Roundhouse
The problem with Paul McCartney is he wrote too many good songs
Don Bradman, the greatest cricketer of all time, was once asked if he reckoned he could have maintained his batting…
Amazing Grace
Some artists need flash bombs to make an impression on stage. Some need giant screens. Some need to run around…
Oops! He did it again
Every so often, Jason Pierce drifts into focus. It happened at the end of the 1980s, when his then group…
The perfect pop star
Dua Lipa’s second album, Future Nostalgia, was released at the least promising moment possible: 27 March 2020, the day after…
Soul searching
No musician ever went bust overestimating the public desire to hear classic soul. Slapping on a Motown backbeat has revived…
Hot metal and methadrine
They may no longer get many teenagers at their shows spending all their money on merchandise, then throwing up on…
A Saturday-night variety show: Take That at the O2 reviewed
Being old is big business in live music nowadays, in a way it wasn’t even 25 years ago. When Take…
Not vintage Mariinsky
Not really a vintage Mariinsky season — an odd choice of repertoire and some hit-and-miss male casting — but the…
War on want
Radiohead have been at the top of the musical tree for so long now that it’s easy to forget what…
Unforgettable fire
How much of a compromise does a fashionable choreographer loved by all have to make with his paymasters? When he’s…
To hell and back
What a week to stage an opera about art’s power to challenge institutional authority, oppression — even death itself. Orfeo’s…
