pop music
Ellie Roberts
After his record-breaking and warmly remembered Love On Tour, Harry Styles is back with a fresh, slightly more experimental twist on universal, blockbusting live pop. The revision of his performance style is subtle enough that Together, Together feels comfortable and familiar but the minor rebrand that came with his latest album Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. sufficiently spices things up. Following a glittery, feel good singalong with Shania Twain to warm things up, “Are You Listening Yet?” opens the show, with tangible gratitude flying through the stadium from Styles in the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Between June 1964 and September 1966, London-area R&B band Downliners Sect issued ten singles, one EP and three albums on EMI’s Columbia imprint. A lot of records. Especially so for a band which barely charted. Only one of the singles, their Columbia debut, a dash through Jimmy Reed’s “Baby What’s Wrong” got anywhere – 29 on the New Musical Express Top 30.Despite its meagre hit parade status, the single sounds irresistible – an unfettered headlong rush. But it, and subsequent releases, did not achieve the traction needed to take Downliners Sect to the level of their similarly minded Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
The World Cup is everywhere in Scotland these days, even among the country’s gigging venues. Rolled up Saltires were visible on the balconies of the O2 Academy, a reminder that the Glasgow venue is hosting watch parties for the national team’s matches, and when Lola Young came back onstage for the encore she was serenaded by fans belting out “no Scotland no party”, to which the Londoner cheerfully joined in.Roughly an hour earlier, the 25-year-old had walked out to the sort of wild reaction that greeted John McGinn hitting the back of the net against Haiti, with screams and hollers from the Read more ...
Erin Lewis
It’s tempting to focus on the peripheral aspects of Olivia Rodrigo’s career, dissecting who a particular song is about in relation to her personal life. However where Taylor Swift, an early source of inspiration for Rodrigo, overtly ties her music to her feuds and relationships, causing them to bleed into each other, Rodrigo has seemed keen to maintain a degree of separation between art and life. This means that even though you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love is widely believed to be about Rodrigo’s British actor ex Louis Partridge, the album doesn’t feel preoccupied with minutiae of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
“Enola Gay” is perfect pop, the ultimate party-uplift banger. It’s that rare song which only seems to grow better as the years, then decades pass. This is tricky to reconcile with the fact it’s about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (albeit opaquely). But, when Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark play it as the last song before their encore, the subject matter fragments amid its subversively joyous synth riff, as has been the case ever since it was a Top 10 hit, back in 1980. It’s greeted ecstatically, like the old friend it is.
Image
OMD’s set Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
As Metallica have long known, Ennio Morricone's Ecstasy of Gold is a rousing choice of walk on music. Deadletter might not be playing the stadiums the metal giants ply their trade in, but strolling on to a near pitch black stage with music from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly booming out was a nicely theatrical opening.The group themselves might have wished for a Clint Eastwood style lawman at points this year. While 2026 has marked the arrival of second album “Existence Is Bliss”, it also saw the theft on tour of thousands of pounds worth of equipment and gear from the Yorkshire six-piece, a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Back when One Direction alumnus Niall Horan released his second album, Heartbreak Weather, in 2020, songs such as “Nice to Meet Ya”, “Arms of a Stranger” and “Small Talk” hinted that new sonic adventures might be opening. Not in the vanguard sense of, say, St Vincent or FKA Twigs, but hints of envelope-pushing, nonetheless. These did not lead anywhere and, now up to album number four, he’s settled to a very 2026 gumbo that melds 1970s West Coast soft rock/yacht rock with a pinch of indie edge, but without the tunes to match his own poppiest (such as the contagiously joyful, if saccharine, “ Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Image
By the time Marina Diamandis reaches “Cuntissimo”, Birmingham’s O2 Academy is a sing-along sauna. We’re squeezed in like rice in vine leaves, drenched in human juice. Attempts to dance are restricted to meagre hip wiggles and hands waved above the head. No-one seems to care. The outrageous, pop-ballistic single of last year hits the desired chord. “Your ex is hitting you up,” Marina sings, and holds the mic towards us all. “BUT YOU NO LONGER GIVE A FUCK!” the place roars as one.Marina is that curiosity, a cult female star making pop Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Sathnam Sanghera’s previous books have included a memoir about growing up Sikh in Wolverhampton, and two acclaimed (and very good) accounts of colonialism – so it wasn’t entirely obvious that his next should be a meditation on the life and work of popstar George Michael. But Sanghera, a fan since childhood, sets out to investigate Michael through a number of lenses (including those of “Queer Icon” and “Celebrity”) and to interrogate his own complicated relationship to the star. Not a biography, it instead often feels like an (over)extended magazine feature (Sanghera writes for The Times), but Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Caution is evidently needed when moving around at a Pins gig. A woman who wandered off to the bar or the toilet returned and appeared slightly startled to realise the group's singer Faith Vern was now among the crowd, complete with microphone stand and considerable swagger. It wasn't even the first time the band had wandered among the faithful, as guitarist Lois MacDonald had gone for a stroll early on, taking care to not bump any punters with her guitar in the process.Such interaction is one of the advantages of being in a sweatbox like Nice N' Sleazy, a location that was fairly busy but is Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Promise me delight” is a tantalising entreaty. One which – in its particular way – this captivating 17-track compliation delivers on. Promise Me Delight - Italo Disco and European Pop from the Golden Age digs into what its title articulates, with the golden age in question spanning 1982 to 1988, with an emphasis on 1983 to 1986.A specific form of Continental European pop is celebrated. One which was dancefloor oriented, with electropop leanings and an emphasis on tunes as much as on atmosphere and rhythms designed to move body and feet. Not much of this pulse-quickening, often-fervid, almost Read more ...
Tim Cumming
There’s been quite a breadcrumb trail leading up to the release of Paul McCartney’s 20th solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane – a The Rest is History podcast recorded at Abbey Road, interviews galore, and the expectation of an octogenarian McCartney delving into the deeper end of his past (almost a decade after he released Memory Almost Full).Thus the Dungeon Lane of the title – a local boyhood hangout for McCartney, a kind of second-tier Penny Lane. Recorded between tours over a period of five years, the 14-song album is packed with tunes and melodies brought together in a busy rush of songs Read more ...