It's Friday night - who fancies playing a game?

Are there any pop acts from the past 20 years who everyone bar you seems to have forgotten ever existed? If so, leave a comment posting one of their hits in the thread below.

Rules are as follows:
1. They must have had at least one Top 20 hit in the UK (here, Every Hit is your friend.
2. The more obscure the better - an act who 99% of the population (including members of the artist's immediate family) will have barely any recollection of are perfect.
3. Bonus points if you have any spectacularly trivial facts about them.

I'll start the ball rolling with this. An Irish female rap duo who reached #17 in 2000 with this cover of a Bananarama track.

Pointless trivia: Naomi Lynch (the dark-haired one) comes from a pop family; her brother, Shane, is in Boyzone (and also features in this video) and her two sisters - Edele and Keavy - were in B*Witched.

I was on the BBC Sport website earlier and noticed there was a boxer fighting this weekend named Tyson Fury - a very appropriate name for a boxer, thought I. This follows on from yesterday when I was listening to Washed Out, a band whose name describes their woozy enveloping sound perfectly.

This got me thinking, who are the most appropriately named people and bands in the public eye? Other than those mentioned above, I think you couldn't ask for a better name for a record-breaking sprinter than Usain Bolt.

If this has been done before, I apologise. It's difficult to know though, if you search "podcast" on this site, lots of stuff comes up, oddly enough.

Anyway, I've recorded a podcast for a website I write for and it's now, quite literally, out there. I'm keen to get it onto iTunes and according to these guidelines, it actually looks easier than I thought it might be.

However, the thing I'm stuck on is where to host it. Currently, it's on Soundcloud, which I don't think will be any good. So, does anyone have experience of hosting podcasts and what sites would you recommend? Overall, I'm looking for something that's cheap (free, preferably), reliable and, if possible, provides stats on number of downloads etc.

Much obliged.

On my walk to buy lunch just now, I was thinking about who my favourite person with my Christian name would be. I went through all the famous Joes I could think of in 3 minutes before settling on the winner. So, it's not Joes DiMaggio, Bugner, Jordan or Jackson. It's not Country Joe and the Fish, Ugly Kid Joe, Hendrix's Hey Joe or R&B singer Joe either.

My favourite Joe is one half of radio's finest duo, film director and all-round genial chap, Joe Cornish. So, who's your favourite namesake?

NB: Members of the Word Massive are not allowed, otherwise obviously I'd have voted for JoLean of this blog.

The Grauniad seems to have gone live blog crazy in recent months, but this one is really worth your time

It seems that, after the head of the FA asked for more transparency within FIFA, he's been roundly shouted down by football representatives around the world. The head of the Argentinian FA has claimed that "Their [Britain's] journalism is more busy lying than telling the truth."

Extraordinary stuff. The obscene amounts of money involved in football may just be a corollary of its growing global popularity, but this is really something else.

Those of you with particularly sharp memories may remember this thread where I regaled the Massive of a time when I was a prize idiot. Well, almost a year to the day, I'm worried I've done it again.

Yesterday, I noticed there was more money in my account than I expected there to be... almost £2,000 more. I went to the bank to check what had happened and they told me that two weeks ago, I'd deposited a cheque for £1,930 in my account. I knew I hadn't, and then I realised what had happened, I'd deposited a cheque for £19.30.

A brief wrestle with my conscience followed. I'd be overpaid to the tune of over £1,900 and only I knew about it. What would you have done?

Reader, I told the bank.

Rather than thank me for my honesty or let me keep a couple of hundred quid for being a good sport, the bank just told me they'd have found out and recouped the money at some point anyway. So, answer me this:

1) Would they have found out? This money had been sitting in my account without any questions asked for two weeks after all.
2) Am I a huge, huge idiot?

Looking at this weeks Top 40 singles chart one thing sticks out like a sore thumb: there are no recognised guitar bands in the chart at all. Pop has always been the big seller in the singles market, but it's difficult to recall a time when there were literally no rock/alternative/indie/call-it-what-you-will tracks in the charts.

Why is this happening? Surely there's just as much of this kind of music being made as there always has been. Also, with the growing popularity of downloads, it's never been easier to buy an individual song; I'm certainly buying more singles than I probably ever have. I would've thought equal access to all music would result in a more meritocratic chart with a range of genres, but it appears to not be the case.

If you need more evidence of the waning popularity of guitar-based singles, consider the case of Arctic Monkeys. Their first two singles topped the charts but their most recent single (the lead track from their as-yet-unreleased new album, no less) dropped out of the Top 40 after one week and the previous two singles barely cracked the Top 100.

So, as someone much more famous and talented than I once said, what's going on?

(As a postscript, I can't understand why this wonderful gem of a pop song wasn't a big hit)

While watching Later... with Jools Holland last night, my interest was grabbed by the band Vintage Trouble. I'd never heard of them before, but they put on such a show that I was instantly captivated.

From the reaction of some of The Massive on Twitter, it looks as if I could be alone in this. I know they're clearly derivative and bring nothing new to the table, but they were great FUN! I don't think I'd buy one of their records but I reckon they'd be a hoot live.

