Music news

• 12 Times Geordie Shore Was Way More Intellectual Than Actual School

  17-02-2017 12:58
  
  *Probs don't revise off these notes though eh?
  
  Read more

• ‘We handed out raw fish to clubbers’: the mind-bending acid house tour of London

  30-04-2024 17:10 via theguardian.com
  
  George Georgiou gave British rave culture its smiley face. Now he’s placing plaques where hardcore clubbers sweated till dawn. Our writer joins the designer – and DJs Danny Rampling and Nicky Holloway – on a face-melting trip‘I remember this street being covered with hundreds of these all over the floor,” says George Georgiou, handing me an original smiley-face flyer he designed for the acid house club night Shoom. “I wish I’d picked them up because now
  
  Read more

• ‘I wasn’t worried about what gringos wanted!’ Ludmilla, Brazil’s next pop superstar

  30-04-2024 16:45 via theguardian.com
  
  Already the most listened-to Black artist in Brazil and a favourite of Beyoncé, Ludmilla has a whole new audience after her viral Coachella show. She discusses the racism and homophobia she’s had to face getting this farIn between her two-weekend debut at Coachella earlier this month, while the first concert was going viral, the Brazilian singer Ludmilla did business meetings, spent a day in Miami and kicked off new music projects. This interview took place on her way back from a sh
  
  Read more

• MC Conrad, acclaimed drum’n’bass vocalist, dies aged 52

  30-04-2024 16:06 via theguardian.com
  
  Rapper and singer was acclaimed for partnership with producer LTJ Bukem, and went on to become a producer and label head in his own rightMC Conrad, the vocalist who helped broaden and deepen the scope for jungle and drum’n’bass during the 1990s and beyond, has died aged 52. The news was confirmed by his agency Clinic Talent, who paid tribute saying: “One of the most recognisable and best-loved voices in D&B, he leaves behind him an unmatched legacy.”No cause of death
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• ‘Bowie told me it’s OK to be messy’: the starry life and strife of singer-songwriter Lawrence Rothman

  30-04-2024 12:55 via theguardian.com
  
  They’ve played with everyone from Lucinda Williams to a pre-fame Billie Eilish. Now, on their intensely personal new album, they confront the trauma of being pistol-whipped and dealing with an eating disorderLawrence Rothman has lived a lot of lives: in the early aughts, they performed under the name Lillian Berlin in the ultra-political hard rock band Living Things. They’ve been a model, posing with Kate Moss in a 2008 Roberto Cavalli ad; and with their wife, Floria Sigismondi, dire
  
  Read more

• Tell us your experiences of making a living from music

  30-04-2024 12:22 via theguardian.com
  
  We would like to hear from professional musicians about how they make a living from their work and the obstacles they faceMusicians playing smaller venues are facing low fees, high costs, and frequent losses. We would like to hear from professional musicians of all levels about how they make a living from their work and the obstacles they face.Have you experienced issues with the costs of playing live or recording? Have you found a way to get around it? Tell us all about it below. Continue readi
  
  Read more

• Everyone Knows That: internet music mystery solved via 1986 adult movie

  29-04-2024 12:55 via theguardian.com
  
  The search for song that has consumed thousands of Reddit users is over, with discovery that it was written for pornographic filmIt’s a musical mystery that has been confounding the internet for years. But an ultra-catchy 80s-sounding song that seemingly no one could identify has finally been tracked down – in a 1986 adult movie.A snippet of the song, known as Everyone Knows That – a low-quality, warped recording that nevertheless showed off the song’s huge pop appeal &nd
  
  Read more

• ‘Scalding emotional intensity’: Geoff Dyer on the spiritual power of saxophonist Zoh Amba

  29-04-2024 11:46 via theguardian.com
  
  Still only 23, the US saxophonist is channelling the free jazz pioneered by Albert Ayler in the 60s – and making hugely profound, wildly uplifting music Interviewed many years after the experience, Don Cherry said he would “never forget” the first time he heard the tenor saxophonist Albert Ayler. That was in Copenhagen in 1963.I’ll never forget the time I first heard Zoh Amba, last March, at the Big Ears festival in Knoxville, Tennessee. A wealth of competing options at t
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Mitski review – unusual, enigmatic and utterly compelling

