pop music
Storyville - Muscle Shoals: the Greatest Recording Studio in the World, BBC FourSaturday, 08 March 2014
Back in the days before you could bash together an album on a phone, recording used to involve a group of musicians playing together in the same room. Finding the perfect studio ambience and acoustic was 90 per cent of the battle, and many a veteran... Read more... |
CD: Paloma Faith - A Perfect ContradictionSaturday, 08 March 2014
For better or worse, it’s not enough these days to be a perfectly serviceable pop singer. With Saturday night TV shows churning them out by the dozen, you need more than an attractive face and an ability to hit the right notes to stand out. With her... Read more... |
Bastille, Alexandra PalaceFriday, 07 March 2014
Bastille didn’t so much raise the roof at Alexandra Palace last night, as ask it politely if it wouldn’t mind elevating itself a touch. Their gentleness belies their success over the past year, since their first album, Bad Blood, was released. The... Read more... |
Nashville, Series 2, More4Friday, 07 February 2014
Since Nashville and country music are one giant soap opera, it's amazing nobody turned Tennessee's Music City into a TV series before. No matter. Here we are with series two, and it's as deliriously cheesy and melodramatic as ever.The first series... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Small FacesSunday, 19 January 2014
Small Faces: Here Comes the Nice - The Immediate YearsWhen theartsdesk last covered Small Faces’ reissues in May 2012, the review concluded “the Deluxe Editions are probably (who knows what might lurk in obscure archives?) the last word on... Read more... |
Extract: Cher - Strong EnoughWednesday, 15 January 2014
Cher was the multi-platform performer of her day, a singer, TV personality, cabaret artist, and Oscar-winning actress. She came up as the initially teenage half of pop duo Sonny & Cher (pictured below left) in the mid-Sixties with her partner (... Read more... |
The Voice, Series 3, BBC OneSunday, 12 January 2014
If you’re a channel trying to prove that there is life in a tired old format, it’s hard to think of a more effective way than signing up Kylie Minogue. It’s tough for a telly talent show to make an impact in those early weeks, before the audience... Read more... |
Boyzone at 20: No Matter What, ITV1Friday, 13 December 2013
In her role as host of this 20th-anniversary celebration, Dannii Minogue was not afraid to ask the tough questions that fans of Ireland’s greatest - or possibly other greatest - boy band wanted to know. “It’s the elephant in the room,” admitted... Read more... |
CD: Kelly Clarkson - Wrapped in RedSaturday, 07 December 2013
This year, even legendary punk rockers Bad Religion released a Christmas-themed album - as if to underline that, for just about any recording artist, it’s not a matter of "if" but of "when". Christmas Songs only shares one track with Kelly Clarkson’... Read more... |
CD: Blood Orange - Cupid DeluxeWednesday, 13 November 2013
Dev Hynes's path of artistic development is one of the most pleasing in 21st century music. The flamboyant black indie-kid risking life and limb to ride the local buses growing up in Hackney, who channeled his frustration at the lack of a place for... Read more... |
Analogue - Rock Portraits by Tom Sheehan, Lomography Gallery Store EastWednesday, 13 November 2013
I've known rock photographer Tom Sheehan since we worked together at the Melody Maker in the 1980s, but even I didn't know that his stellar career stretches back "almost 40 years", or so it says in the programme notes for his new exhibition,... Read more... |
Mystery Dance: On filming Elvis CostelloWednesday, 06 November 2013
Making a film about an artist with the phenomenal range and creative effervescence of someone like Elvis Costello was never going to be easy. There have been over 30 albums since he started out in 1977, hundreds of songs, many of which are as... Read more... |
