pop music
Liz Thomson
Rick Rubin has revivified many late-career musicians, most notably Johnny Cash, whose quartet of American Recordings achieved both universal praise and commercial success. Twenty years ago, he worked with Neil Diamond, applying his trademark unplugged approach to Diamond’s distinctive spregesang style. The result, 12 Songs (2005), was one of the singer's most successful studio recordings, charting at #4 on Billboard. James Bassett of PopMatters considered it “an album of rare beauty, grace, and eloquence that captures Diamond in all his plain-spoken and big-hearted glory.” Home Before Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Cast your mind back to the release of “Never Be The Same Again” (1999), which seemed to come out of nowhere and turned Sporty Spice’s image on its head. For the least pushy of the fabulous five, it was something of a turn up for the books. And now, at the ripe old age of 52 (whipper-snapper), she’s pulled off what could be considered another volte face.Ask me to name the female artist with the most songs at number 1 in the UK chart’s history and I wouldn’t have plumped for Ms Melanie. But that’s what the blurb claims, alongside this mega fact: “she is he only female performer to top the Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
In just over three years Olivia Dean has gone from taking the stage at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow to selling out two nights at the city’s largest venue. Such a leap up in surroundings in a short space of time did not seem to faze Dean though, the 27-year-old Londoner possessing both a honeyed voice and a Disney Princess smile onstage. She was confident enough, in fact, to drop in a cover of the classic “Movin On Up” late on. It was a risky choice that did not totally work, but you could not fault the boldness of it, and you can understand why she has reason to feel such Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Along with Harry Styles, Zayn is one of the stars to emerge from the immensely successful boy-band One Direction. Now no longer a mere "boy", he’s part of a mainstream in which music is carefully fashioned to gleam, the product of artisans of the kind of pop that reaches the widest possible audience – uncannily astute talent-spotters such as Simon Cowell and super-producers that hold the keys to dressing the songs up with catchy hooks, appealing riffs and contagious rhythms. Pop is now an industrialised hit-machine, with a seemingly endless supply of singer and songwriters trained in Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Do You Believe in Magic.” “You Didn't Have to be so Nice”. “Daydream.” “Did You Ever Have to Make up Your Mind?” “Summer in the City.” “Rain on the Roof.” “Nashville Cats.”The first seven singles by The Lovin’ Spoonful are all great, really great, and all were hits. Top Ten in the band’s US home. International hits too. Arriving in a torrent over July 1965 to November 1966, they help define Steve Boone, Joe Butler, John Sebastian, and Zal Yanovsky as integral to America’s riposte to the Beatles-kindled British Invasion of the US charts. The Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man” had been released in Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The pairing of Chemical Brother Tom Rowlands and Norwegian pop star Aurora sounds interesting but not, on paper, like the formula for something extraordinary. Tomora’s debut album kicks such presumptions to the kerbside. It feels like a project they both urgently need, a vital escape from their “day jobs” which they dive into with effervescent giddiness, whether embracing the android-ethereal or the thunderously bangin’.The Chemical Brothers’ last two albums have showcased a unit who, three decades into their ravey career, are still alive to the possibilities of electronic music, to pushing Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Lincolnshire singer Holly Humberstone, now London-based, was awarded the Brit for Rising Star in 2022. A UK Top 5 album followed, Paint My Bedroom Black. But her second album, Cruel World, will showcase what long-term following she’s developed, via her support slots with Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo and Sam Fender. Well, things don’t go anywhere too unexpected but, by the same token, she knows her way around a honeyed hook.Humberstone is, at her best, a fine lyricist, telling stories, usually of angsty, youthful love, longing and break-up, with an evocative literate snappiness. “I think I Read more ...
Ellie Roberts
Johnny Franck’s energy is palpable with the latest Bilmuri instalment, his signature comedic country metalcore style is as honed as ever and Kinda Hard really just sounds like it was a lot of fun to make. Even with the genre blending, this album falls very much under the pop punk umbrella, with humour through emotion being at the forefront of its style. It’s not hard to see why fans of this trope enjoy Bilmuri, even if the moment has slightly passed. Maybe it’s because the world felt lighter, because the genre was newer, or because we were younger, but the notion of comedy through Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The opening track is Hoyt Axton’s “Evangelina.” After first appearing on the 1976 album Fearless it was re-recorded and issued as a flop UK single in July 1980. The new version had also been an OK-selling US single in 1980. The reason this deeply atmospheric, velvety, yearning country marvel had UK sales potential after it came out on minor-league British imprint Young Blood was due to radio play: radio play on the BBC’s Radio 2.“Evangelina” illustrates exactly what Wednesday Morning 6AM - Radio Hits From The Small Hours 1970-1983 is about: the musical continuum defined by a maverick aspect Read more ...
Joe Muggs
theartsdesk’s Thomas H Green has lately been noting a “mellow production flatness” in modern pop and he’s really nailed a ubiquitous tendency there. The pendulum has definitely swung a long way back from the “loudness wars” of the era that trap and EDM crashed in and everything was amped up and ramped up as if to fight for attention in a crowded mall. One might trace the global counter tendency back to the chillwave of the Noughties, and its mainstreaming to the breakthrough of Tame Impala a decade ago, ushering in era where (brat being the exception that proves the rule) everyone from SZA to Read more ...
Joe Muggs
In 1988, in The Manual: How to Have a Number 1 The Easy Way, Bill Drummond wrote: “We await the day with relish that somebody dares to make a dance record that consists of nothing more than an electronically programmed bass drum beat that continues playing the fours monotonously for eight minutes. Then, when somebody else brings one out using exactly the same bass drum sound and at the same beats per minute (B.P.M.), we will all be able to tell which is the best, which inspires the dance floor to fill the fastest, which has the most sex and the most soul.”It looks like a reductio ad absurdum Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although it was released as a single in November 1968, The Goodees’ “Condition Red” could – apart from a specific quirk – have been issued four years earlier, in the wake of The Shangri-Las’ “Leader of the Pack” hitting the US charts. Despite going on sale in the hippie, back-to-the-roots, heavier-than-heavy, burgeoning-bubblegum era, “Condition Red” is so in sync with “Leader of the Pack,” it can pass for a follow-up.However, the lyrics – that specific quirk – of “Condition Red,” while in line with the Shangri-Las’ tale of the demise of a ruff-’n’-tuff rebel boy after a vehicular mishap, are Read more ...