An extraordinary, brilliant spectacle: Taylor Swift at Wembley Stadium reviewed
Imagine living Taylor Swift’s life. She has been staggeringly, life-dominatingly famous since she was 17. Not for a single moment…
‘I think The Kinks could have found a better frontman’: Ray Davies interviewed
‘I like your shirt today,’ Sir Ray Davies says to the waiter who brings his glass of water to the…
Viv Albertine of the Slits on anger, honesty and being an arsey feminist
Viv Albertine, by her own admission, hurls stuff at misbehaving audiences. Specifically, when the rage descends, any nearby full cup…
How the Moody Blues only became good once they realised they were crap
Rarely has one irate punter so affected a band’s trajectory. Without the anger of the man who went to see…
Pete Waterman on hits, HS2 and gay clubbing
One of the members of the government’s HS2 Growth Taskforce is remembering the first time he went to a gay…
Baxter Dury on London going to the dogs, his acclaimed new album and his dad
In the last week of October, the middle-aged Baxter Dury and the boy Baxter Dury were brought together. The 45-year-old…
Sound and vision
To get a reminder of how strange the 1970s were, there’s no need to plough through lengthy social and political…
Northern rock
A fortnight ago, the debut album by a young British guitar band entered the chart at No. 6. You might…
His dark materials
Randy Newman is already struggling to keep up with himself. His dazzling new album, Dark Matter, was written before the…
His dark materials
Randy Newman is already struggling to keep up with himself. His dazzling new album, Dark Matter, was written before the…
A genuine oddity
The most compelling pop singers in music right now — at least in the branch where pop singers still play…
Back to the future
As Kraftwerk took their 3D show around Britain last week, a document from 2013 surfaced online, purporting to be their…
Glamming it up
Late on the Friday afternoon of The Great Escape — the annual three-day event for which the London music industry…
The rise of toytown pop
Pop’s counterfactuals tend to be built on questioning mortality: what if Jimi Hendrix had lived? Or Buddy Holly? Rarely does…
