Pop
Off-the-peg ire
Over the decades, Van Morrison’s role within the tower of song has shifted from chief visionary officer to head of…
Sandy psychedelia
The other week someone posted on Twitter a link to a YouTube clip titled ‘Family Lotus and D.J. Cookin’ at…
Women’s troubles
It has never been easy for women in the music industry. Once upon a time the evidence was largely anecdotal.…
Nowt so great as folk
Has any musical moment extended its tendrils in so many unexpected directions as the English folk revival of the mid-1960s?…
Mainlining sunshine
One thing about a streamed festival is that the toilets are better than at the real thing. The other thing,…
Blasts from the past
One of the unforeseen consequences of the rise of streaming was a change in the very structure of the pop…
In league with the devil
The most headline-grabbing of these three pop docs was Framing Britney Spears, part of the New York Times Presents documentary…
Bands on the run
Twitter was awash with mockery last week, after Adam Levine, the singer of the American group Maroon 5, was interviewed…
Rock and awe
You very possibly know the music of the Glaswegian band Mogwai, even if you don’t think you do. You might…
When music was more than a click away
In Teenage Superstars, a long and slightly exhausting documentary about the Scottish indie scene of the 1980s and ’90s, there…
Ordinary but extraordinary
How hard must it be to make music that sounds like no one else? And how unrewarding, often, as well?…
Simply divine
Three shows in a week! Why, it was just like the first week of March. There was, however, little of…
Potted herring and Lester Piggott
Q: ‘How would you define transcendence?’ A: ‘Well, how would you define it?’ I interviewed Van Morrison last year. (I’m…
Greatness and idiocy
Is the world ready for the return of live rock music? On the evidence of the first gig in London…
I’m missing moshpits
There was only so long anyone could put up with the live musical performances of the early days of lockdown:…
Dysfunctional music by dysfunctional people
A star is born, but instead of emerging into the world beaming for the cameras, he spits and snarls and…
The Peter Cook of pop
In 1992 Prince released a single called ‘My Name Is Prince’. On first hearing it seemed appropriately regal. Cocky, even.…
Beasties and besties
The music of the Beastie Boys was entirely an expression of their personalities, a chance to delightedly splurge out on…
Hopping mad
The ghost of Samuel Beckett oversaw the Hip Hop Loves NY livestream last Thursday night. Time and time again its…
A kind of magic
You have to admire the spirit of the organisers of last weekend’s One World: Together at Home concert. To put…
The fascinating Ms Swift
There had been some question about whether Taylor Swift’s Netflix special would actually appear. Last year it seemed that the…
The great pretenders
The accepted line about Bryan Ferry is that his is one of the greatest reinventions in English pop culture: Peter…
Waking the dead
‘No matter what they take from me,’ sang Whitney Houston towards the end of a peculiar evening in Hammersmith, ‘they…
Material world
You might have thought Madonna was not a singer but a professional footballer judging by the talk before she took…
Purified scarification
Every development in heavy music is derided by mainstream critics. When Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin emerged in the late…
