Music news

• ‘I was the only person who didn’t know the words to Coldplay’: Anoushka Shankar’s honest playlist

  04-05-2025 10:00
  
  The musician on her love of cheesy R&B, hating karaoke ‘with a fiery passion’, and the people who have sex to her sister Norah Jones’s musicThe first song I fell in love with
  Tana Mana by my dad, Ravi Shankar. In the late 80s he was experimenting with synthesisers and released an album called Tana Mana, an anomaly in his discography. I remember my imagination would light up with the title song – I would picture a village dance, and I’d be acting it out in my liv
  
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• ‘Anastacia is a big inspiration for me – raspy, raw and heartfelt’: Ella Eyre’s honest playlist

  09-11-2025 10:00
  The singer was inspired by her mum’s love for Basement Jaxx and spent 69p on Jamiroquai, but what does she put on when she’s feeling down?The first song I fell in love withThe first song that I remember really feeling inspired by was Good Luck by Basement Jaxx. My mum had all their CDs. Good Luck was the first song I sung for my managers before they took me on board, so I still have a big love for it.The first single I bought
  My mum gave me money to go and buy Feels Just Like It Shou
  
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• Guitar Hero at 20 – how a plastic axe bridged the gap between rock generations

  08-11-2025 11:00
  Guitar Hero’s controllers let anyone become astar in their own living room – and made the bands featured in the game household names againIt is 20 years since Guitar Hero was launched in North America, and with it, the tools for the everyday gamer to become a rock star. Not literally of course, but try telling that to someone who has nailed Free Bird’s four-minute guitar solo in front of a packed living-room audience.Developed by Harmonix, published by RedOctane and inspired by
  
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• Grammy awards 2026: Kendrick Lamar leads nominations with nine nods

  07-11-2025 18:53
  Rapper receives nominations in all top categories while Lady Gaga, Bad Bunny, Sabrina Carpenter and Leon Thomas are also major nominees• Grammys 2026: the nominations in all the major categoriesThe Grammys’ love continues for Kendrick Lamar. The rapper, who took home the most trophies at the 2025 music awards with five, leads the nominees for the 2026 awards.Lamar is up for nine awards, including album of the year (for his most recent, GNX), best rap album, record of the year and song
  
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• ‘I was the only out queer guy in rock’: Faith No More’s Roddy Bottum

  07-11-2025 14:13
  The keyboard player on his heroin overdose, how Kurt Cobain wanted to be gay and why his memoir will ruin his Christian relatives’ Thanksgiving dinnerWhen Roddy Bottum began work on his remarkable autobiography The Royal We, the Faith No More keyboard-player knew exactly the book he didn’t want to write. “The kind that has pictures in the middle,” he says, via video-call from Oxnard, California, where he’s completing a new album by his group Imperial Teen. “I&
  
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• The Mountain Goats: Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan review – shipwreck songs from a master storyteller

  07-11-2025 10:30
  (Cadmean Dawn)
  The latest themed album from John Darnielle’s band – with some help from Lin-Manuel Miranda – takes them on a sumptuously crafted and surprisingly upbeat voyage to a desert islandJohn Darnielle’s penchant for a concept album has already produced the likes of Beat the Champ (about wrestling), Bleed Out (action movies) and Goths (alternative music in his teens). Now, the 23rd Mountain Goats album tackles – but of course – the story of a small crew
  
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• Sara Ajnnak and the Ciderhouse Rebellion: Landscapes of the Spirit, Parts 1-4 review | Jude Rogers' folk album of the month

  07-11-2025 09:30
  (Self-released)
  The Ume Sámi vocalist and British folk duo complete their four-part cycle with a dark, dazzling finale that blends ancient song with fearless improvisationJust released at a fittingly ghoulish time of year is the final part of this collaboration between Ume Sámi vocalist Sara Ajnnak and British folk-improv duo the Ciderhouse Rebellion. The artists’ joint Landscapes of the Spirit project, delivered in four releases over 2025, has cycled through life from Ge&aum
  
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• ‘It’s impossible not to have contradictions in a contradictory world’: Catalan pop visionary Rosalía on critics, crisis and being ‘hot for God’

