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PODCAST

Word In Your Ear

Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold

Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "Rock On", "Whistle Test" and VH-1.Over thirteen years ago, when working on the late magazine The Word, they began producing podcasts. Some listeners have been kind enough to say these have been very special to them. When the magazine folded in 2012 they kept the spirit of those

music music commentary

All Episodes

46:55

Albums we bought because we liked the title

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/03/01

Spinning sides at the conversational disco to see what fills the dancefloor, which this week includes …… Jerry Garcia had seven fingers! Brian Jones had seven children! Morrissey worked for the Inland Revenue!… the most terrifying villain in the history of cinema... is pop music becoming inbred?… when Neil Sedaka made records with 10cc (and Abba)… Happy? Get Lucky? Crazy In Love? What was the last hit single the whole world seemed to be singing?… Noddy Holder, Kim Wilde, Robert Wyatt, Gary Numan:

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33:53

How Glenn Tilbrook transformed the life of Squeeze

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/02/25

Glenn Tilbrook wrote an album with Chris Difford about a futuristic nightclub when they were teenagers and, 52 years later, they’ve recorded it and are performing it on the upcoming tour. He looks back here at the partnership that once wrote 200 songs in three years, the first gigs he saw, his recent decision to take control of the group and what’s changed the way they sound. Among the highlights …… what he learnt from watching Radiohead and Doechii… when you walk into a teashop and Tír na nÓg are

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41:53

Keith & Chuck, Bowie & Tina, Frank & Elvis and what...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/02/18

Some shared stages. Some made records and films together. Some had love affairs. Matt Thorne is fascinated by stars’ collaborations and what they reveal about them. He talks here about 14 musicians who collided and the discoveries he made in the six years spent writing ‘Famous: Ego, Envy and Ambition in Pop, Rock and Hip-Hip’, with all this high in the mix …… Frank Sinatra’s ‘Welcome Home Elvis’ TV Special and how threatened he felt by rock’n’roll… “Chuck Berry thrived on tension in exactly the way

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35:20

Boston, Def Leppard, bad hair & the golden age of...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/02/17

Paul Rees fell in love with AOR when it began with Boston in 1976, the polished, ramped-up hits that were briefly the music of the American heartland. His book ‘Raised On Radio: Power Ballads, Cocaine & Payola – the AOR Glory Years 1976-1986’ remembers the age when records were launched via car stereos, their eternally appealing sound and the preposterous lives of the people who wrote and played them – Bon Jovi, Pat Benatar, Asia, REO Speedwagon, Don Henley and Toto among them. “It’s happy

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1:03:58

Was Bad Bunny at the Superbowl the greatest show ever...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/02/16

After 40 days of relentless rain, you need our little ray of sunshine. And here we all are! Sitting in the rock’n’roll rainbow this week you’ll find …... the Wuthering Heights instagram gold-rush… licensing Foreigner and Lynyrd Skynyrd: when is a band not a band?.. what Michael Jackson asked the Superbowl promoter… one long video for Charli XCX: “if that film was playing in my back garden I’d draw the curtains”… Bob Dylan & Kurtis Blow, Kate Winslet & ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic: a brief history of

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56:32

The genius of Sly Dunbar & Catherine O’Hara plus...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/02/01

A bone-shaking ride on the weekly news cycle, stopping off here to pump up the tyres ….… Springsteen’s Streets Of Minneapolis: it’s not what he said but the fact that he’s said it… “they’re all just Sly & Robbie records but with someone different singing on them”… the price of stadium tickets: if it’s too high, don’t go – but stop complaining!… Catherine O’Hara’s wit and humanity in Waiting For Guffman and A Mighty Wind, and why Home Alone wouldn’t work without her… Melania’s deal with Amazon:

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35:54

Adele Bertei, New York’s art-rock explosion and Eno’s...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/01/28

