Popjustice.com was founded in May 2000, and became something a bit like what you see today at the end of 2002.

As well as being a website, Popjustice is also a weekly London club night, a range of illustrated pop biographies, a compilation album, a mobile service, a weekly email and a regular London live showcase night. Every year we hold the Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize, which rewards the creator of the best British pop single of the previous twelve months with £20, cash.


What We Know

Terrible popstars can make brilliant pop songs.

Brilliant popstars can make terrible pop songs.

A pop song doesn't have to sell to be brilliant.

A pop song doesn't have to flop to be awful.

You shouldn't grow out of pop music the moment you hit puberty.

You shouldn't grow into pop music the moment you discover irony.

Popstars who say "pop just means popular" don't really get it.

Pop music is not dead, it's just not the same as it was five years ago, or ten years ago, or twenty years ago.

A genre's popularity at one point in history does not automatically mean that a genre or way of presenting pop music is by rights relevant in every other era of pop. We are thinking of boybands here.

The worst pop music is made specifically for children, for gays, for housewives, for students; for any demographic patronisingly targeted by songwriters, producers and major label marketing departments.

There is a lot to be said for an underground approach to mainstream music.

There is a lot to be said for a mainstream approach to underground music.

Nobody should ever be guilty of pop pleasure.

Smash Hits was beyond saving as a magazine but Top Of The Pops was not beyond saving as a TV programme.

If you don't have the Pet Shop Boys somewhere in your Top 10 Pop Acts Of All Time In The Known Universe you need to be asking yourself some serious questions.

Pop music only 'goes in cycles' if you're an artist desperate to reinvigorate a dead musical scene to fit in with your own dated concept of popular music.

Mindlessly aggressive marketing and street-teaming has taught a generation of music fans to be suspicious of the pop industry.

Pop music is never good simply because it is pop music.

Indie music is frequently bad simply because it is indie music.

The death of the pop single as a format is inevitable but that does not mean we should not mourn its slow and painful demise.

If all pop songs were the length of ringtones the world would be a far better place.

Radio programmes and TV scheduling bigwigs are embarrassed to like pop music.

In limiting the formats singles can be released on, the Official Charts Company have killed the single through a series of regulations aimed solely at preventing the pop consumer from getting value for money.

£10 is a fair price for an album. More is unfair to the pop fan and less is unfair to the people who made the CD in the first place.

Shoddy media training has completely sucked the spunk out of the modern pop landscape and not in the good way.

You can have a million MySpace friends and still not count on any of them to buy your records.

Reality TV is saving nobody's music career.

We know more about pop music than this and we will update this page when things occur to us. ("Big wow" - The World.)