They should have stuck a scratch'n'sniff card of rich Norwegian earth in with this intensely bucolic album fronted by composers Tore Brunborg on reeds and Rhodes, and vocalist Kirsti Huke.

The pop music of the Eighties was bright, bouncy and shiny – and the biweekly magazine Smash Hits displayed the same qualities while providing the perfect handbook for teenagers throughout the British Isles and beyond to follow the latest bands and trends. A mainstay of the much-loved publication throughout the first half of the Eighties, the photographer Eric Watson shot many of its iconic covers, including those featuring Madonna, Madness and Morrissey, and helped define the "heroic" look of many of the acts from the period.

In news to dismay many music fans, Stock, Aitken and Waterman are getting the gang back together for a reunion gig. But will Kylie come too? By Simon Usborne

The Subo story is a feel-good potboiler brought to life: dowdy Scottish introvert turns up at Britain's Got Talent to initial audience titters, but wows the world with her untutored perfect pitch and West End-worthy projection.

The caprine warble of solo Steve Nicks has broken its silence after 10 years to explore the idea that nothing lasts forever, especially in affairs of the heart.

This week's Culture Club is on the new series of E4's controversial teen drama Skins. Do you love it? Do you hate it? How do feel the latest cast members compare with their predecessors? Let us know your thoughts below.

This week's Culture Club focuses on the second series of Glee. Do you love it? Do you hate it? How do you feel it is comparing with the first series? Leave your thoughts on Glee below.

This week’s Culture Club focuses on Let Me In - the American remake of acclaimed Swedish vampire movie Let The Right One In.

Your views on Michael Douglas' new film

Hot dog, jumping frog! Prefab Sprout are reborn

A-ha were arguably the first veteran band to realise it was possible to express “grown-up” feelings without growing beards or going solo, and that the supposedly ephemeral genre with which they made their name, teen-aimed pop, could be an eternally valid vehicle.

The Pet Shop Boys' stock has been gently sinking for 15 years. Since perfecting their English art-disco with Very, the consistency of the sleekly subversive pop singles that made them dance culture's Kinks has been lost. How much Neil Tennant confirming he was gay also contributed to their commercial slide is a matter for their audience's consciences. But in Heaven, the often gay nightclub, the Pet Shop Boys' enduring quality and meaning becomes movingly clear.

Heaven 17 have sensibly worked around the pitfalls of a first tour - where can we borrow an amp from and will they let it on the bus? - by not rushing into it. So they waited. Seventeen years. One of the icons of early Eighties electropop was finally to meet its wider public.

Last weeks for a double-bill of Alan Bennett monologues, with Margaret Tyzack and Maggie Smith, who reprises her TV role in "A Bed Among the Lentils", a tragicomic performance described by our very own Paul Taylor as "brilliant beyond belief".