Music news

• ‘World domination is a big thing for me’: pop superstar Becky Hill on raving to the top – and her new album’s dark past

  17-05-2024 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  She’s won two Brits and rivalled Dua Lipa and Adele for streams, but the public is still getting to know the ex-reality TV singer. She explains why snobbery has held her back, but trauma won’tBecky Hill Hill glides up on an ebike in full pop star clobber: leather flares, black strap top with enormous silver buckles, immaculately tousled hair, light green contacts that bestow a feline air. We were supposed to be meeting at her tour manager’s flat in London, so she seems slightly
  
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• Post your questions for Mike Skinner

  14-06-2024 18:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Whether you want to ask about A Grand Don’t Come For Free, writing and directing his debut feature film or his Fred Again-inspired new fanbase nothing is off the tableTrust Mike Skinner to put it succinctly: “I’ve spent many nights wasted, but not wasted any nights in Fabric over the years,” he said on the announcement of his new mix to celebrate 25 years of the fabled London nightclub. Fabric Presents: the Streets centres on the club’s reputation as “one of t
  
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• Barclays suspends sponsorship of Download, Latitude and Isle of Wight festivals

  14-06-2024 16:22 via theguardian.com
  
  Move follows protests from bands and fans over the bank providing financial services to defence companies supplying IsraelBarclays has suspended sponsorship of all Live Nation festivals for 2024 – including Download, Latitude and the Isle of Wight – after protests from bands and fans over the bank providing financial services to defence companies supplying Israel.The bank signed a five-year sponsorship deal with Live Nation in 2023. It is understood that the suspension does not apply
  
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• ‘I didn’t engage with the Bowie song’: Peter Schilling on Major Tom, the unofficial anthem of the Euros

  14-06-2024 15:24 via theguardian.com
  
  First released in 1983 the German new wave song has since become a byword for 80s cool – now it is about to unite the tournament on the terracesIf you are planning to brush up on your German ahead of tonight’s opener of the European Championships, one umlaut-heavy phrase could come in handy: Völlig losgelöst.Meaning “completely untethered”, these two words form the chorus of Peter Schilling’s Major Tom, a German new wave song that first climbed to the top
  
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• Foo Fighters review – beloved rockers thunder back from trauma with thrilling intensity

  14-06-2024 15:22 via theguardian.com
  
  Emirates Old Trafford, ManchesterThe pain of losing drummer Taylor Hawkins is still audible in some of these songs, but the band’s togetherness is plainly stronger than everJust over two years after the shattering and untimely death of drummer Taylor Hawkins left them facing trauma and turmoil, Foo Fighters deliver a two-and-a-half-hour-plus masterclass in how to put the show back on the road. “Do y’all love rock’n’roll music?” yells Dave Grohl as Monkey Wrenc
  
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• Sam Morton: Daffodils & Dirt review – actor’s intoxicating trip-hop debut

  14-06-2024 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  (XL)
  Oscar nominee Samantha Morton teams up with label exec Richard Russell for an unnerving, dreamy album inspired by childhood traumaWe’re in the midst of a trip-hop revival: some 30 years after Portishead released Dummy, artists such as Lolahol, a.s.o. and Avalon Emerson are waving the flag for the genre once again, refracting icy synth textures and torch-song vocals in modern ways. One of the best records of the trip-hop resurgence is by an unlikely pair: Oscar-nominated actor Samantha
  
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• Normani: ‘In Fifth Harmony we had a lot of things taken away from us’

  14-06-2024 12:00 via theguardian.com
  
  It’s six years since the former girl group star announced her first solo album. Now – after a breakup, family illness and battles with her label – her vision of ‘divine femininity’ is about to be unveiledWhen we speak on the eve of her 28th birthday, Normani is feeling wistful. Living out in LA, she is putting the finishing touches to her debut album, a diary of her journey “to womanhood”. Six long, hard years in the making, Dopamine is her ambitiou
  
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• Crowded House review – raucous spun-sugar pop perfection