  07-11-2025 06:00
  With a towering new album about female saints in 13 languages, she’s pop’s boldest star – and one of its most controversial. She revisits her spiritual breakthroughs, and explains why we need forgiveness instead of cancel cultureRosalía Vila Tobella is just as bored as you are of pop music functioning as gossip column fodder, with lyrics full of hints of rivalries and betrayal. “I’m tiring of seeing people referencing celebrities, and celebrities referencing
  
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• Hatchie: Liquorice review – dizzying dreampop with welcome flashes of depravity

  06-11-2025 15:00
  Eschewing the fairyfloss hooks of her earlier work, the Australian’s third album is both more mature and less immediately palatableGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailAlmost all of Hatchie’s music could slot frictionlessly into a coming-of-age film. Her songs, mostly, are misty-eyed ruminations on puppy love and its ensuing devastation; they yearn for a redamancy that feels both fated and vexingly out of reach. You can imagine Harriette Pilbeam’s mille-feuille harmonies
  
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• ‘A shot of adrenaline’: readers pass on 90s club classics to new generations

  05-11-2025 08:00
  With the latest John Lewis Christmas ad sparking nostalgia, readers share which 90s hits are worth partying toIn the new John Lewis Christmas ad, a young son gifts his dad a vinyl copy of the track Where Love Lives by Alison Limerick, which transports the father to the dancefloor of his youth. Powerful stuff.Of course, that record wouldn’t be everyone’s choice, so we asked readers to tell us which 90s club tracks they would pass on to the next generation. Here are some of them. Conti
  
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• Radiohead review – bards of the apocalypse return for a brutal bacchanal

  05-11-2025 02:19
  Movistar Arena, MadridPowered by a pounding rhythm section, the crowd dance to even the tricksiest drum patterns at Radiohead’s first gig in seven years – one that demonstrates the pure joy this band can bring
  Almost 10 years have passed since Radiohead released a new record, and more than seven since they were last seen on stage. Living through that period has felt like moving further and faster into the future that their songs often sounded so worried about. Animal-borne diseases a
  
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• Donna Jean Godchaux supplied steel and soul to the Grateful Dead in their prime

  04-11-2025 18:53
  Godchaux sang on classics by Elvis and Otis Redding and had a long solo career, but it’s as a member of the Dead’s classic, acid-drenched 70s lineup – and as the band’s only female member – that she will be remembered• Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay, Grateful Dead singer, dies aged 78By her own admission, Donna Jean Godchaux was not a fan of the Grateful Dead when she arrived in California – then Donna Jean Thatcher – in 1970. Already a music industry v
  
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• ‘I want to ride out on a unicorn every night’: swords’n’sorcery heavy metal band Castle Rat

  04-11-2025 11:00
  Wielding fantasy weapons and splashing fake blood, the New Yorkers have even learned how to make chainmail outfits – and they’re already aiming to conquer stadiumsWhile many a rocker has cribbed from high fantasy, few have truly walked the walk. Sure, they might bedeck their album sleeves with ghouls, goblins, manacled maidens and brawny barbarians, but did a member of Cirith Ungol ever have to retrieve a missing unicorn horn from a snowy field in the depths of winter? Has Yngwie Mal
  
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• Ravyn Lenae review – art-school dreamer at ease with her own melancholy

  03-11-2025 14:06
  Albert Hall, Manchester
  The Chicago musician’s fans are delighted by her alt-R&B, but for all the adventurous new songs tonight’s show does not quite live up to its ambitionChicago-born Ravyn Lenae has been a cult darling of alt-R&B since the mid-2010s, an art-school dreamer whose whimsical, pop-tinged sound first drew notice when indie-slacker wunderkind Steve Lacy produced her Crush EP back in 2018. Tonight in Manchester, her kooky on-stage persona is mirrored by a surprisi
  
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• Rosalía: Lux review – a demanding, distinctive clash of classical and chaos that couldn’t be by anyone else

  03-11-2025 14:00
  (Columbia)
  The Catalan star’s monumental fourth LP features lyrics in 13 languages, references to female saints, the London Symphony Orchestra – and Björk on ‘divine intervention’Last week, Rosalía appeared on a US podcast to discuss her fourth album. At one juncture, the interviewer asked if she didn’t think that Lux was demanding a lot from her listeners: a not entirely unreasonable question, given that it features a song cycle in four “movements
  
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• Richard Ashcroft: ‘Why not Sir Liam and Sir Noel?’