  28-04-2024 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Usher Hall, Edinburgh
  The indie artist deploys her songs like controlled explosions as she turns the stage into a cabaret, a circus, a cageA curtain hangs centre stage, as if set for a magician’s disappearing act. Mitski, barely visible in a black dress and tights, gazes at it longingly before ducking behind it. Her silhouette is thrown on to the drapes, frozen like a shadow puppet, as she opens with Everyone, a muted track which speaks, cryptically, about the American artist’s relat
  
  Read more

• Billy Bragg: ‘There’s nothing like going out there singing your truth. That ain’t changed’

  28-04-2024 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The singer-songwriter’s brand of stubborn protest songs with a strain of tenderness has kept him relevant for 40 years. Here he talks about why he’s fighting for trans rights, his late-night tweeting habit and his forthcoming tour – with his sonRecently, Billy Bragg showed his two young granddaughters a little promo film he put together celebrating his 40 years of making records. The girls were nonplussed by the early scenes on picket lines and spiky festival stages, but toward
  
  Read more

• T Bone Burnett: The Other Side review – a radiant meditation

  27-04-2024 17:00 via theguardian.com
  
  (Verve Forecast)
  Inspired by new guitars, and with guest spots from Roseanne Cash and more, the US producer-musician contemplates love and mortalityAt 76, Joseph Henry “T Bone” Burnett is revered as a godfather of the Americana revival, architect of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack and producer of Gillian Welch and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss among many others. The Other Side is his first solo album in almost two decades, a seemingly simple 12-track set that arrived only
  
  Read more

• Rick Astley: ‘I’m boring away from the spotlight – that’s why my life works’

  27-04-2024 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The singer, 58, on staying sane, why he isn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty and how the internet gave his most famous song a new lease of lifeBeing 10 years younger than my older siblings meant I was bombarded with music from a young age. My older sister, Jane, and brother, John, played records relentlessly. My sister was obsessed with Motown, but also prog rock. The first band I ever saw live was Supertramp.My dad ran a little garden centre and it made me realise that if you run your
  
  Read more

• Paraorchestra: Death Songbook live review – bittersweet ballads with Brett Anderson and friends

  27-04-2024 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Roundhouse, London
  Charles Hazlewood’s boundary-breaking ensemble guide the Suede singer and special guests through an elegiac evening grown out of the pandemicDressed all in black, Brett Anderson is channelling the elliptical yearning of Echo and the Bunnymen’s 1984 song The Killing Moon. To his left, Paraorchestra percussionist Harriet Riley conjures a moody ache out of double-bowed vibraphone keys. Surfing atop currents of orchestral strings are flutes, whose trilling potential is
  
  Read more

• T’Pau’s Carol Decker looks back: ‘We went ballistic when we got to No 1. Our screaming annoyed Bryan Adams’

  27-04-2024 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The lead singer on hitting it big, how things fell apart, and the joy of the 1980s revivalBorn in Liverpool in 1957, Carol Decker is the lead singer of T’Pau. She was fronting Shropshire band the Lazers when she met BT engineer and musician Ronnie Rogers, with whom she would go on to form T’Pau. Together they became one of the biggest-selling groups of the 1980s, with tracks such as China in Your Hand and Heart and Soul. The group split in 1992 but have since had a ren
  
  Read more

• Taylor Swift equals Madonna’s record of 12 UK No 1 albums

  26-04-2024 19:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Swift now has joint highest number of chart-toppers for a female artist, as The Tortured Poets Department earns biggest opening week in seven yearsTaylor Swift has tied with Madonna to become the female artist with the most UK No 1 albums, earning her twelfth chart-topper with the global phenomenon that is The Tortured Poets Department.Swift also dominates this week’s singles chart, with three songs in the Top Five including a No 1 for Fortnight, featuring Post Malone. It’s her fourt
  
  Read more

• ‘It was only a matter of time for Slim’: Eminem to kill off Slim Shady alter ego on new album