  14-06-2024 11:21 via theguardian.com
  
  Shepherds Bush Empire, London
  With his sons rocking solos and a bonkers cameo from Mick Fleetwood, Neil Finn’s band spreads harmonic happiness Sometimes all pop music needs to do is spread a little happiness. Playing a small London show to mark the release of their eighth album, Gravity Stairs, Crowded House do rather more than that. There’s comedy, with Neil Finn teasing bassist Nick Seymour – the only other constant member of the band – about his strapped knee, which le
  
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• Multiple bands pull out of Download festival over Barclays’ Israel ties

  12-06-2024 13:46 via theguardian.com
  
  Acts including Speed, Scowl and Ithaca voice opposition to Barclaycard sponsorship over financial services provided to defence companiesMultiple bands have pulled out of Download festival over Barclaycard being used as its official payment partner, in protest against Barclays providing financial services to defence companies supplying Israel.Download, the UK’s biggest rock, metal and punk festival which takes place from 14 to 16 June, lists Barclaycard as one of its official sponsors along
  
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• The best albums of 2024 so far

  12-06-2024 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Billie Eilish’s third is a triumph, Shabaka goes woodwind and Yunchan Lim makes the most thrilling piano debut of the decade … here are our music team’s picks of the best LPs from the first half of the yearBeing called “overproduced” is generally a criticism but BMTH make it a virtue on this ridiculously high-intensity album. The glitched-up production reflects a fiendishly intricate digital world, while frontman Oli Sykes’ emotions are more histrionic &ndash
  
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• Pop singer Kevin Jonas documents skin cancer treatment

  12-06-2024 12:28 via theguardian.com
  
  Jonas Brothers star revealed he has had surgery for basal cell carcinoma, advising followers to get moles checkedPop singer Kevin Jonas, a member of chart-topping trio the Jonas Brothers, has received treatment for skin cancer.In an Instagram video, the 36-year-old singer, guitarist, actor and reality TV star said he had been diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma. Continue reading...
  
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• Françoise Hardy: France’s girlish yé-yé star was a groundbreaking musical artist

  12-06-2024 02:55 via theguardian.com
  
  Hardy shot to fame singing airy, carefree pop before she took control of her career, hung out with 60s rock aristocracy and became a sophisticated singer-songwriter of rare sensuality and melancholyFrançoise Hardy, French pop singer and fashion muse, dies aged 80Yé-yé was France’s homegrown response to rock’n’roll: pretty young singers – almost all female – performing a lightweight Francophone adaptation of American music with lyrics about teena
  
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• Françoise Hardy, French pop singer and fashion muse, dies aged 80

  12-06-2024 02:19 via theguardian.com
  
  Singer and actor who wrote some of her country’s biggest pop hits had suffered with lymphatic cancer for many yearsFrançoise Hardy obituary Françoise Hardy, whose elegance and beautifully lilting voice made her one of France’s most successful pop stars, has died aged 80.Her death was reported by her son, the fellow musician Thomas Dutronc, who wrote “Maman est partie,” (or in English, “mum is gone”) on Instagram alongside a baby photo of himself
  
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• Four Tops singer sues hospital for assuming mental illness after he revealed identity

  11-06-2024 21:29 via theguardian.com
  
  Alexander Morris alleges racial discrimination and false imprisonment after being placed into restraining jacketThe lead singer of the Four Tops said a Detroit-area hospital restrained him and ordered a psychological exam after refusing to believe that he was part of the Motown music group.Alexander Morris, who is Black, filed a lawsuit Monday against Ascension Macomb-Oakland hospital in Warren, alleging racial discrimination and other misconduct during an April 2023 visit for chest pain and bre
  
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• ‘Don’t worry about AI. People want bodies in a room’: Faithless on the eternal power of rave – and the death of Maxi Jazz

  11-06-2024 17:29 via theguardian.com
  
  The dance music legends are preparing their first live shows without their late frontman. They explain why they can’t replace his voice, but can continue his spiritIn 2002 Faithless were granted a sunset slot on Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage, and attracted close to 100,000 people. “England had actually just lost the football, so lifting the crowd took real energy to get people going,” says the band’s Sister Bliss. “It’s a funny coincidence – we&rsquo
  
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• War, disastrous sex and a lot of lawsuits: the chaotic aftermath of Motown’s peak years

