Music news

• How I fell in love with country music | Martin Farrer

  21-12-2017 22:00
  My life didn’t change when I saw the duelling banjos scene in Deliverance, but it was the first time I realised there was more to country music than the Benny Hill theme tune My name is Martin and I love country music. There you go, I’ve said it. It’s not always an easy thing to do. When the subject comes up, I get a funny sort of look. Once you spring the c-word on people, you can see they’re thinking: “Shit, this bloke’s weird. Does he dress up like a cowboy
  
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• The Geordie Shore Girls Weigh In On The Most Iconic Fashion Moments Of 2017

  21-12-2017 17:06
  It's fair to say some *eccentric* decisions were made this year.
  
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• Sophie Kasaei And Charlotte Crosby Will Probably End Up 'Shagging' Each Other On New Year's Eve

  21-12-2017 16:17
  As dodgy d*ck pic DMs just aren't doing it for Geordie Shore's Soph.
  
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• The 5 Relationships To Let Go Of In 2018

  21-12-2017 16:06
  You don't need these people dragging you down.
  
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• 18 Iconic Songs You Won't Believe Are Turning 10 In 2018

  21-12-2017 16:01
  Britney returned to the top while the world was introduced to Lady Gaga and Katy Perry...
  
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• Discoteca global: why 2017 was the year Latin pop broke through

  21-12-2017 16:00
  As well as being insanely infectious, tracks such as Luis Fonsi’s Despacito and J Balvin’s Mi Gente have scored billions of streams thanks to an increasingly cross-cultural pop marketOn 31 December 2016, a curious thing happened on YouTube. The platform’s most-watched music video on New Year’s Eve wasn’t a hoary old seasonal favourite, a longstanding party anthem or one of the year’s biggest hits. It was Chantaje, a Spanish-language reggaeton-influenced track
  
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• 2017 in review: Andrew Clements' top 10 classical CDs

  21-12-2017 16:00
  From some delightful Debussy to a bewitching Berlioz opera, via a scintillating set of Schubert sonatas, here are the recordings that stood out this yearThe imminent collapse of the classical recording industry has been predicted so regularly and so tediously over the last two decades that each year in which it remains in rude health seems like a bonus. Of course it evolves, as all cultural industries do, but while the predominance of the previously all-conquering multinational groups – su
  
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• Is It Time To Redefine Cheating?

  21-12-2017 15:54
  What does and what doesn't constitute cheating...?
  
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• The Ultimate Pop Culture Quiz Of 2017

  21-12-2017 15:52
  Don't feel bad, you're just not that smart....
  
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• WATCH! The Hilarious Geordie Shore Christmas Shoots Outtakes

  21-12-2017 15:43
  We're DYING...
  
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• Beginner’s Guide To Budgeting

  21-12-2017 15:30
  Make 2018 the year you sort out your finances.
  
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• The Spirit of the Beehive: Pleasure Suck review – giddy peripatetic lo-fi pop pleasures

  21-12-2017 15:00
  (Tiny Engines)Philadelphia four-piece the Spirit of the Beehive are the sort of woozy, musically meandering outfit who once would have been lazily dismissed as a “stoner band”. Of course these days, when weed is legal in a number of US states and even Christopher Biggins is blazing up on ITV, that label no longer feels like such an insult. The band’s third album, Pleasure Suck, takes the lo-fi collage approach of the likes of the Elephant 6 collective – in particular the
  
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• Rina Sawayama: Rina review – R&B-fuelled peek into the pop future

  21-12-2017 15:00
  (Momoé Records)If there’s one person who looms large over Rina Sawayama’s debut, it’s Britney Spears. The slightly nasal tones and aggressively synthetic production that characterised the pop star’s early career serve as a sonic moodboard for this mini-album, which also takes in R&B slink as well as the 90s penchant for a lo-fi phonecall sample. Opener Ordinary Superstar sees Britney meet Hannah Montana in the guise of a peppy paean to relatability, while Tunne
  
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• Powerdance: The Lost Art of Getting Down review – love is the message

  21-12-2017 15:00
  The collective celebrate disco and post-punk from an age before tedious dancefloor Instagrams – but their bass-heavy toughness means they never become retroIn spring this year, dance music collective Powerdance released their third single, A Safe and Happy Place. It came accompanied by a video shot at the Bethnal Green strip club that hosts Savage, an LGBT+ club night “combining disco music with an army of pole-dancing drag queens” at which Luke Solomon – the core of Powe
  
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• Paul Jacobs: Pictures, Movies and Apartments review – wild, essential garage punk

