Prince Buster’s Al Capone changed the Madness singer’s life and Aretha Franklin is his go-to at karaoke, but what song makes him cry?
The first song I fell in love with
Judy Teen by Cockney Rebel. I’d seen Steve Harley on Top of the Pops and liked his look, with the mascara and bowler hat, like Alex from A Clockwork Orange. One day, me and my mates decided to cycle to Salisbury Plain. I had a transistor radio tied to the handlebars and Judy Teen came on. Unfortunately, the batteries ran out when we got to Swiss Cottage [in north London] … and my legs ran out at the same time!
The first single I bought
The Wall Street Shuffle by 10cc, from Woolworths in Camden Town. Later on, we used to pinch records, but I paid my dues for a while.
Jackson’s songs are back on charts and biopic trailer racked up 116m views in 24 hours, yet there is a certain hesitation
Michael Jackson’s voodoo classic Thriller was high on Billboard’s Hot 100 in the week of 15 November, handing the 16-years-gone King of Pop a record for having a Top 10 hit across six different decades. Simultaneously, Jackson also broke records for receiving 116m views in 24 hours for the trailer of a new biopic, Michael, set for release in April.
Millions of fans may be excited and primed for a Jackson biopic. For comparison, the trailer beat out Taylor Swift’s Eras tour preview and it will join a procession of recent music biopics about Bruce Springsteen, Amy Winehouse, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley and Elton John. The most successful of all – the Freddie Mercury and Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody – took in nearly a billion dollars at the box office.
A decade on from the height of their fame, the Australian boyband have written a record that reclaims and pokes fun at the label foisted upon them. They speak to Hannah Ewens about fangirls, One Direction, and how partying inspired the new album
Philip Barantini’s single-take special follows the star mooching around Manhattan, guitar ever ready for ad hoc turns, ahead of his evening show
Ed Sheeran floats through New York on a cloud of his own sunny high spirits in this hour-long Netflix special. He is the Candide of the music business, smiling benignly, strumming and singing, seamlessly pausing for selfies and fist-bumps and high-fives; he almost visibly absorbs energy from the saucer-eyed fan-worship shown by gobsmacked passersby and radiates it back at them.
Maybe you have to be a Sheeran fan to really appreciate it, but this is another single-take bravura special from film-maker Philip Barantini (who directed Netflix’s searing single-take drama Adolescence) and his director of photography Nyk Allen. With no cuts (though there’s an allowable fast-forward bit, and the audio might have been tweaked in post-production) they follow the unselfconscious Ed as he completes a late-afternoon soundcheck at the New York theatre where he’s playing a concert later on, and then for the next hour, and with fans pretty much always swarming around him, he wanders through the city with his guitar for various encounters, some planned, some (supposedly) not.
Jelly Roll reaches his lowest point in years while touring Australia, sharing candid details about anxiety, health issues and missing his family support system.
Singer-songwriter Todd Snider, known for witty lyrics and genre-blending music, has died at 59. The Nashville artist influenced American music for three decades.
Influential musician who created Americana hits had recently been hospitalized with pneumonia
Todd Snider, the influential alt-country singer-songwriter who created Americana hits such as Alright Guy, has died at 59.
His passing was shared through announcements on his official social media accounts. Although no cause of death was provided, his family shared on Friday that he had recently been hospitalized with pneumonia.
Gary Sinise opens up about his grief journey after losing son Mac to rare cancer, revealing how undiscovered music left behind continues his legacy almost two years later.
As she prepares to release No Lube So Rude, her first album in a decade, the Canadian dance-punk icon will answer your questions
Whether crowdsurfing inside a giant condom or singing alongside a vulva-headed dancer, Peaches has left us with some indelible on-stage images over the years – and there are set to be a few new ones as she goes on tour and releases her first album in a decade. As she does so, she’ll join us to answer your questions.
