Pop
Cheap thrills
Noël Coward was so right that his words have become a cliché: it is indeed extraordinary how potent cheap music…
A sting in the tale
Did the US secretly write a power ballad in order to bring down the Soviet Union? That’s the question behind…
The 1975: Notes on a Conditional Form
Grade: B+ Just what you wanted. An opening track that matches banal piano noodling to an address by Greta Thunberg.…
Beasties and besties
The music of the Beastie Boys was entirely an expression of their personalities, a chance to delightedly splurge out on…
Fiona Apple: Fetch the Bolt Cutters
Grade: C+ Where did they all come from, the quirky yet meaningful rock chicks who don’t have a decent song…
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…
Public enemy
Many performers hated playing live. But freed from the stage they often made their best and wildest work, argues Graeme Thomson
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…
Waking the dead
‘No matter what they take from me,’ sang Whitney Houston towards the end of a peculiar evening in Hammersmith, ‘they…
Green Day: Father of All…
Grade: B+ It is an eternal mystery to me why Britain has never had much time for power pop, seeing…
Grimes: Miss Anthropocene
Grade: B The old axiom no longer applies. In modern popular music, it is possible not only to gild a…
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…
New faces
Come January, when the proper pop stars are all in the gym working off the pounds before they emerge, blinking……
A son-et-lumière spectacular: The Chemical Brothers at the O2 Arena reviewed
How does one account for the phenomenon that is the Chemical Brothers, a quarter of a century on from their…
Rap that feels like a sociology lecture: Loyle Carner at Alexandra Palace reviewed
A few years ago, I asked the young American soul singer Leon Bridges — a latter-day Sam Cooke, with the…
Range and power – and amazingly she sang all her songs: Christina Aguilera at Wembley reviewed
In every respect bar its austere pews, the Union Chapel is one of the best venues in London: beautiful and…
Fascinating and compelling: Bruce Hornsby at Shepherd’s Bush Empire reviewed
In the unlikely event that Bruce Hornsby and Morten Harket, A-ha’s singer, ended up featuring in the Daily Mail for,…
Mick Hucknall on women, rejection and cultural appropriation
What makes someone become a pop star? Sometimes, it’s true, pop stardom arrives by accident, and its recipient responds not…
The open-hearted loveliness of Hot Chip
Squeeze and Hot Chip are both great British pop groups. But they never defined a scene. Their ambitions extended further…
At their best the Psychedelic Furs are fantastic
It’s amazing what the movies can do. In 1986, the John Hughes teen flick Pretty in Pink — the one…
An eight-year-old’s dream: Muse at the O2 reviewed
‘Butterflies and Hurricanes’ by Muse was on heavy rotation on MTV at a time, 15 years ago, when my infant…
Great title – shame about the songs: Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell reviewed
Grade: B+ Get the razor blades out, Ms Misery is back. Only the truly affluent can immerse themselves in such…
Reliably odd but the deranged proggery grates: King’s Mouth by The Flaming Lips reviewed
Grade: B- So a queen dies as her giant baby is being born. The baby grows very big indeed and…