  11-06-2024 11:21 via theguardian.com
  
  Disenchanted with Motown, star songwriters Holland-Dozier-Holland set up a pair of bold new labels: Hot Wax and Invictus. As a new box set is released, its artists remember their personal, political songs – and exhausting battlesMotown Records famously churned out songs like cars on an assembly line, and songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland (HDH) – brothers Eddie and Brian Holland, and the late Lamont Dozier – built some of the company’s most gleaming, purring models,
  
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• ‘Nobody believed I sang it’: how Move Your Body blew dancefloors away

  10-06-2024 15:44 via theguardian.com
  
  It became a Chicago house anthem classic – and it was cooked up in just 30 minutes by four postal workers after a tough shift on the letter-sorting machineI first heard the term “house music” in Chicago in 1983 when I was working at a post office. There was this girl there who dressed crazy, with her hair different colours. She said she was going to the Music Box, where they played “house music”. I went along and the bass was so loud it physically moved you back a c
  
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• Beth Gibbons review – otherworldly presence transcends light and dark

  10-06-2024 12:25 via theguardian.com
  
  Barbican, London
  The singer’s voice remains almighty in an intense and sometimes thunderous set, but ultimately what steps out of the tumult is her unswerving humanity
  Beth Gibbons is visible only as a silhouette, backlit against blood red lighting. Flanked on three sides by her musicians, she stands several feet away and isolated at centre stage as an expectant hush gives way to the stark guitars, brooding drums and low clarinet of Tell Me Who You Are Today. For the rest of the show, whil
  
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• Smashing Pumpkins and Weezer review – mismatched 90s rockers bore and charm

  10-06-2024 11:39 via theguardian.com
  
  O2 Arena, LondonBilly Corgan’s band are bloated with self-importance, but Rivers Cuomo and company continue to dole out witty power-pop with elanCo-headline tours of this ilk can allow relatively long-in-the-tooth artists to pool their fanbases and play large venues that they would not necessarily be able to fill on their own. Nevertheless, this particular pairing of two bands who arrived in the wake of the early 90s US grunge rock scene appears decidedly incongruous.When Weezer (★&#
  
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• ‘You’re Beautiful by James Blunt is terrible!’: Paloma Faith’s honest playlist

  10-06-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The singer hates a certain James Blunt megahit and feels empowered by Chaka Khan, but which Aussie bard does she think wrote the best song of all time?The first song I remember hearingMy mum was a massive fan of Nina Simone but she’s got dyspraxia. She was always having dinner parties, but she’d always make people dance. I just have an image of her clapping out of time to Simone’s song Baltimore.The first single I boughtEspecially for You by Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue, on
  
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• It’s OUR team: Euro 2024 anthem strikes a chord for England’s diversity

  09-06-2024 16:27 via theguardian.com
  
  Rappers team up with the Black Footballers Partnership for a song calling out racism while backing England“Football and music are the biggest influences in the country,” says the artist CreezOn, also known as Cree Amory Reid. “I think that they are vehicles of expression that have been put there for us to explore.”The 20-year-old features on the recently released Euro 2024 anthem It’s OUR Team alongside another up-and-coming rapper, Keaton Amory (Ke4t). Th
  
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• Frothy, fun and hard to resist: is Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso the song of the summer?

  09-06-2024 11:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The US singer’s hit has all the elusive qualities that can elevate a tune into a touchstone for sunny memoriesHave you heard the Sabrina Carpenter song Espresso? Even if you don’t know it by name, you will have done. It’s honeyed but arch (“That’s that me, espresso”). Frothy, hooky, with a lyrical sting (“My ‘give a fucks’ are on vacation”). The coquettish hyper-real video has the US singer draped over speedboats and surfboards like a S
  
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• Hip-Hop Is History by Questlove review – a soundtrack for the world, from the Sugarhill Gang to Kanye West

  09-06-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The Roots drummer, DJ, author and director is the ‘Ken Burns of black music’, and his personal reflections on a genre that last year turned 50 are full of wisdom and charmHip-hop officially turned 50 last year. It is generally accepted that it was born on 11 August 1973, when 18-year-old DJ Kool Herc first cut up breakbeats at a party in the Bronx and his friend Coke La Rock rapped along, but this DJ-driven art form, which evolved parallel to disco, took another six years to spawn it
  
