pop
Framing Britney Spears, Sky Documentaries review - the rollercoaster ride of the former teen iconThursday, 24 June 2021She became one of the most successful pop stars in history, but Britney Spears has also become a paradigm of the horrors and pitfalls of life in the white heat of showbusiness. This new documentary by Samantha Stark (made by the New York Times)... Read more... |
Album: Angélique Kidjo - Mother NatureMonday, 21 June 2021Hailing from Benin and based in Paris since she was 23, Angélique Kidjo can sing in five languages, has collaborated with an A-list festival line-up of global stars ranging from Alicia Keys and Philip Glass to Herbie Hancock and Peter Gabriel... Read more... |
Album: Kings of Convenience - Peace or LoveSaturday, 19 June 2021The first release that brought folk-pop duo Kings of Convenience to prominence outside of their native Norway was their Live in a Room EP, released in 2000. Recorded, as the title suggests, with a minimum of fuss, the cuts include pre-song count-ins... Read more... |
Album: Maroon 5 - JordiFriday, 11 June 2021Well this is bleak. Seven studio albums, three live albums, two compilation albums, one remix album, three EPs, 33 singles, 23 music videos, 120 million sales and streams well into the tens of billions seem to have completely erased what personality... Read more... |
Album: Dinosaur Jr - Sweep It Into SpaceWednesday, 21 April 2021When Laurence Binyon wrote: “Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn…” he was, of course, talking about the fallen soldiers of World War One, not Amherst’s premier hardcore grunge punks. However, on hearing Sweep It... Read more... |
Album: Raf Rundell - O.M. DaysThursday, 08 April 2021The career of Raf Rundell has had one of the most satisfying trajectories of any in UK music – a steady process of self-realisation, from record label staff via DJing and artist management, through being a serial studio collaborator, to becoming a... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Daryl HallMonday, 08 March 2021Writing something people want to stream one billion times is inconceivable for most of us. But then, most of us aren't Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Daryl Hall. Alongside John Oates, he is behind some of the greatest pop songs of all time: "Maneater... Read more... |
Album: Genesis Owusu - Smiling With No TeethSaturday, 06 March 2021The debut album by Australian-Ghanaian artist Genesis Owusu is so musically restless it’s exhilarating. What’s clear is this guy doesn’t want to be placed in a box, marked hip hop or anything else. Over a wild variety of music, he adopts multiple... Read more... |
Album: Zara Larsson - Poster GirlThursday, 04 March 2021Best known for winning Sweden's version of Got Talent, at the tender age of 10, Zara Larsson is a shining example of a prodigious young female talent being groomed by the music industry into the perfect pop icon.Her third album Poster Girl is... Read more... |
Album: Kings of Leon - When You See YourselfThursday, 04 March 2021Over the course of seven albums and nearly two decades, Kings of Leon have gone from spiky, short bursts of adrenaline-fuelled garage rock to swollen stadium pomp, full of big builds and grandiose gestures. Following on from 2016’s WALLS (We Are All... Read more... |
Disc of the Day 10th Anniversary: the level playing fieldFriday, 19 February 2021Theartsdesk is a labour of love. Bloody-mindedly run as a co-operative of journalists from the beginning, our obsession with maintaining a daily-updated platform for good culture writing has caused a good few grey and lost hairs over the years. But... Read more... |
Album: Mathieu Boogaerts - En AnglaisThursday, 18 February 2021Mathieu Boogaerts has been recording since the mid 1990s, emerging from the nouvelle chanson scene in Paris, a chansonnier who’s performed at the likes of Cafe Oto over here, while establishing himself as a star turn on the Tôt ou Tard label in... Read more... |