  03-11-2025 12:28
  The former Verve singer talks about his supporting role in the big Oasis reunion shows, his AI fears and what he thinks of fans who Shazam his songsRichard Ashcroft is the man of the moment. Fresh from supporting Oasis as the self-proclaimed “only man for the job”, the former Verve singer is back with an (almost) sold-out arena tour for 2026, and some more Oasis dates in South America, not to mention a seventh solo album, Lovin’ You. We caught up with Ashcroft to chat about lov
  
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• ‘I took mushrooms before my audition’: Smiths drummer Mike Joyce on wild gigs, Marr’s jim-jams and Morrissey’s genius

  03-11-2025 06:00
  Breaking dancefloors, recording in the dark, crying at I Know It’s Over, winning in court, splitting over chips … the musician relives his tumultuous years in ‘the best British band ever’‘It was terrifying,” says Mike Joyce, sitting in the palatial suite of the Stock Exchange hotel in Manchester. The drummer is talking about his favourite gig with the Smiths: the night in July 1986 when The Queen Is Dead tour hit Salford Maxwell Hall. “They weren’
  
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• Romesh Ranganathan: ‘I Want Your Soul by Armand Van Helden is so relentlessly catchy I’m sick of it’

  02-11-2025 10:00
  The comedian and presenter would do LL Cool J at karaoke – if his family’s lives depended on it. But what song would make his funeral ‘pop off’?The first song I fell in love withGrowing up, every weekend we’d visit a different Sri Lankan family’s house in London. One kid had Thriller by Michael Jackson, and I fell in love with Billie Jean. I then ripped my brother’s Michael Jackson Bad poster in a retaliation move, for which I now formally apologise.The
  
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• Add to playlist: the long-lost lo-fi pop of Australian nun Sister Irene O’Connor and the week’s best tracks

  31-10-2025 13:00
  Far from being the preserve of ecclesiastical listening, the reissue of O’Connor’s 1973 album is a compelling feast of drum machine, acoustic guitar and synth organFrom Sydney, Australia
  Recommended if you like Shirley and Dolly Collins; Efficient Space’s Sky Girl compilation
  Up next Fire of God’s Love reissued by Freedom to Spend on 14 NovemberAs any nun worth her salt might tell you, revelation can come from the most unlikely places. Such is the case with Fire of God&rs
  
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• Florence + the Machine: Everybody Scream review – alt-rock survivor surveys her kingdom with swagger

  31-10-2025 01:00
  (Polydor)
  On her self-deprecating, viscera-flecked sixth record, Florence Welch picks apart the compulsions and contradictions of fameThe title track of Everybody Scream provides a suitably striking opening for Florence + the Machine’s sixth album. A sinister organ and a choir of voices harmonise in the style of a horror theme, replaced in short order by the sound of screaming and a stomping glam rock rhythm; instead of the shouts of “Hey!” that traditionally punctuated a glitt
  
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• Anna von Hausswolff: Iconoclasts review – exhilarating, euphoric goth songcraft

  30-10-2025 13:00
  (Year0001)
  The Swedish experimental musician pivots from drones to spectacular pop melodies, with guest spots from Iggy Pop and Ethel CainAnna von Hausswolff’s sixth studio album is being trailed as the 39-year-old Swede’s pivot towards pop, which you could say is all relative. For the last decade, Von Hauswolff has dealt in music that is solemn, echo-laden, heavy on the drone of her beloved pipe organ and fully deserving of the adjective gothic.Her work has elicited comparisons to N
  
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• Jack DeJohnette was more than a jazz drummer – his staggering range made him a superhuman force in music

  27-10-2025 17:06
  With a complex playing style that was nevertheless generous towards other musicians, the US musician was in a category all of his own• Jack DeJohnette dies aged 83My interview with Jack DeJohnette didn’t start well. It was the summer of 2000 and DeJohnette was in London to play with Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. Referring to him in my first question as a “drummer” felt reasonable enough, but DeJohnette didn’t appreciate being pigeonholed and shot back instant
  
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• Sananda Maitreya review – the former Terence Trent D’Arby returns in astonishing vocal form

