Cold Heart. It helped that he’d roped in Dua Lipa to sing some of the chorus of Rocket Man and Australian duo PNAU to weave Sacrifice and elements of two other songs into a new creature. It points to the future of pop, resurrecting copyrights and putting new twists on them.

Indeed, on If You Really Love Me we have an old chorus inserted into a new tune: David Guetta and MistaJam work on the production and recruit John Newman to purr the lyrics of How Will I Know and turn it into a new song. MistaJam was a Radio 1 DJ who is now a commercial radio DJ; I wonder if his BBC contract forbade him from doing this sort of thing. There’s also a quirky sample of a mid-period Nelly Furtado tune on Talk About, a tune from Rain Radio and Irish DJ Craig Gorman.

Who is more glam than Elton? Diana Ross! The title track of her album Thank You is at the end of Disc One and promotes her delayed live shows which will include the Glastonbury Legends slot, which not even Elton has played (although the rumour mill has been working overtime this year). Meanwhile, less glam but still boasting multiplatinum album sales, Sting and Rod Stewart (combined age 146!) both offer new music in the form of If It’s Love and One More Time respectively, which build upon their million-selling catalogues and introduce more new stuff to their greatest hits sets.

The announcement of the death of photographer Mick Rock the week of NOW 110’s release brought to a close the life of the man who ‘shot the seventies’, with Queen album covers and David Bowie concert stills among his portfolio. Rock music, which captured the imagination of young people as far back as 1956, is now coming up to 70 years old. Like pop, it can still be twisted into innovative forms using amplified melodies and hard beats.

Sam Fender hit the top 10 with Seventeen Going Under, a tune that recalls Sam’s upbringing in North Shields near Newcastle. Maneskin’s version of Beggin’ by The Four Seasons gained traction across the world and kept the Eurovision winners in conversation for their full fifteen minutes of fame. Coldplay, whose 20-year career has seen them join U2 as the hottest ticket in any city they stop by, call upon both Max Martin and BTS on My Universe, a song with a marvellous chorus (‘You! You are! My universe!’) and a solo for each member of the Korean boyband. Talking of Max, his latest muse The Weeknd continues his hit streak with the invasively catchy Take My Breath.

Elsewhere on NOW 110, all the usual faces turn up to add to their catalogue of poppy dance tunes that kickstart a party, in a way which becomes a version of Dem Bones, such is the way one act is connected to another. David Guetta also brings us the poppy Remember, with a neat vocal from Becky Hill who wraps her tongue around lyrics like ‘occasionally I lose composure’.

Becky also appears on the number 11 smash My Heart Goes (La Di Da) with Topic (which is his real surname), who also appears with Clean Bandit and Wes Nelson on the forgettable Drive. Far better is the debut from German newcomer Jonasu who had a smash with Black Magic (‘you work your voodoo on me’) that is perfect for Love Island montages.

Joel Corry and Jax Jones deliver Out Out, a song about partying which namechecks Uber and features vocals from Charli XCX and Saweetie. Harlee was the uncredited vocalist on Lonely by Joel Corry and she gets the credit she deserves on Lonely, a tune produced by St Helens native Navos. The song’s chorus includes the line ‘we can learn to love ourselves’, which is very current.

For some reason Rita Ora still has a career, even as she now lives in Australia, and Sigala pull her in on You For Me, co-written by AG Cook from the PC Music collective and Charli XCX. Along with MNEK, I think Charli is one of the big top-line melodists of pop music today. She’ll get her due even if she doesn’t get the mainstream acclaim.

Conversely, two tracks offer dancefloor patrons the chance to dance their cares away. Nathan Dawe offers Goodbye (‘you don’t know a thing about love’) along with T Matthias, while on Riton’s song I Don’t Want You RAYE fires off a rapid kiss-off; ‘you only see me in my IG pictures’ is a good line.

The true sound of Britain is drill, the latest incarnation of folk talking over a beat. Superstars include Digga D from Ladbroke Grove and ArrDee from Brighton, who team up on Wasted, as well as Central Cee from Shepherd’s Bush, who had a hit with Obsessed With You. Another big top ten hit was Love Nwantiti (ah ah ah), an addictive piece of Afrobeats from CKay, a Nigerian who is signed to Warner South Africa.