Adele Bertei got a Greyhound to New York in 1977 intent on joining a band. James Chance thought she “looked like a pimp” and hired her as the organist in the Contortions, an instrument she couldn’t play. Her memoir No New York captures the most intoxicating times imaginable, the rise of Blondie, Talking Heads, Television, Madonna and her fellow raft of No Wave cheerleaders in pursuit of dismantling music. Highlights include …… the local priest recommending the Velvet Underground when she was 11…

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54:19

Steve Lillywhite produced the Stones, U2, Siouxsie,...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/01/27

Steve Lillywhite first got a foot in the studio door aged 17 making demos for Ultravox and became a producer with credits on over 500 records. He doesn’t have a copy of any of them but kept his Grammys and his CBE. The job involves being a lightning-rod, cheer-leader, editor, finisher and “as diplomatic as Henry Kissinger”. He looks back here from his ‘Lillypad’ in Bali at the milestones along the way, among them …… “I’d done my 10,000 hours by the age of 22”... “If it ain’t broke, break it!”… when

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47:48

Who’d be a nepo baby? plus the mystery album that...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/01/25

Scanning the baggage carousel of news to see what sets off the alarm, which this week involves …… Springsteen: why is America’s most American American so quiet about his President on home turf?… the Seven Ages of Nepo: in defence of Julian Lennon, Joe Sumner and Brooklyn Beckham… the Robbie Williams story that gets our goat… why do half the UK music venues make no profit?… the onstage ‘act’ that did 104 minutes non-stop… pre-testing EDM singles on the dancefloor… Four Boys in the Wind! What A Night

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37:15

Simon Nicol of Fairport Convention, back in the van...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/01/22

Fairport tour again in 2026 and are playing their annual Cropredy Convention in August, its 50th year. The rolling Kent landscape behind him, co-founder Simon Nicol looks back at almost six decades in the line-up, the first shows he ever saw and played, why he can’t wait to get back on the tour bus again, and …… the intoxication of live music – “lost in a moment that’s never happened before and won’t be repeated”… Count Basie at the Astoria, aged 7 – “the moulded Turkish ottomans! The massed ranks

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41:40

Miles Hunt of the Wonder Stuff - ‘I’d rather make...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/01/21

Miles Hunt is on tour in 2026 – solo, with Vent 414 and the Wonder Stuff - and looks back here at his 40 years on stage, which involves …… stifling hecklers the John Lydon way: “the exits are clearly marked!”… what percussion does to your ears… “when a tout’s selling your £3 ticket for £50 you know you’ve made it!”… keytars, flat drums, guitars without headstocks: things that are JUST PLAIN WRONG!… seeing Slade at Birmingham Town Hall when he was 10… why the Size Of A Cow was “the moment a lot of

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25:46

Kenney Jones remembers the Small Faces’ masterpiece

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/01/20

Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake is being reissued on Kenney Jones’ Nice Records, along with unheard outtakes discovered when the original master was found in one of his battered old drum cases. He talks to us here – with the compiler Rob Caiger – about the chaotic construction of the Small Faces’ 1968 masterpiece and his mission to “carry on the legacy”. Are you all sitting comftybold two-square on your botty? Then we’ll begin. Among the highlights …… the Thames boating accident that inspired the album…

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39:23

The fabulous Bob Weir and how the Grateful Dead...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/01/18

A tie-dyed-in-the-wool rock & roll space odyssey to infinity and beyond which stops off this week at …… why the Dead’s music was “like lighting a match in the wind”… Ha Ha Harlem! Rebels Without Applause! – Morrissey song or Lenny Bruce comic routine?… Sting v Sumner & Copeland and what Every Breath You Take makes daily just from streaming… is Oasis “the biggest exchange of money for old rope in the history of commerce?”… rock stars in shorts… John Hartford and his Willie Nelson Sliding

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28:09

Steve Cradock on Ocean Colour Scene, Mod hair & the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/01/16

Steve Cradock’s touring with Ocean Colour Scene in 2026 and in his own show, Travellers Tunes, with his wife and son Steve – “we’re like the Von Trapps!” This highly original night involves them “living like gypsies in the spirit of Ronnie Lane”. He looks back here, from his psychedelic Mod-shrine converted garage in Totnes, at the first shows he ever saw and played, which touches on ……seeing UB40 at Birmingham Odeon, aged 13 – “I was bruised for days”… an after-school Duran Duran video shoot…

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25:17

Mary Coughlan, onstage from the age of five -...