  27-10-2025 16:14
  O2 Academy, Liverpool
  Pop’s lost prodigy returns for the first time in 23 years with a dazzling, genre-hopping show – and a falsetto that still floors the crowdThe 63-year-old American on stage tonight was one of the biggest stars in the firmament at the end of the 1980s. Back then, his debut album Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D’Arby went multiple-platinum, he was seen as the new Prince and told the world he was a genius. However, D’Arby’s car
  
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• Gillian Welch and David Rawlings review – perfectly paired talents at the peak of their powers

  26-10-2025 13:14
  02 Apollo, ManchesterThe guitar duo cast a spell over a rapt audience with wistful songs evoking open skies and yearning that even the final house lights can’t dispelThe Apollo’s huge stage contains nothing more than a stool and a table, upon which are placed two drinks and a very tiny amplifier, but Gillian Welch and David Rawlings don’t need showbiz trimmings. Later, when Rawlings straps on a harmonica, his musical partner quips: “That’s all you get by way of cost
  
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• Dave Ball was not some bloke in the background of Soft Cell – he drove their startling, subversive sound

  23-10-2025 18:53
  Far more than a mute foil to Marc Almond, Ball brought his love of northern soul and strange electronics to bear on some of Britain’s most uncompromising pop• News: Dave Ball, synth-pop hitmaker as one half of Soft Cell, dies aged 66By common consent, Soft Cell’s first Top of the Pops appearance, on 13 August 1981, ranks among the show’s most striking performances. It was impactful enough to send their single Tainted Love first into the Top Ten, then to No 1 – it ult
  
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• D’Angelo’s music was imbued with the influence of Black women

  21-10-2025 14:16
  Female collaborators, muses and ministers shaped D’Angelo’s voice, arrangements and emotional acuityThe first time D’Angelo reached me, he wasn’t alone. His voice was entwined with Erykah Badu’s on Your Precious Love, a duet that felt like an offering being passed between sweethearts. I was 14, the edge of adolescence, opening to my own life. Their voices sounded delicate, blooming – almost shy. A cover of a classic Motown record written by Ashford & Simps
  
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• Chris Brown charged with GBH over alleged bottle attack in nightclub

  16-05-2025 00:50
  
  American R&B singer arrested in Salford over alleged 2023 London attack, after flying into UK for new tour The US musician Chris Brown has been charged with grievous bodily harm with intent over an alleged bottle attack at a London nightclub two years ago.The 36-year-old rapper, a former partner of the singer Rihanna, was arrested at 2am on Thursday at the five-star Lowry hotel in Salford, Greater Manchester, after flying into the UK for a tour. Continue reading...
  
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• Cassie Ventura grilled about explicit messages on day four of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs trial

  16-05-2025 00:30
  
  On third day of testimony the former girlfriend of music mogul details violence, abuse and blackmailSinger Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, a former girlfriend of Sean “Diddy” Combs and a key witness in the federal sex-trafficking and racketeering trial of the music mogul, returned to the stand on Thursday for a cross-examination that lasted the entire day and will continue on Friday.On Thursday morning,one of Combs’s lawyers, Anna Estevao, opened her cross-examination of
  
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• ‘Climate change is going to cull us as a species’: folk hero Peggy Seeger on Bob Dylan, the ultimate love song and touring at 90

  15-05-2025 14:00
  The musician and activist answers your questions about her marriage to Ewan MacColl, being the inspiration for The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, and her mother’s legacyTouring at 90 is amazing. What was a career highlight? Nicens_boi
  When I was 60 the thought of touring when I was 70 was anathema and the thought of touring at 90 seemed dreadful! The hardest part is sitting in the car. We’re gonna be away six weeks and I’m a walking hospital case. I have meds, a step stool so
  
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• Shanti Celeste: Romance review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

  15-05-2025 13:01
  (Method 808/Peach Discs)
  Six years on from her acclaimed ‘fast house’ debut, the UK singer-producer invites listeners into a sunlit space between night out and morning afterNo one could accuse Shanti Celeste of being a dance producer who indulges in lofty conceptualising about their music. Not for her, the album that represents the soundtrack to a film that hasn’t been made yet, or a sci-fi-influenced cosmic opera, or a globe-spanning travelogue inspired by the peripatetic life
  
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