As seems customary on modern NOW sets, Steps and Kylie Minogue offer escapist disco-pop in the form of Take Me For A Ride and A Second To Midnight (where Kylie pulls in Years & Years), while Sigrid prepares for the arrival of her second album with fist-pumper Burning Bridges. Little Mix celebrate ten years since their X Factor win with a packed greatest hits set with new songs No and Kiss Me (Uh Oh), which both adorn NOW 110; the latter brings in both Anne-Marie and the Lumidee classic Never Leave You (Uh Oh). Ex-Mixer Jesy Nelson launches her solo career with Boyz (with a Z), featuring a Puff Daddy sample and a Nicki Minaj guest vocal. All sorts of beef and cultural criticism ensued, which isn’t the ideal way for Jesy (who talked of suicide attempts and depression) to stay in the conversation.

In the Pretty Princess category, we’ve got Mabel – Let Them Know, co-written by SG Lewis, MNEK and RAYE and featuring a namecheck for Khaleesi from Game of Thrones – Billie Eilish (the caterwauling Happier Than Ever), Olivia Rodrigo (the morose Traitor) and Mimi Webb (Dumb Love, with a killer chorus). Tones & I proves that she isn’t a one-hit wonder by bringing in a choir on the euphoric Fly Away.

In the Hot Guy category, Shawn Mendes’ latest hit is the anaemic Summer of Love, produced by the Puerto Rican DJ Tainy. Dermot Kennedy (Better Days), Tom Grennan (Don’t Break The Heart) and Rag’n’Bone Man (heartstring-tugger Alone) all continue their careers with more emotive vocals and processed beats, while Columbia Records newcomer Clinton Kane, of Filipino descent, begins his own with I Guess I’m In Love. It’s a stately self-composed piano ballad about love and stuff with the vulnerability of the modern man (‘I’m a mess’). Hey, if it sells, they’ll sell it to us.

Although he hasn’t had a hit since 2018, Liam Payne offers the perky song Sunshine (‘what really matters is the journey that we’re on’) from the movie Ron’s Gone Wrong. The vocals are processed in parts, and it could be anyone. Sam Smith and Summer Walker, meanwhile, team up for a version of You Will Be Found, the showstopper from Dear Evan Hansen which came to cinemas after a successful few years on the stage.

The hottest young thing is The Kid LAROI, who is being marketed as an Australian Bieber and thus it’s perfect casting that the pair combine on huge hit STAY, which is basically Blinding Lights by The Weeknd with a bit of emo. Far better is the insistent That’s What I Want by Lil Nas X, who produces his best chorus and delivery, even as the radio edit removes some offending F-words. His 2022/23 tour will also astound.

Over in the US, Lil Nas is accompanying Doja Cat and Ed Sheeran on the Jingle Bell Ball tour in December. Doja appears on NOW 110 with the trap banger Need To Know, hot on the heels of fellow females Lizzo and Cardi B with a dull track called Rumors that serves to reintroduce Lizzo to market. After the belated success of Truth Hurts and Good As Hell, it is her first entirely new music since 2018. Millions of dollars will be pumped into her new album and tour, and we’ll know about it.

Bruno Mars is at the stage of his career, post-Uptown Funk, where he can do anything because he doesn’t need to do anything. His collaboration with Anderson .Paak as Silk Sonic sees them reach back to the Philly Soul of 1974. Skate is an immaculate, fully realised production and it’s no wonder that they have the blessing of Bootsy Collins, James Brown’s bassist, who appears on the album the track comes from.

Westlife are booked into Wembley Stadium in August 2022 to promote their twelfth album (!) and might play newer tunes like Starlight, written with Tom Grennan – yes, there’s a key change – even as they know people are there for You Raise Me Up and Flying Without Wings. The Script face the same problem, even as new songs like I Want It All will pepper their greatest hits setlist. Even The Wanted are back together after a benefit gig for their member Tom. Rule The World, which shares the euphoria of Glad You Came, promotes their own Greatest Hits called, brilliantly, Most Wanted.

With JLS touring again as well, the boyband era is not going the way of rock any time soon.

England’s football team beat Germany in a tournament for the first time in 55 years. Sir Andy Murray forgot about his recent injury troubles and won a five-setter on Centre Court. Manxman Mark Cavendish won a stage of the Tour de France. British athletes prepared for the delayed Tokyo Olympics.

A sporting summer helped assuage the disappointment of red lists, PCR tests and the inability of politicians to be decent but, to paraphrase the Gogglebox narration, we heard LOADS of GREAT MUSIC. Much of the music would have been plotted during the pandemic, with release schedules and promotion timelines unable to be supplemented by live music. On NOW 109, there are 48 (forty-eight!!) tracks.

