Johnny Sharp

Johnny Sharp cut his teeth (can you cut teeth? Without some sort of fearsome dental implement?) as a writer for NME during the 1990s under the name Johnny Cigarettes (a schoolyard nickname adopted as a pseudonym, meaning plenty of people would remember his name, but few would ever take him seriously), before reverting to his real surname of Sharp, realising a decade too late that the name he was born with sounded like a made up name anyway. He has gone on to write for The Guardian, Q, Mojo, loaded, and many, many others about music, sport and whatever else anyone will pay him to gob off about.

His first book was Crap Lyrics, published by Portico Books in 2009, which examines the noble art of rubbish song words, and their enduring contribution to popular music. Mind The Bollocks, his new tome, is a similarly academic affair, celebrating ‚50 years of people talking nonsense about music‘ – featuring (it says here, on the back cover blurb) urban myths debunked, terrible advice in songs, stupid things musicians say, terrible reviews of great records and ludicrous hype of hopeless bands.