pop music
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... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: William Onyeabor, Tears For FearsSunday, 03 November 2013
William Onyeabor: World Psychedelic Classics 5 – Who is William Onyeabor?A primitive drum machine rattles out a Latin rhythm. Keyboards begin. The gaps between the repetitive spirals of notes are plugged by blobs of fat synth. A disembodied... Read more... |
CD: Avril Lavigne - Avril LavigneSaturday, 02 November 2013
It’s taken Avril Lavigne more than a decade to release a self-titled album, but in some ways it’s appropriate: after all, the Canadian singer’s best music still sounds exactly like what she was releasing as a teenager. The difference is that when... Read more... |
Just in From Scandinavia: Nordic Music Round-Up 9Monday, 28 October 2013
Norway is currently attracting an uncommon degree of attention due to the absurd “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)” by Ylvis, the comedy duo Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker. The country’s mainstream music hasn’t been this newsworthy since a-ha conquered... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Oh Yes We Can Love - A History of Glam RockSunday, 27 October 2013
Various Artists: Oh Yes We Can Love – A History of Glam Rock Despite Marc Bolan fashioning glam rock’s starting block in 1971 with T. Rex’s “Hot Love”, 2013 has been the year when pop's era of androgyny, inappropriate and shiny trousers, and... Read more... |
CD: Union J - Union JThursday, 24 October 2013
Union J are a boy band consisting of George Shelley, Josh Cuthbert, JJ Hamblett and Jaymi Hensley. They finished fourth in last year’s X Factor.In November 2012, after being voted off the talent contest, teen competitor Ella Henderson revealed to... Read more... |
CD: The Saturdays - Living for the WeekendSaturday, 19 October 2013
It’s official. The Saturdays are the nation’s number one girl group. Well, these days they’re more of a yummy mummy collective, with two of their members having recently popped out sprogs. Since Girls Aloud bowed out last year amid the usual round... Read more... |
The One and Only Cilla Black, ITVThursday, 17 October 2013
“I hate surprises!” joked Cilla Black, for 20 years host of the family reunion show Surprise, Surprise, in ITV’s toothsome tribute to her 50 years in showbusiness. She needn’t have worried, for there were no shocks in this clean-heeled gallop... Read more... |
Alison Moyet, Royal Festival HallWednesday, 16 October 2013
You couldn’t help marvelling at how good Alison Moyet looked. It wasn’t just her dramatically slimmed-down physique, but also the sense of her being truly comfortable in her own skin. Partly, that may have just been a result of an increasingly... Read more... |
Extract: George Harrison - Behind the Locked DoorSaturday, 12 October 2013
Following the completion of the White Album, and the conclusion of recording sessions in Los Angeles with new Apple signing Jackie Lomax, in late November 1968 George Harrison and his wife Pattie Boyd departed for Woodstock in upstate New York. They... Read more... |
CD: Miley Cyrus - BangerzFriday, 04 October 2013
I am increasingly finding it almost impossible to express just how bored I am by Miley Cyrus. I mean, seriously, are we really in such a fix that this guff is a serious talking point? A second-generation celebrity and former child star seems to be... Read more... |
CD: Sub Focus - TorusMonday, 30 September 2013
When drum'n'bass emerged from hardcore rave's interactions with London's pirate radio culture, 20-odd years ago, it created some of the most radical grassroots music ever to come out of the British Isles. It came in such a white heat explosion of... Read more... |