The big UK music genre that the kids love is drill, a music formed in Chicago which spread to the UK via smartphones in tower blocks and on streets where kids rap over hard beats. It’s like grime but more menacing. ArrDee does it on Oliver Twist, A1 & J1 do it on Latest Trends (‘Clap for the NHS’) and Central Cee does it on Commitment Issues. It sounds like punk music, scaring off adults and made to be heard on headphones on a nightbus. Also significant is the delivery, which emphasises the singer’s local area, be it Shepherd’s Bush for Central Cee or Brighton for ArrDee.

Russ Millions and Tion Wayne scored a UK number one with Body, which is driven by the hook ‘English girl named Fiona, African girl Abiola’ (at least in the clean version). When it comes to the most musically, culturally and lyrically relevant of NOW 109, Body is the clear winner. The fact that it’s not aimed at 33-year-old men like me only makes it more zeitgeisty.

The breakout star of 2021, Olivia Rodrigo, topped the UK charts for five weeks with good 4 u, a kiss-off which sounds like Avril Lavigne, and had a two-chord top five hit with déjà vu, where she sings high up in her range. Unsurprisingly, Mimi Webb was launched as a clone, though Good Without has a strong melody. It’s great to hear melody back in the top ten.

With Save Your Tears, The Weeknd and Ariana Grande tried to get Max Martin another number one and fell just short. Talking of Max, whoever saw Coldplay working with him, on the suitably anthemic Higher Power (‘got me singing every second, dancing every hour’)?

Justin Bieber’s ‘political’ album Justice drew scorn for segueing a Martin Luther King speech into Peaches, which featured the r’n’b vocals of both Daniel Caesar and Giveon. Lil Nas X uses his given forename for his big number one smash MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name); his Saturday Night Live poledance-assisted performance was so hot that he split his costume.

As you would expect, the big record labels keep the Dance Act + Vocalist formula that saves them a lot of hassle. The public don’t care if the music is by Joel, Nathan, Jonas, Calvin or David; they just want something to bop along to in the car. Marshmello (whose real name is Christopher) brings The Jonas Brothers in for Leave Before You Love Me, which sounds an awful lot like The Weeknd; Jonas Blue is a student of Swedish pop and his club-ready Hear Me Say features terrific vocals by Swedish singer Leon; Calvin Harris returns with By Your Side, three minutes of blah featuring the voice of Tom Grennan; Nathan Dawe brings in Anne-Marie and (interestingly) MoStack on Way Too Long, with a bouncy melody co-written by MNEK, one of the best in the ‘top-line’ business.

Meanwhile, Regard’s track You has both Troye Sivan and Tate McRae, which sounds very contemporary but blends into the background of whichever clothes shop you might browse in, except for the bit which sounds like the first line of The Middle by Zedd (lawyers assemble). Joel Corry has his fourth smash in four years with Bed (‘I got a bed but I’d rather be in yours tonight’), which features RAYE and David Guetta. Raye has written some big hits but still, to her public irritation, has not been allowed to put an album out by her label Polydor.

Galantis and David Guetta drag in Little Mix for Heartbreak Anthem (‘hello, it’s me, your ex’) which with 14 (fourteen) writers wins the prize for the most hands in a formulaic dance-pop track (2012 edition) while, like Guetta, the trio two-time with freedom jam Confetti (‘all eyes on me’). Kamille and MNEK are found in the credits of the title track of their sixth album, while rapper Saweetie (whose given name is Diamonte Harper) is on hand for a remix which I imagine is to help push the song to an international audience. Little Mix do seem to love the kiss-off, after Shout Out to My Ex and No Time For Tears brought them success.

Dance music is also represented by the piano house throwback of Summer 91 (Looking Back) by Noizu. It won’t remind teenage listeners of Go by Moby (‘Yeaaah’) and, thanks to its spoken line about memories, The Orb’s Little Fluffy Clouds, but older listeners can enjoy the allusions. Tom Zanetti once had an affair with Katie Price, which I Didn’t Know, to quote the title of his ploddy dance-pop hit.

The other formula is Big Act + Big Act duet. KSI, Yungblud & Polo G all have Patience (which needed 12 writers) which is another one for the H&M store playlist; Anne-Marie and Niall Horan sing the happy-sad breakup song Our Song (‘on the radio’); and Rag’n’Bone Man and P!nk want to get Anywhere Away From Here in a torch-ballad sort of way. Ella Henderson and Tom Grennan harmonise Let’s Go Home Together, an anodyne song whose best line is the opener: ‘I’d never have given you a second look, but I like the way you don’t give a…damn’.

