pop
Odd times and clunking lines in 'The Life of a Showgirl' for Taylor SwiftSaturday, 04 October 2025
It’s funny: people say a lot online that what you’re allowed to like and dislike in music is bounded by age, gender and so forth. “It’s not FOR you,” they say. And in many ways, when it comes to Taylor Swift, that’s fair enough.There are certainly... Read more... |
'The Art of Loving': Olivia Dean's vulnerable and intimate second albumMonday, 29 September 2025
In the age of streaming, it’s never been less clear knowing when you can safely say an artist is well known in the mainstream. But for the rising star of Olivia Dean, the neo-soul Londoner, if Spotify streams count for anything then with... Read more... |
Album: Baxter Dury - AllbaroneThursday, 11 September 2025
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... Read more... |
Album: CMAT - EURO-COUNTRYFriday, 29 August 2025
Queen of the earworm Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson has had quite the summer, capturing imaginations and sparking indignation. The brazen hussy has the audacity to wear what the hell she likes while belting out her stream of catchy country-pop, life-... Read more... |
Elizabeth Alker: Everything We Do is Music review - Prokofiev goes popWednesday, 27 August 2025
Composers and musicians explore acoustic space. Generally, they have got by with combinations of readily accessible sounds, with occasional novelties as instruments improved, bit by bit.In the 20th century that changed radically. New technologies... Read more... |
Album: Blood Orange - Essex HoneySaturday, 23 August 2025
The more time goes by, the more it seems like Dev Hynes might be the antidote to what Guy Debord called “the society of the spectacle”. As is documented in the fantastic recent book Songs in the Key of MP3, Hynes is representative of a type of... Read more... |
Album: Wolf Alice - ClearingFriday, 22 August 2025
Wolf Alice are a band who consistently over-deliver. Their presentation is so staid, their cited influences so safe (The Beatles! Blur!), their politics so “bad things are bad, m’kay?”, that they give every impression they’re going to be bland and... Read more... |
Album: Cian Ducrot - Little DreamingThursday, 31 July 2025
Cian Ducrot cut his teeth on a blend of intimate singer-songwriter balladry and lowkey alt-pop, most of his debut album Victory sounding like a less personable Lewis Capaldi. There’s a modernity to Ducrot’s sound, though. The palette is... Read more... |
Sabrina Carpenter, Hyde Park BST review - a sexy, sparkly, summer phenomenonMonday, 07 July 2025
Has Sabrina Carpenter officially conquered London? A year after bestie and fellow Disney alumni Taylor Swift declared the “Summer of Sabrina” stateside, the army of fans clad in pink cowboy hats, bloomers and kiss transfers streaming into Hyde Park... Read more... |
Album: Lorde - VirginThursday, 26 June 2025
Lorde’s trajectory is continually fascinating. From the minimalist, sparse electropop of Pure Heroine to the similar but more grandiose production of Melodrama was a linear progression, but then came the acoustic... Read more... |
Album: Pulp - MoreFriday, 06 June 2025
While the Gallagher brothers scrabble around in the dirt for their rich pickings, an altogether more dignified experience is on offer from Sheffield. More is Pulp’s first album for 24 years, which is a sobering fact for those of us who... Read more... |
Album: Miley Cyrus - Something BeautifulFriday, 30 May 2025
A couple of months ago, I wrote here that Lady Gaga was the godmother of the new generation of ostentatiously “theatre kid” pop stars – but actually, perhaps I was wrong and Miley Cyrus deserves that title. Ever since her teens, she has consistently... Read more... |
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