Rock history, argued with excellent memory.
Word In Your Ear treats music history as a living argument, not a museum shelf. Its conversations move from Fairport Convention road life and post-punk synths to AI-written criticism, Bowie afterlives, and the darker symbolism rock sometimes borrowed.
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Word In Your Ear is a long-running music conversation show with the feel of informed people talking across a table. It is brisk. The charm is not polish for its own sake, but the way its conversations keep finding trapdoors into older scenes, odd claims, and half-remembered pop-cultural weather. A guest may arrive with a book, a tour, or a contested piece of rock mythology, and the show quickly starts testing the story from several angles. Matt Johnson’s early The The history becomes a route through post-punk seriousness, small ads, primitive synths, Wire, This Heat, Cabaret Voltaire, and the slightly comic problem of attracting the wrong musicians. Brian Coleman’s account of 1970 London opens onto Nick Drake, Sandy Denny, John Martyn, timing, and proximity. Daniel Rachel’s work on pop music and the Third Reich gives the show room for a more grave register, tracing shock, style, cruelty, and responsibility without pretending that rock history is clean. Simon Nicol’s Fairport Convention appearance has a warmer road-life texture, with touring, early gigs, and the persistence of a band still moving after almost 60 years. The show likes myths, but it likes poking them too. The Manchester Sex Pistols episode tests the famous Lesser Free Trade Hall story as both legend and local reaction, asking what happens when an audience thinks it can do better. Elsewhere, the conversation turns to cosmetic work, AI, bad criticism, Beatles commentary, and the strange comfort of phrases that sound meaningful until someone actually reads them. It can wander. The wandering usually pays rent. The show’s best mode is anecdote first, thesis second, with enough names and specifics to keep the talk from floating away. It is for listeners who enjoy the social history around records as much as the records themselves. It treats music as an industry, a memory system, a fan argument, and a source of very durable jokes.
Made for: For listeners who like music criticism, rock history, record-collector detail, and interviews that leave room for argument. It especially suits people who enjoy British music press culture and stories behind scenes, not just songs.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its lived-in mix of interview, banter, and cultural memory. It can move from a panto aside to post-punk, AI criticism, or Nazi imagery in rock without losing the thread.
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 podcasts alive in regular Word In Your Ear evenings in which they spoke to musicians and authors in front of an audience. Over these years they've produced hundreds of hours of material. As of the Curr…
Abbey Road meets Manchester punk mythology, with your favorite music certainty invited to defend itself.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded origin story that moves from a misfired advert to the fertile edges of British post-punk.
Matt Johnson's path into music gives the episode its pull: a wrong-turn Melody Maker advert, a better fit through NME, and an electronic duo built around a Wasp, a borrowed guitar, foot pedals, and a reel-to-reel tape recorder.
Jimmy Carr's candor, a Beatles medley, and suspiciously meaningful prose turn AI talk into a music argument.
Word In Your Ear takes a sideways route into AI, opening with Jimmy Carr's unembarrassed candor about filler and hairline work before asking why such disclosure now lands so easily.
A Manchester punk story built from memory, noise, and oral history.
Word In Your Ear treats David Nolan's I Swear I Was There as a piece of oral history built around the two summer 1976 Sex Pistols shows at the Lesser Free Trade Hall.
Rock history, Nazi imagery, and the line between provocation and harm.
Word In Your Ear treats rock's fascination with the Third Reich as a serious subject rather than a shock tactic, tracing it through Brian Jones in an SS uniform, Malcolm McLaren's swastika use in punk, Bernie Rhodes' refusal, and Daniel Rachel's history.
Records worth hearing, reasons worth arguing over.
Annual Songlines Music Awards ceremonies spotlighting global artists, from Afrobeat to sevda.
A high schooler's music diary — Grammys press pass stories to family concert interviews.
Rap verdicts, fight-night takes and wandering movie arguments.
Word In Your Ear examines cosmetic work among celebrities, using Jimmy Carr's candid admission and Bruce Springsteen's dispute with the President of the United States as starting points.
Word in Your Ear interviews film critic and author Mark Kermode about Surround Sound, his book on music in movies, co-written with Jenny Nelson after a ten-year delay.
Word In Your Ear interviews Glenn Tilbrook about a 1974 album he and Chris Difford wrote as teenagers and recorded 52 years later.
Word in Your Ear examines why comparisons between Robbie Williams and the Beatles’ chart records ignore the Beatles’ long UK number-one runs, including 21 weeks for With the Beatles in 1964.
Word In Your Ear interviews Matt Johnson about Cognitive Dissident, a book built from 16 conversations with Jason Wood over five or six years.
Hosts Mark Ellen and David Hepworth interview author Brian Coleman about his book on the 1970s London music scene featuring Nick Drake and Sandy Denny.
A podcast where music journalists Mark Ellen and David Hepworth interview musicians and discuss the music industry.
Two music journalists chat about music and pop culture, starting with a New Year's panto-themed discussion.
Hosts Mark Ellen and David Hepworth interview Simon Nicol of Fairport Convention about his earliest live music memories and the band's enduring touring legacy.
Mark Ellen and David Hepworth interview author Daniel Rachel about his book 'This Ain't Rock and Roll: Pop Music, the Swastika and the Third Reich'.
Mark Ellen and David Hepworth interview author David Nolan about his book 'I Swear I Was There', which details the Sex Pistols' two 1976 gigs at Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall.