albums
The ethics of posthumous pop albums
‘At the record company meeting/ On their hands – at last! – a dead star!’ Back when Morrissey was more…
Too bombastic to be country music: Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion reviewed
Grade: B Country music has become the acceptable route through which American pop stars resuscitate their floundering careers: sales are…
Jack White’s new album will be of close interest to Led Zeppelin’s legal team
The ploy of releasing an album without any advance warning comes into play when an artist feels they are being…
Camila Cabello’s new album presents an existential threat to songwriting
It is always interesting to observe the ways in which pop stars try to negotiate first growing up, and then…
The weird, hypnotic world of Willie Nelson
Many years ago, I wrote a book about Willie Nelson. At its conclusion, I reached for an elegiac, valedictory tone.…
Taylor Swift’s new album is exhausting
How to explain the supercharged star power of Taylor Swift? An undeniably gifted artist, Swift’s albums 1989, Folklore and Evermore,…
Can everyone please shut up about Maria Callas?
Rupert Christiansen on the cult of Callas
The case against re-recording albums
In 2012, Jeff Lynne released Mr Blue Sky: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra. Except it wasn’t. It was…
Being Dead: When Horses Would Run
Grade: A– The point of a sudden, abrupt change in the time signature and instrumentation of a song is to…
Heaven knows they’re miserable now
Bands that have hung around, or gone away and come back again, occupy an increasingly sizeable percentage of pop’s bandwidth.…
Nepo daddies
Rob Grant releases his debut album, Lost at Sea, this week. A 69-year-old millionaire and former ad man, furniture exec…
Back to black
Michael Hann on the most enduring of pop subcultures
Sad-face emoji
Whether by accident or design, the mathematical theme of Ed Sheeran’s previous album titles (+, ×, ÷ and = respectively)…