I say, "more of this sort of thing, please." What do you think?

Bob's recent pop music thread couldn't have come at a better time, as far as I'm concerned. I seem to be rapidly falling out of love with guitar music, and am listening to ever-increasing qualities of pop, dance, electro, hip-hop and dubstep.

At the moment, if it was made in 1971 and features copious amounts of pedal steel, I'm going to turn it off and put some JLS on. I don't want over-wrought singer-songwriters; I want sassy girls singing about how crap their boyfriends are or Nicki Minaj being completely bonkers.

So, is anyone else feeling a bit like this? And also, what's your favourite pop song of the last twelve months. Mine is this...

(Katy B - Katy On A Mission)

I do quite a bit of writing; it's good, and I like it.

However, I'd like to do more. I spend a fair few of my lunchtimes in cafés and I'm often on trains, and it'd be great to have a laptop to tap out a collection of finely-hewn bon mots*.

Unfortunately, I've no idea what to get. So, I'm looking for a laptop/notebook which is: small, robust (likely to get thrown in a bag and carted around) and good value for money.

Any suggestions?

(*hastily ill-thought out claptrap)

At lunchtime today, I was listening to the new Britney Spears album (lucky me). While doing so, I wondered what exactly the point of the album was.

There are certain acts (primarily pop and usually aimed at the teen market) whose albums contain two or three hit singles and then a load of filler. This isn't true for all pop - the most recent Lady Gaga and Robyn albums are pretty strong from soup to nuts - but it is the case for many.

So, why do these people still record albums? In a market where single sales are booming and album sales are down, an established artist such as Britney Spears could surely not bother with the full 12 track, 40 minute LP and just concentrate on the songs people want to hear. Then, every few years, she could release a compilation featuring nothing but big hits.

So, has anyone done this before and if not, why not? Or, am I just being naive and the reason no-one does it is because albums are where the money is?

I like music. I like music A LOT. I listen to it whenever I can, and will happily prattle on about it for many an hour when given the opportunity. When not doing these things, I'm usually writing about music.

However, I rarely go to gigs.

Yesterday, I had tickets to go and see The Decemberists in Hammersmith. I bought them ages ago, but as the day wore on, I realised I was looking forward to it less and less. By 3pm, I really couldn't be bothered and by 5pm, I'd made my mind up not to go, and so I didn't. A quick count means that in the last 6 months I've had tickets for five gigs... and I've been to one of them.

Why is this? I've come up with three possible reasons but I'm wondering if there's something else which makes me so unlike most music fans.

- Music is a very personal experience. Listening to music I love gives me a feeling very particular to me; I don't feel the need to share that with a load of strangers.
- You always stand next to an idiot. After having paid to go to a gig, you don't want the words being sung tunelessly by the lagered-up cretin behind you.
- I'm a grumpy, lazy bastard (I don't like the cinema either)

So, anyone else feel like this? Can you suggest something to help capture some gig magic? Or am I doomed to live a life of melodic solitude?

In 1998, a pop star looked to follow up his debut Top 20 hit with a new single. He decided to cover a Hall & Oates track (She's Gone) and teamed up with an up-and-coming girl band. So far, nothing out of the ordinary, but in hindsight, this really was an odd mix.

The singer in question was Matthew Marsden. You probably don't remember him; this was his final foray into the charts. He'd launched a (fleeting) pop career after leaving Coronation Street, where he played a mechanic who - like practically every male of a certain age who's been in Corrie - had an affair with Sally Webster.

The girl group you may have heard of. They were called Destiny's Child and since duetting with a Z-list soap actor, they've done rather well for themselves.

I still can't get my head round this; Destiny's Child were his back-up group.

Any other unlikely pairings or moments in pop that, with hindsight, just seem bizarre?

Last week, I listened to the entire Top 40 on Radio 1. I'm not about to denounce all modern pop music as rubbish; some of it was pretty good.

However, what was most striking was how NOISY everything was. Most songs had no semblance of dynamics and any trace of subtlety had been sledgehammered out of them. I was wondering why this is and came up with three possible reasons:
- the "loudness wars"; as covered by The Word before, now you can see songs represented as waveforms on ProTools, the temptation is always to "fill in" any gaps
- shorter attention spans; thanks to the internet and particularly social networking, people get easily distracted, songs no longer have time to "grow on you". They have to catch your interest right away otherwise... oh, look, a squirrel.
- competition; music is now often listened to on the move. Therefore, any song has got to compete with ambient traffic noise and sometimes other music leaking out from poor quality headphones.

So, any other suggestions as to why this is?

In case you're wondering, in the class of 2011, THIS is the worst offender (maybe NSFW due to fruity language).

- "Save a tree - only print this email if you really need to"
- "Only boil as much water as you need"
- "Now wash your hands"
- "Please enjoy alcohol responsibly"

Messages like these drive me absolutely mad. I know their intention is honourable, but they're so incredibly patronising it makes me want to do the complete opposite.

So, my question is, who are these messages for? Who are the people whose opinions and actions are swayed by reading these notices? As a follow-up, seen any other good examples recently?