pop music
Adam Sweeting
“Bob’s not the kind of guy you can say no to,” said Sting, reminiscing about the origins of 1984’s Band Aid charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”. “He’s persistent.”He spoke, of course, of Bob Geldof, then best known as the singer with Dublin band the Boomtown Rats, but destined to be remembered as the driving force behind Band Aid and the subsequent massive Live Aid concerts which took place on both sides of the Atlantic in July 1985. Experts believe the shows were watched by 1.9 billion people (onstage at Wembley Stadium, pictured below).The Boomtown Rats had some success on the UK Read more ...
caspar.gomez
MONDAY 30th JUNE 2025“I think you’d better drive,” says Finetime, his face sallow, skull-sockets underscored by dark brown rings. He looks peaky.“Why?” I enquire. Sweat nodules down my face, my body, everywhere. So saline-intense it leaves powdery white steaks.“My eyes,” he replies, “They’re wobbling about.”We pull over in Cannards Grave, a Somerset hamlet named for a thieving 17th century publican hanged here. Every third car passing contains battered detritus from the annual Worthy Farm pilgrimage.“You don’t look too good yourself,” says Finetime.“I’ll be fine.”But will I? Inside of my head Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
“I’m, like, pop star when I have to pop star, and then I’m, like, naked hippy when I can naked hippy.” So Kesha explained recently on the Jennifer Hudson Show, going on to say she spent most of her time romping in the woods and chasing butterflies. A far cry, then, from the trailer trash Gaga guise she adopted when she exploded in 2009 with global chart-topper “Tik Tok” (“Brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack”!). Her sixth album sees a sometimes vital, sometimes awkward collision between the above personas.Kesha has rarely been predictable – remember when she did a song with Flaming Lips – and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
German singer Claudia Brücken has had a long and busy career, initially defined by her role in Propaganda. They were a cult 1980s band on ZTT Records who laced their opulent synth pop with an appealingly morbid Teutonic sensibility. Decades later, it seemed they’d been forgotten until Brücken and fellow Propaganda singer Susanne Freytag released an album in 2022 as xPropaganda. It scooted up the UK charts. Her latest solo outing follows elegantly in its footsteps and contains good things.It's far from her first non-Propaganda material. As well as once being in long-defunct duos Act and OneTwo Read more ...
joe.muggs
Dominic “Mocky” Salole has had a long career in which the tension between authenticity and pastiche has been a constant. Toronto-born, of English and Yemeni heritage, he came of musical age in the Bohemian hotbed of 1990s Berlin with a close-knit bunch of other Canadian ex-pats, including Peaches, Chilly Gonzales and Feist.In the early days, this mini-scene was about a delirious collision of huge musical ambition and the urge to goof off at every turn. Puppet shows, silly rap personae, punk provocation and cabaret razzle-dazzle meshed with musical virtuosity, electronic experimentation, with Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was an instant phenomenon. Recorded in April 1967 and issued as a single on 12 May after pre-release play on pirate station Radio London, it topped the UK charts four weeks later. Globally, it hit big on most pop markets and was integral to launching the classical music/pop hybrid which evolved into prog rock.“A Whiter Shade of Pale” also spawned imitators: singles this-close to its arrangement, atmosphere and style. Amongst the British sound-a-likes and analogous recordings were Svensk’s “Dream Magazine” (issued on 25 August 1967), Felius Andromeda’s “ Read more ...
James Mellen
Lorde’s trajectory is continually fascinating. From the minimalist, sparse electropop of Pure Heroine to the similar but more grandiose production of Melodrama was a linear progression, but then came the acoustic guitars and organic percussion of Solar Power.Though, like Melodrama it was produced by pop powerhouse Jack Antonoff, it had the laid back vibe of an artist who’d ditched her mobile phone and got back to nature – and divided fans. Now, the DIY aesthetics and pop-up warehouse events to promote Virgin suggested it might be a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHFrank From Blue Velvet I Am Frank (Property of the Lost) + Column258 Interloper (The Workshop Sessions, Volume One) (Property of the Lost)Hastings label Property of the Lost has grown into a potent force, its stable of artists impressive, usually attached to a US-indebted garage aesthetic. Local band Frank From Blue Velvet’s eponymous 2022 debut was a tasty amalgam of southern gothic country filtered through punk sensibilities, its stand-out song, “Church of Prosperity” a deathless hit at Theartsdesk on Vinyl Mansions. I Am Frank steps forward and sideways, offering a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Theirs is truly rock in extremis, a précis of the youthful impetuosity and cathartic chaos at the heart of real rock ’n roll.”This extract from the essay in the booklet coming with the handsome box set High Time bluntly lays it out: The Sonics, as is also said, played “it fierce and feral.” Although “The Witch,” the topside of their debut single, was issued in November 1964, it was and is as ferocious as The Stooges, the most untrammelled aspects of punk rock and, geographically closer to home for The Sonics, grunge at its grungiest. A first reaction to hearing the single out of the blue was Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Haim’s profile just grows and grows. Since their last album, youngest sibling Alana’s starring role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s whimsical Seventies L.A. nostalgia-fest, Licorice Pizza, has done them no harm. I Quit is, the band says, thus titled because its songs are about “quitting something that isn’t working for us anymore”. More than its concept, though, the listener is swept away by the sisters’ joy in ransacking their skills and studio, any which way they can, to create sun-dappled retro-futurist pop.This is not pop in the Gaga/Roan vein, though. Alongside ex-Vampire Weekend super- Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Jarvis Cocker is proudly holding the No 1 trophy handed to him on the day Pulp topped the album chart for the first time in 27 years with More, their first album in almost as long. “It’s nice they’ve got something to do when they’re getting on a bit,” Cocker says, acidly imagining the response. “Fuck that!”More sounds like a direct continuation of ‘95’s defining hit Different Class, as if This Is Hardcore’s dankly erotic confession of Britpop comedown and Scott Walker-produced last gasp We Love Life never happened, the band instead rematerializing to wrestle with reluctant maturity while Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Had a passer-by from outwith Newcastle been asked to guess what was taking place at St James' Park, football would have been the likely answer. It felt like nearly every person walking to see Sam Fender was clad in a replica top, bearing the name of club legends past and present or, most commonly, the official kit released to mark Fender's newest album.A canny piece of marketing that, and pity any Sunderland fans in attendance, hearing terrace chants belted out disparaging their club as people queued for entry. The party atmosphere continued inside with a string of warm-up tunes connected to Read more ...