Music

Red vinyl 12" on a turntableHere at SOTC we like to broaden your musical horizons a little. Not too much, mind! But there’s a lot of ’80s music (and later music by ’80s bands) that’s just as good as the songs everyone knows but somehow slipped through the net, or just didn’t get as much attention as it should have done. That’s where we come in…

Because we’re not a physical magazine, we can’t glue free CDs to the cover every month, but that doesn’t mean we can’t share our favourite music with you! Each month we give you a virtual mixtape crammed with 90 minutes of great ’80s music: some of it you’ll know; some of it you might not, but should. The Virtual C90 is available on Spotify and, from May 2016, also on Mixcloud.

We also have a weekly podcast-type-radio-show-thing on Mixcloud: every Saturday Off The Chart looks at the UK singles chart from the corresponding week in one of the years from the ’80s. We play some of the records you don’t normally hear on chart shows, feature one of the week’s hit albums, and generally have fun with it.

We also use Spotify playlists to create virtual mixtapes dedicated to a single artist, allowing you to sample some of their lesser known (but just as good) material alongside the familiar hits. We’re working on adding playlists to all the artist pages; you’ll find more in the Spotification section.

Of course, we recognise that music didn’t stop at the end of 1989, so we’ll also keep you up to date with the latest releases from acts associated with the ’80s – we’ll try and point you to as much new music as possible. And if all that’s not enough, follow us on Spotify, Mixcloud and Twitter and you might catch a few surprises!