wed 22/10/2025

disco

Lady Gaga, The Mayhem Ball, O2 review - epic, eye-boggling and full of spirit

The backscreens pop alive. A wall of photographer’s flashguns. On cyberpunk crutches, Lady Gaga stumbles jerkily towards us. She sings her 2009 global smash “Paparazzi”, her arms clad in armour, on her head a metallic skullcap. Her corseted dress...

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Get Down Tonight, Charing Cross Theatre review - glitz and hits from the 70s

In a fair few bars around the world tonight, bands will be playing “That’s The Way (I Like It)”, “Give It Up” and so many more of KC and the Sunshine Band’s bangers. They’ve filled dancefloors for half a century and Harry Wayne Casey (KC to you and...

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Album: Baxter Dury - Allbarone

Quite why Baxter Dury isn't already a national treasure is a mystery to me. Not for his nepo connections but for his perfectly pitched delivery and super-dry observations. He's sardonic, sleazy, sexy and has a cracking dog – what more does any man...

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Album: Alison Goldfrapp - Flux

It’s impossible to overstate how much the early 2000s records of Goldfrapp – the duo of Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory – set the tone for the whole rest of the 21st century. The electroclash scene had already ushered in an Eternal Eighties...

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Album: Lady Gaga - Mayhem

Just the other day I overheard one of my kids watching a YouTuber called Nathan Zed and was instantly gripped. It was called “How Trying Became Cool Again,” and focused on pop cultural moments like Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl show, Doechii...

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Album: Biig Piig - 11:11

Is there such a thing as a boundary between pop and alternative any more? The presence of strange characters like Chappell Roan, Billie Eilish and Lola Young in the mega mainstream suggests not – and so does trajectory of Jessica Smyth aka Biig Piig...

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Album: Kylie Minogue - Tension II

There’s a real bind for Kylie Minogue. Her core audience want disco pop, people like me slag her off if she branches out from disco pop and goes country, she does disco pop well… but it’s really, really hard to do disco pop relentlessly well all the...

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Why Am I So Single?, Garrick Theatre review - superb songs in Zeitgeist surfing show

Going to the theatre can be a little like going to church. One communes on the individual level, one’s faith in the stories underpinned by a psychological connection, but also on the collective level, belief rising on a tide of shared emotions....

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Album: Galliano - Halfway Somewhere

Some performers are born to perform. It seems obvious, but it’s not a given in the music world. Some just want to make sound, some want to compose, not all are in it to connect directly to an audience. Rob Gallagher, however, is all about that...

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We Out Here Festival 2024 review - generations of weirdness and wonder

I won’t give it loads about the atmosphere and attendees at We Out Here – suffice to say that in its fifth edition, it has maintained all the strengths I mentioned last year, with the added benefit of slicker-operating infrastructure having ironed...

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Album: Joe Goddard - Harmonics

Joe Goddard’s torrent of creativity rarely fails to amaze. As well as eight albums as a crucial part of Hot Chip, he has made two in the 2 Bears duo with Raf Rundell, one as Hard Feelings with Amy Douglas, and there’s been various other...

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Music Reissues Weekly: Jon Savage's The Secret Public - How The LGBTQ+ Aesthetic Shaped Pop Culture

Jon Savage's The Secret Public How The LGBTQ+ Aesthetic Shaped Pop Culture 1955-1979 accompanies the titular author/historian/journalist’s book of almost the same name. The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955–1979) and...

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