  21-12-2017 15:00
  (Stolen Body Records)Pictures, Movies and Apartments offers the single most exciting opening to any album this year. The Image (Pictures) begins with kick drum, a single-note bassline and squalls of feedback, before going into a monstrously in-the-red five-chord riff, over which Jacobs howls who-knows-what. It’s the very essence of garage punk: something so primal you suspect the Sonics might have rejected it for being a little unsophisticated. Jacobs, from Canada, has – in common wi
  
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• Myra Davies: Sirens review – witty spoken-word skewering of violence, patriarchy and modern music

  21-12-2017 15:00
  (Moabit)Backed by smart techno-pop production by Beate Bartel and Gudrun Gut, Canadian spoken-word artist Myra Davies delivers a supremely droll series of observations. Some are close portraits with the vibrancy of a Manet or Degas – on Golddress, she frets about a girl on the cusp of womanhood (“I’m aching to take her picture / it’s nothing compared with what the world will do”), while Inshallah is a funny meet-cute at Istanbul airport. Elsewhere there is a brillia
  
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• Gaz Beadle Babysat Newborn Twins In Preparation For Dad Life And It Was A Hilarious Journey

  21-12-2017 13:51
  The Geordie Shore lad is putting himself through his paces before the little one arrives.
  
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• Eminem Beats Himself Up In 'Walk On Water' Video

  21-12-2017 13:39
  There's a sea of Eminems in the video... but where's Beyoncé?
  
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• 18-Year-Old Leads #FreePeriods Protest Against Period Poverty On Westminster

  21-12-2017 13:08
  "Toilet paper is free in schools, so why not sanitary products?"
  
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• CupcakKe Announces New Album 'Ephorize'

  21-12-2017 12:41
  The 'CPR' rap queen is dropping her third album in just a few weeks...
  
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• Rigoletto review – violence, corruption and charisma

  21-12-2017 12:28
  Royal Opera House, LondonIn this revival of David McVicar’s brooding production, Sofia Fomina is an exquisite Gilda and Dimitri Platanias a touching and imposing RigolettoThe Royal Opera has opted for a revival of David McVicar’s brooding 2001 production of Verdi’s Rigoletto for what is effectively its Christmas show: a big, double-cast run that lasts well into the new year. The staging has been reworked, in places substantially, by Justin Way, who has attempted to restore the
  
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• Is This Stephen Bear's New Girlfriend?

  21-12-2017 12:20
  It looks like the Just Tattoo Of Us Presenter has got a new bae after his Charlotte Crosby split.
  
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• Niall Horan Says Critics 'Can Go F*** Themselves'

  21-12-2017 12:17
  Wilhelmina's newest model gets honest in his new Esquire interview...
  
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• Katy Perry Goes Marie Antoinette In 'Hey Hey Hey' Video

  21-12-2017 11:48
  The 'Bon Appétit' singer drops another high-concept video for the latest 'Witness' single...
  
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• Nelly sued for alleged sexual assault and defamation

  21-12-2017 11:40
  Following the collapse of the criminal case against the rapper last week, his accuser has filed a lawsuit against himThe rapper Nelly has been sued for sexual assault and for defamation against the alleged victim, after he publicly denied the accusations.He was arrested and briefly jailed in October in Auburn, Washington, after being accused of raping the 22-year-old University of Washington student on his tour bus. He denied the allegations via his attorney. The criminal case against him collap
  
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• Fans Are Losing Their Minds Over Charlotte Crosby's Make-up Free Dubai Bikini Pic

  21-12-2017 11:35
  The Geordie Shore star is looking hot, and we're not just talking about the Dubai weather.
  
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• Chrissy Teigen Has Some Thoughts About John Legend Being Cast In Jesus Christ Superstar

  21-12-2017 11:30
  This is an angle that nobody ever considered.
  
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• Rita Ora and Liam Payne Pair Up For New Fifty Shades Single

  21-12-2017 10:50
  The A-list pair follow Zayn Malik and Taylor Swift's massive duet last year...
  
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• Gigi Hadid And Bella Hadid Took Zayn Malik's Mum For On Epic Girls' Night

  21-12-2017 10:47
  The former One Direction lad was nowhere to be seen as they headed to a New York Knicks hockey match.
  
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• Khloe Kardashian Confirms She's Pregnant And Reveals Why She Wanted To Keep It Secret

  21-12-2017 09:39
  What she has to say is too cute.
  
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• The best albums of 2017, No 2: Kendrick Lamar – Damn

  21-12-2017 07:00
  With an incendiary beginning and deeply personal social commentary, Lamar’s fourth album reveals an artist at his real and metaphorical peakMore on the best albums of 2017More on the best culture of 2017‘The feeling of an apocalypse happening, but nothing is awkward”: one line from Kendrick Lamar that perhaps sums up 2017 more than any other in the year’s pop music. We know that the Earth is warming to apocalyptic levels, and yet in the west we can still generally go abou
  
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