Unsurprisingly Rag’n’Bone Man and Tom Grennan two-time on NOW 109 with the supercharged All You Ever Wanted and the hooky shoutalong Little Bit of Love respectively. So does KSI, a schoolfriend of Roman Kemp who grew up in Watford who is turning into the Craig David of the modern era; his song Holiday is a feelgood three-chord summer jam that will sound great by the pool.

P!nk two-times too, with an interesting new track from her live film written with the incredibly hot Broadway songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. All I Know So Far contains all the ingredients from their Greatest Showman compositions and proves that pop and musical theatre might not be far apart in the next decade, especially given the prevalence of teen-targeted musicals like Everybody’s Talking About Jamie and Dear Evan Hansen (music by Pasek & Paul) coming to streaming services the autumn.

The big radio hit of 2021 in the US was Leave The Door Open, a collaboration between Bruno Mars and Anderson.Paak released under the name Silk Sonic. It sounds like every Philly soul song released in 1973 and is obviously a sex jam. The compilers put Jessie Ware’s similarly spectral Remember Where You Are just after it, an immaculate production that may well win some big awards. Doja Cat’s ‘concept album’ didn’t impress me but the single Kiss Me More, with SZA on the hook, is extraordinary and one of the best songs on the compilation.

TikTok once again drives some hits. Polo G’s Rapstar had a Drake-type delivery and a ukulele sample that drove the kids wild and the song to the top of the Billboard Hot 100. AURORA is an underrated act whose song Runaway came back in a big way thanks to a ‘filter trend’ (don’t ask me) and is evidence again of recurrent songs coming back into fashion. The song is one of the select few to have been profiled by the Song Exploder podcast. It has had an incredible journey to over 500m streams: the songwriter said it was about the benefits of sharing one’s inner pain while ‘listening to the ocean’, a very contemporary phenomenon. Written in 2007, the song helped secure her a record deal; it was recorded as a piano demo in 2013, and AURORA wanted the ‘coldness’ of Norway to be heard in the song and its production. She advises us to hear ‘trolls in the mountains’ and airborne flight in parts of the song, which in its finished form is basically AURORA’s voice and some Bjorkish drum patterns. (I would love to see young people reappraise the music of Bjork, who is one of the geniuses of popular music in the last 40 years.)

The Majestic remix of Boney M’s tribute to Rasputin returns to public consciousness after four decades, again thanks to TikTok. Astronaut in the Ocean, by the Greek-Australian rapper/singer Masked Wolf, was a global hit thanks to a dance trend on TikTok. It sounds like 2021, digital cymbals and monotone vocals make it come across like Drake and Lil Nas X teaming up, and I like the line ‘I believe in G-O-D, don’t believe in T-H-O-T’ (aka ‘that hottie over there’).

As for new artists, away from TikTok, Griff was heralded as the Rising Star at the BRIT Awards: half-Jamaican and half-Chinese her image is striking and so was her song Black Hole (‘where my heart used to be’). Delivered with a slight quiver, the sound is contemporary and the melody strong. She is immediately followed on Disc One by Billie Eilish (the moody Your Power) and Sigrid, with her song Mirror (‘I love who I see looking at me’), which has a delicious descending bridge. Don’t forget Celeste, whose rollout in 2020 was kyboshed by the pandemic; Tonight Tonight was the impact track to promote her album Not Your Muse, which she still hasn’t been able to tour. If Stop This Flame doesn’t end up soundtracking Olympics montages, I will eat my swimming cap.

James Arthur and Becky Hill will keep making music to satisfy their label investment, regardless of whether anyone can remember tracks like Medicine (James) and Last Time (Becky) a year after they have been released. Becky, by the way, is on Polydor, so I hope she has words of solidarity for her label mate Raye. Years & Years are on Polydor too and got Starstruck in a disco manner. Their vocalist Olly Alexander spent summer 2021 in negotiations to be the next Doctor Who following his remarkable performance in the TV series It’s A Sin. Smartly, Olly and Elton John took on that Pet Shop Boys song of that title, which itself was played on TV as part of the BRIT Awards.

For mature listeners, the man born Giovanni (but goes by Jack) Savoretti turned up the funk on his Europia album which was launched with Who’s Hurting Who. Even without the credit you can tell Nile Rodgers helped write it. London Grammar returned with an album of modern rock, led by single How Does It Feel, while Royal Blood did the same with the pulverising Typhoons.

Astonishingly, Eurovision 2021 was won by Italian act Måneskin, who had two top ten hits in the aftermath of the show including the kickdrum-driven top ten hit I Wanna Be Your Slave, which ends Disc Two. Next year in Torino!!