Word In Your Ear ·

2026/01/12

Mary Coughlan – aka “Ireland’s Billie Holiday”, adored by Nick Cave, Shane MacGowan and Elvis Costello - is on tour again in 2026. This warm, funny and circuitous conversation looks back from her home in Wicklow at the first shows she ever saw and played and various milestones along the road, among them …… singing Two Little Orphans (aged 5) at a Christmas party: “The adrenaline rush! Applause and lemonade!”… escaping down ladders from school to see Rory Gallagher in Galway and the nuns waiting when

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53:43

Do all panned albums end up loved? And what’s the...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/12/21

Deck the halls with cheese and Bolly! … and a dish of the usual rock and roll distraction which this week throws the following logs on the fire …… the greatest Xmas single ever?… Metal Machine Music, Cut the Crap, Two Sides of the Moon … can panned records ever be rehabilitated?… how Roxy Music invented ‘rock brand-value’ and turned it into pictures… Joe Ely and the romance of songs about the American landscape… Rob Reiner and why that scene in When Harry Met Sally is the greatest marriage of people

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48:11

Paul Kelly – ‘national treasure!’ - and the song that...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/12/18

Beloved Australian songwriter Paul Kelly has just turned 70 – “it sounds Biblical, threescore years and ten.” He looks back here at the road he took to get there, from early days in Adelaide to the pub circuit to his catalogueof stirring and eloquent songs about the big issues of life and love, as Neil Finn says, “with not a trace of pretence or fakery”. You’ll find …… the moment he felt he’d arrived… the story of How To Make Gravy – “a Christmas song with no chorus about a man in prison” – and Rita

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32:00

Lucinda Williams is fighting on every front

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/12/17

Lucinda Williams was a teenage activist singing We Shall Overcome at protest marches and she’s taken up the cudgels again on her new album World’s Gone Wrong. She talks to us here from her home in Nashville about …… early inspirations - Dylan, Donovan, Joan Baez, Peter Paul & Mary, Buffy Sainte-Marie – and her love of Sandy Denny, Bert Jansch, Nick Drake and ‘60s British folk… playing Delta blues for tips at Andy’s in Bourbon Street in 1971… her sudden favourite Beatle switch – “Paul … then

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1:02:40

Beastie Boys, Frankie, teds, punks, raves - ‘moral...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/12/15

Shock, horror, public outcry and moments of moral turpitude plus with the usual news, rants and old hokum, which this week alights upon …… why Gene Simmons thinks “musicians are treated worse than slaves”... the high noon of Madonna and her foil-wrapped Sex book… is Rufus Wainwright pop’s most successful nepo-baby?… how CMAT forced Bertie Ahern to pull out of the Irish Presidency… the Stackwaddy Quiz: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You? Getting Killed? Sinister Grift? Pitchfork Album of the Year or an entry

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34:03

Punk Rock recalled by Chris Sullivan - can music...

Word In Your Ear ·

2025/12/09

What’s the word ‘punk’ come to mean 50 years later? It’s been adopted by the very people it sought to unsettle. Chris Sullivan – DJ, club runner, lecturer, former band-leader – arrived in London just as it kicked off and looks back at a time when everything was a challenge, no-one apologised, outsiders linked up and fought for recognition, and pop culture could change overnight. We talk to him here about ‘Punk: the Last Word’ which traces its roots from Socrates to Soho, touching on…… does ‘punk’

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