Music

The dazzling, devious, doomed sound of James Booker

10 October 2020 9:00 am

Dr John called James Booker ‘the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced’. Booker died…

The joy of an illegal rave

22 August 2020 9:00 am

Every time I read that Britain’s anti-coronavirus measures are being jeopardised by a ‘small minority of senseless individuals’ holding illegal…

Young people have never paid attention to the BBC

25 July 2020 9:00 am

In January, the director-general of the BBC, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, announced that the corporation intended to shift away from…

The problem with livestreaming heavy metal? No moshpits

25 July 2020 9:00 am

There was only so long anyone could put up with the live musical performances of the early days of lockdown:…

SOS: Save our singers

11 July 2020 9:00 am

‘Musician’ is how I described myself to the nice Latvian lady interviewing me the other week for an ONS survey…

The festivalisation of TV

27 June 2020 9:00 am

Televising Glastonbury has changed the festival, and in turn transformed television, says Graeme Thomson

The power of cheap music: pop podcast round-up

13 June 2020 9:00 am

Noël Coward was so right that his words have become a cliché: it is indeed extraordinary how potent cheap music…

Privatisation is the best option for the South Bank Centre

6 June 2020 9:00 am

I must have written about this subject 100 times in 30 years and I’m still having to restate the bloody…

Dion, one of the last living links to the earliest days of rock ’n’ roll

30 May 2020 9:00 am

He toured with Little Richard, sang with Van Morrison, inspired the Beatles and Paul Simon. Graeme Thomson talks to Dion, one of the last living links to the early days of street-corner rock ’n’ roll

One of the more disturbing films I’ve seen: Arena’s The Changin’ Times of Ike White reviewed

23 May 2020 9:00 am

Arena: The Changin’ Times of Ike White (Monday) had an extraordinary story to tell — but one that, halfway through…

Joyous and very, very funny: Beastie Boys Story reviewed

16 May 2020 9:00 am

The music of the Beastie Boys was entirely an expression of their personalities, a chance to delightedly splurge out on…

You’re not special – just ask Google

16 May 2020 9:00 am

My research assistant, John Steele, is also a songwriter. A friend emailed him with the lyrics of a Fleetwood Mac…

Beautiful voice, pretentious album: Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters reviewed

9 May 2020 9:00 am

Grade: C+ Where did they all come from, the quirky yet meaningful rock chicks who don’t have a decent song…

From Middlemarch to Mickey Mouse: a short history of The Spectator’s books and arts pages

24 April 2020 11:00 pm

The Spectator arts and books pages have spent 10,000 issues identifying the dominant cultural phenomena of the day and being difficult about them, says Richard Bratby

The musical benefits of not playing live

18 April 2020 9:00 am

Many performers hated playing live. But freed from the stage they often made their best and wildest work, argues Graeme Thomson

Haunting and beautiful: Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus’s Songs of Yearning reviewed

11 April 2020 9:00 am

Grade: A It has taken 33 years — during which time this decidedly strange Liverpool collective have put out only…

Welder, banjo player, comedian, actor, and now artist – Billy Connolly interviewed

11 April 2020 9:00 am

William Cook talks to Billy Connolly – welder, banjo player, comedian, actor, and now artist – about growing up in Glasgow, ditching the mike stand and living with Parkinson’s

Bleak humour, resourcefulness and wit: Budapest Festival Orchestra’s Quarantine Soirées reviewed

28 March 2020 9:00 am

There’s a certain merit in bluntness. ‘Quarantine Soirées’ was what the Budapest Festival Orchestra called its response to the crisis,…

Beethoven wasn’t just history’s greatest composer but also one of its greatest human beings

11 January 2020 9:00 am

Ludwig van Beethoven isn’t just my favourite composer: he’s my household god. There’s a bust of him on my mantelpiece.…

Rap that feels like a sociology lecture: Loyle Carner at Alexandra Palace reviewed

30 November 2019 9:00 am

A few years ago, I asked the young American soul singer Leon Bridges — a latter-day Sam Cooke, with the…

Fascinating and compelling: Bruce Hornsby at Shepherd’s Bush Empire reviewed

16 November 2019 9:00 am

In the unlikely event that Bruce Hornsby and Morten Harket, A-ha’s singer, ended up featuring in the Daily Mail for,…

The open-hearted loveliness of Hot Chip

9 November 2019 9:00 am

Squeeze and Hot Chip are both great British pop groups. But they never defined a scene. Their ambitions extended further…

Woke slogans welded to incompetent grunge: Neil Young’s Colorado reviewed

9 November 2019 9:00 am

Grade: B- Horribly woke boilerplate slogans welded inexpertly to the usual incompetent Crazy Horse grunge. Young and his pick-up band…

‘The only place I can’t get my plays on is Britain’: Sir Peter Brook interviewed

2 November 2019 9:00 am

‘Everyone of us knows we deserve to be punished,’ says the frail old man before me in a hotel café.…

I was born to be on this Bob Dylan podcast, says Geoff Dyer

12 October 2019 9:00 am

Podcasts will soon be like porn. Every interest, desire or idle flicker of curiosity will have been anticipated and catered…