  26-04-2024 15:17 via theguardian.com
  
  Rapper trails summer release of The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) with a fictional crime report suggesting that the antic character will meet a violent endOne of the great alter egos in pop could be meeting a grisly end, as Eminem announces his first album since 2020: The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce).Set for release on an unspecified date this summer, the album was announced with a trailer that frames the demise of the antic character, with a crime reporter saying to cam
  
  Read more

• Take That review – oddly packaged pop still packs a wallop

  26-04-2024 14:28 via theguardian.com
  
  O2 Arena, London
  There’s some magic amid the cheese as the trio revisit a stacked catalogue of hits – and gamely give their old choreography a goIt’s difficult to say exactly what Take That are going for on their This Life tour: a 41-date behemoth that has shifted more than 700,000 tickets. Video interstitials show the three remaining members doing their very best at acting in retrofuturist infomercials. The set is sometimes done up like a 1950s sitcom, sometimes just with ster
  
  Read more

• Olivia Dean review – pop-soul singer proves she was born for big stages

  26-04-2024 13:45 via theguardian.com
  
  SWG3, Glasgow
  Delicately sipping a Red Stripe and accompanied by a seven-piece band, the Brit School grad loosens up her Mercury prize-nominated album with radiant star powerOne hand raised to the heavens, the other fixed sharply on her hip, Olivia Dean is beaming. The 25-year-old musician is just three songs into her largest headline tour so far, and Echo – last year’s suave, soulful pop single about possibly misplaced trust – is a chic foil for her glamorous, Supremes-style c
  
  Read more

• Justice: Hyperdrama review – an uncertain return to the dancefloor

  26-04-2024 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  (Ed Banger/Because)
  The French producer duo attempt a return to their roots, but the results are a little too polishedWith their self-titled 2007 debut, French production duo Justice – Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay – established themselves as promising Daft Punk successors. Combining arena-sized drum tracks with squealing guitars and a thundering dancefloor pulse, they delivered gargantuan melodic hooks with gut-thumping force. Yet subsequent releases have struggled to eli
  
  Read more

• Pet Shop Boys: Nonetheless review – a great, fan-pleasing album

  26-04-2024 12:30 via theguardian.com
  
  (x2/Parlophone)
  The duo’s first LP in four years finds them refining and updating their late-80s heyday sound, with a new producer in towCultural gravity makes certain events inevitable, such as Sean Lennon and James McCartney writing songs together. Or Britain’s most successful pop duo returning to refine and update the sound of their late-80s imperial era. Nonetheless is Pet Shop Boys’s first album since 2020’s Hotspot, which concluded their Stuart Price-produced trilog
  
  Read more

• ‘People think I hate pop’: super-producer AG Cook on working with Beyoncé and honouring his friend Sophie

  26-04-2024 12:00 via theguardian.com
  
  As the boss of PC Music, the godfather of hyperpop confounded critics but won over Beyoncé and Charli XCX. Now, with a supersized new solo album, he’s continuing his mission to make pop more unpredictableEverything about AG Cook is exhausting. As a producer of elasticated outre pop his output is as varied as it is frenetic, taking in everything from bass-rattling electronic workouts for cultural behemoths such as Beyoncé to celestial dreamscapes for underground newcomers
  
  Read more

• Post your questions for Billy Idol

  26-04-2024 11:17 via theguardian.com
  
  As a 40th anniversary edition of Rebel Yell is released, the punk rock icon will answer your questionsBilly Idol cried his Rebel Yell 40 years ago this year, and an expanded anniversary edition of the album of the same name is out now. To mark the release, Billy is joining us to answer your questions.Born William Broad and raised in unassuming London suburbs, come the mid-1970s he had morphed into Billy Idol. With blond hair aflame, he fronted Generation X and made punk rock palatable to pop fan
  
  Read more

• Porij: Teething review – dance music without drama or daring

  26-04-2024 09:30 via theguardian.com
  
  (PIAS)
  The Manchester band sing about edginess and emotional danger, but never manage to give their beats any tensionYou can imagine a private members’ club commissioning Porij as artists-in-residence: the young Manchester band makes dance music so smooth and so inoffensive that I can imagine it goes down a treat among the UK’s young, moneyed finance set. The title of their debut album Teething is a misnomer; even if it implies growing pains or an unsettled genesis, perhaps with a re
  