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• On my radar: Billy Corgan’s cultural highlights

  08-06-2024 16:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The Smashing Pumpkins frontman on bonding with his son over Miyazaki, the genius of Mozart’s Requiem, and the world’s biggest Bozo the Clown collectionBorn in Chicago in 1967, Billy Corgan is the frontman of the Smashing Pumpkins. The band have released 12 studio albums, including Atum: A Rock Opera in Three Acts (2022–2023); he has also released music solo and with the supergroup Zwan. He owns the National Wrestling Alliance, and is the subject of US reality TV series Billy Co
  
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• Liam Gallagher/ Definitely Maybe 30th Anniversary review – 90s anthems still shake without their maker

  08-06-2024 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Utilita Arena, Cardiff
  Noel may be absent, but so is the chaos of early Oasis, leaving Liam free to get the detail right in a volley of on-point anthems As a defining image, it’s an unexpected choice: a sizeable portrait of Burt Bacharach sits in front of the drum riser, drawing the eye as a giant digital clock counts back the years to 1994. A songwriter of classic pop who died last year at age 94, the US artist seems an unlikely totem for a band – Oasis – whose general disdain
  
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• Girls Aloud on public bullying, getting older and reuniting after the loss of Sarah Harding: ‘I keep expecting her to burst into the room’

  08-06-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  When their bandmate was diagnosed with terminal cancer, it was her dying wish that the tour would go on. Now, the biggest-selling British girl group of the 21st century are making good on their promiseCheryl has a wind problem. We’re meeting at rehearsals for Girls Aloud’s comeback tour, standing in what will later become the Gift Wrapped Kitty Kat VIP Zone – essentially a pit next to the stage named after a ludicrous lyric in their equally ludicrous 2004 single Love Machine. I
  
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• Taylor Swift review – as all-powerful as a pop star can be

  08-06-2024 00:32 via theguardian.com
  
  Murrayfield stadium, Edinburgh
  ​The audience is overwhelmed by an astonishing, risk-taking, strangely intimate extravaganza – and Swift in turn is overwhelmed by themAs Cruel Summer fades away and she surveys the audience, Taylor Swift looks startled. She clasps her hand to her chest and shakes her head in disbelief. They cheer louder. “That went straight to my head!” she exclaims, apparently unable to take in the vociferousness of their reaction.Of course, this is hokum
  
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• Céline Dion says illness has caused muscle spasms that broke her ribs

  07-06-2024 16:19 via theguardian.com
  
  Singer describes symptoms of stiff person syndrome, the rare illness she was diagnosed with in 2022, including a feeling of strangulationCéline Dion has said she has suffered muscle spasms so strong that her ribs were broken as a result, as she lives with the condition stiff person syndrome.Speaking in her first TV interview since the diagnosis, to Hoda Kotb on NBC News, Dion said: “I had broken ribs at one point, because sometimes when it’s very severe …” Kotb as
  
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• Guess who’s back? How Eminem is storming to the top of the charts again

  07-06-2024 14:46 via theguardian.com
  
  His new song Houdini is set to be the fastest-selling single of the year, eclipsing even Taylor Swift – despite being ignored by rap fans and radio stations alikeLast Friday, Eminem released his 62nd single, Houdini. Reviews were lukewarm to woeful. “Eminem loses the magic,” ran the headline in the New York Times, while website Stereogum went for the more straightforward “Eminem’s New Song ‘Houdini’ Is Really, Really Bad”, criticising everything fr
  
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• Peggy Gou: I Hear You review – sparkling 90s-inspired dance

  07-06-2024 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  (XL)
  Irrepressible tracks abound on the hugely popular Korean DJ-producer’s debut albumKorean DJ-producer Peggy Gou is one of the most successful women in her field. She’s about to headline a huge outdoor party in London and reckons she’s played to a million fans in the past year. As often in the dance industry, success precedes suspicion: Gou’s first break came when a promoter saw her photo rather than heard her DJ; she’s into fashion as much as music; her songs of
  
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