wed 18/12/2024

pop

Album: Camila Cabello - C,XOXO

Oh this is sad. Up until this point Camilla Cabello has been a good pop star. Her biggest songs were loaded with familiar-to-the-point-of-cheesiness retro Latin samples, or angsty mini-dramas loaded with the musical theatre-style chops that had made...

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Girls Aloud, OVO Hydro, Glasgow review - pop queens return with poignant hit parade

There was a point in this pop revival jaunt where you could feel members of the crowd wince. Not for the performance, but because Nicola Roberts introduced a song by mentioning it was from “the Chemistry album, which came out 19 years ago”. You...

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Album: Charli XCX - Brat

Charli XCX has been making scrambled eggs of pop for a decade. She’s written songs for/with artists including, but far from limited to, Lady Gaga, Iggy Azalea, Giorgio Moroder, Selina Gomez, BTS, David Guetta, Ty Dolla $ign, Blondie, Gwen Stefani,...

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Album: Richard Hawley - In This City They Call You Love

Hot on the heels of his Olivier Award-winning musical Standing at the Sky's Edge, comes In This City They Call You Love, the 10th solo album from Richard Hawley, proud son of Sheffield, and it’s a peach. With echoes of early Elvis (the...

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Album: Twenty One Pilots - Clancy

If there is one positive of the past decade, it must be the growing openness with mental health and wellbeing. Whether in the films we watch or music we listen to, there is much less of a stigma in addressing anxiety, depression, and mental health...

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Album: Billie Eilish - Hit Me Hard and Soft

So Billie Eilish’s new album has had its worldwide midnight release, dropping at midnight wherever you are kiddos, and taken as a whole it’s like some dark, heavy, low-hanging semi-forbidden, semi-erect fruit that you want to bite into, chew and...

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Album: Sia - Reasonable Woman

Sia has well and truly stepped into her power. Gone are the days of releasing songs that were pitched to megastars but turned down (“This Is Acting”), or hiding behind collaborations and Christmas albums.In her first solo album for eight years, the...

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Album: Pet Shop Boys - Nonetheless

This album came with an absolutely enormous promo campaign. As well as actual advertising there were “Audience With…” events, and specials on BBC radio and TV – the latter an Imagine special with Alan Yentob really going in with...

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Ellie Goulding, Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, Royal Albert Hall review - a mellow evening of strings and song

For a singer so often sampled in electronic dance music, it’s a high-end twist to replace synth, claps and bass drum with the woodwinds, strings and brass of an orchestra.Hot on the heels of her newest release, “Higher Than Heaven”, Ellie Golding...

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Album: The Libertines - All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade

Carl Barat and Peter Doherty are "the Glimmer Twins" of their own wayward trajectory through the worlds of rock and roll, stardom, drugs, distraction and destruction.The noughties indie stars, releasing their first album in a decade,...

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Album: Sum 41 - Heaven :x: Hell

Sum 41 honour their 27-year career with Heaven :x: Hell, a 20-track double album, due to be their final, without a single skip. Harking back to their widely acclaimed debut All Killer No Filler, the album that gave us “Fat Lip” and “In Too Deep”,...

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Album: Elbow - Audio Vertigo

On this, their 10th album, the melodious Mancunians started at the drum kit and built from there. This is no bad thing. The overall effect is wide-ranging, surprising and altogether more uplifting than either the delicious despairing ...

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