  Read more

• Mad fer it! The young musicians flying the flag for Britpop

  26-04-2024 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Artists from Dua Lipa to Nia Archives are tapping the boisterous energy of mid-90s music – and even embracing the union jack. Can they avoid the genre’s laddish lows?For some, Britpop was a high point for British guitar music: that time when Blur, Pulp, Suede and Oasis thrilled the world with wit and brio. Others argue it has aged worse than Loaded magazine: blokey, beery, conservative and still clogging up the charts. Indeed, there’s perhaps something a bit dismal about the fa
  
  Read more

• David Crowell: Point/Cloud review – minimalism that sparkles with joy

  26-04-2024 08:30 via theguardian.com
  
  (Better Company Records)
  The New York multi-instrumentalist, who has played with Philip Glass and Steve Reich, shows great flair for making minimalism rich and harmonically complexCrowell has been an in-demand musician around New York for more than a decade – playing saxophone, flute and guitars with the likes of the Philip Glass Ensemble, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Steve Reich and in his own outfits Empyrean Atlas, Spirit Stout and Eco-Tonal – but Point/Cloud foregrounds his work
  
  Read more

• St Vincent: All Born Screaming review – the unmasking of a great American songwriter

  25-04-2024 14:10 via theguardian.com
  
  (Total Pleasure)
  Are we finally seeing the real Annie Clark? Replacing alter egos with raw immediacy, she delivers one of her best albums: restlessly inventive and packed with ideasThe cover of St Vincent’s previous album, Daddy’s Home, featured Annie Clark in character: heavy eye-make up, ripped stockings, blond wig – the “benzo beauty queen” who haunted a number of songs.Well, of course it did. Clark once released an album called Actor, and role-playing is very mu
  
  Read more

• ‘The working class can’t afford it’: the shocking truth about the money bands make on tour

  25-04-2024 11:39 via theguardian.com
  
  As Taylor Swift tops $1bn in tour revenue, musicians playing smaller venues are facing pitiful fees and frequent losses. Should the state step in to save our live music scene?When you see a band playing to thousands of fans in a sun-drenched festival field, signing a record deal with a major label or playing endlessly from the airwaves, it’s easy to conjure an image of success that comes with some serious cash to boot – particularly when Taylor Swift has broken $1bn in revenue for he
  
  Read more

• Estate of Tupac Shakur threatens legal action against Drake over AI diss track

  25-04-2024 10:59 via theguardian.com
  
  Drake used AI to simulate the voice of the late rapper and have him chide Kendrick Lamar, which the estate calls a ‘flagrant violation’The estate of the late Tupac Shakur has sent a cease and desist letter to Drake, following the release of a Drake track that uses an AI version of Shakur’s voice to lambast Kendrick Lamar.As seen by Billboard, the letter instructs Drake to remove the track, Taylor Made Freestyle, within 24 hours, or face legal action. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Young researchers need greater access to Britain’s rich archives, says curator

  25-04-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Aleema Gray used British Library’s collection to assemble Beyond the Bassline exhibition about Black British musicYoung cultural researchers need greater access to the UK’s rich archival resources so untold stories can be brought to light, according to the curator of an exhibition that documents five centuries of Black British music, from the Tudor court to grime.Dr Aleema Gray has assembled Beyond the Bassline, an expansive tour through the past 500 years of Black British musical hi
  
  Read more

• Northern music awards winners call for more help for region’s emerging talents

  24-04-2024 15:10 via theguardian.com
  
  Lisa Stansfield says difficulties young people face in getting a start are ‘disgusting’, at inaugural ceremony in ManchesterMore should be done to help talented emerging musicians from the north of England, top artists have said at the inaugural Northern music awards in Manchester.The awards, run by the music therapy charity Nordoff and Robbins, took place in a packed Albert Hall, with winners including the former One Direction singer Louis Tomlinson – who beat Sam Fender and S
  
  Read more

Follow @MusicUKnws on Twitter!