There are literally millions of video essays on YouTube, for any goddamn subject you can think of, and that's certainly true for essays about the history of music. Most of them are easy to ignore, because they're too amateurish, or just so basic, talking about the same old shit that everyone else is. And some are just too niche, fixated on things I can barely follow, full of the gossip on decades-old feuds and the most arcane technical info.
But I never miss a Trash Theory, which hooked me in with usual focus on punk and the world it created, but kept me coming back with its ongoing examination of the British canon of pop music over the past 40 years, from Ian Dury to the Spice Girls.
They're compulsive viewing for any fair-weather music fan, entertaining and informative even when talking about music you couldn't give a damn about. They're impeccably edited, with the finest snatches of music backing up the new analysis. And the crew behind these videos have shown impeccable timing, with a hardcore Kate Bush appreciation video coming out just before the diva herself scorched back into the public consciousness on the back of Stranger Things.
Whether it's the eye-opening video on the mysteries behind Andrew WK, or telling us how Take Me Out was inspired by a really awful war movie but inspired a musical legacy anyway, it's always a terrific slice of pop history, if you can hear it above all the other noise.
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