Peaches, AKA Merrill Nisker, emerged from Toronto’s underground scene in the late 1990s – her peers included Feist, her flatmate above a sex shop – but really came to fame in the early 00s after she moved to Berlin. Her debut EP, Lovertits, was a cherished item on the era’s electroclash scene but it was the a joyous, profane dance-punk track Fuck the Pain Away, from her debut album The Teaches of Peaches, that really took her into the mainstream.
Official Trump social media accounts have been using The Life of a Showgirl snippets to promote his agenda. Why has Swift, who once wanted ‘to be on the right side of history’, said nothing?
In the last two weeks, the Trump administration has used music from Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, in three posts on social media. The first, shared by the official White House account on TikTok, was a patriotic slide show of images set to lead single The Fate of Ophelia. As Swift sings “pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes”, the video cuts to pictures of the US flag, President Trump, the vice-president, JD Vance, and the first and second ladies. The second and third were posted by Team Trump, the official account for the Trump Campaign. One, set to Father Figure, riffs on the lyric “this empire belongs to me” with the caption “this empire belongs to @President Donald J Trump”, while the other, celebrating Melania Trump winning something called the Patriot of the year award, is soundtracked by Opalite.
The Trump administration has found itself in dicey waters for using popular music in the past. The White Stripes and the estate of Isaac Hayes have both attempted to sue the administration for using their music without permission, while artists including Celine Dion, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Abba and Foo Fighters have released statements demanding Trump stop using their songs at campaign rallies and public appearances. Most recently, Olivia Rodrigo condemned the administration after the official Department of Homeland Security and White House Instagram account used her song All-American Bitch on a video promoting its controversial deportation efforts (the song was later removed by Instagram).
Deals between media conglomerates and tech companies serve both sets of interests, while leaving artists by the wayside
The world’s biggest music company is now in the AI business. Last year, Universal Music Group (UMG), alongside labels including Warner Records and Sony Music Entertainment sued two AI music startups for allegedly using their recordings to train text-to-music models without permission.
But last month, UMG announced a deal with one of the defendants, Udio, to create an AI music platform. Their joint press release offered assurances that the label will commit to “do what’s right by [UMG’s] artists”. However, one advocacy group, the Music Artists Coalition, responded with the statement: “We’ve seen this before – everyone talks about ‘partnership’, but artists end up on the sidelines with scraps.”
Alexander Avila is a video essayist, writer and researcher
Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys star in a taut psychological two-hander, and the Nobel prize winner delivers another miracle. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews
From Taylor Swift’s fiancé Travis Kelce to your neighbour the wellness guru, the influence of podcasters is all pervasive. Once the domain of esteemed broadcasters, the punditry pulpit has shifted inexorably from sterile newsroom to digital living room. Read More
The celebrated American mezzo-soprano has graced the world’s top opera houses, but is equally passionate about performing to first-timers – and inmates
American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato apologises for the bed hair as we chat via zoom from Tasmania, where she’s preparing a series of concerts to mark her first time performing in Australia. “I’m windswept”, she laughs as she pats down her signature spiky blond hair. “I’m having a week of vacation, which is rare for me.”
Downtime for DiDonato is made rarer by a punishing touring schedule that sees her perform around the globe in recitals showcasing her extraordinary vocal technique, while juggling major roles in classical and contemporary opera. She’s a regular at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and has sung in the world’s top opera houses, including Milan’s La Scala and Covent Garden in London.
With his murder conviction overturned, the Jamaican star is back performing. He talks about his illness, regrets, and how he felt about dancehall going global while he was behind bars
There’s a moment when I’m interviewing Vybz Kartel in the courtyard of the Four Seasons hotel in Tower Bridge, London, and the UK government emergency alert test rings on my phone. He is panicked by it and jumps up. “Me ready fi run you know!” he says, which has us both laughing.
It is a funny moment, but also a jolting one considering that it arrives in the middle of him discussing the lasting psychological effects of prison. Kartel, 49, real name Adidja Palmer, had been incarcerated across different institutions in Jamaica following his conviction for the 2011 murder of his associate Clive “Lizard” Williams. Following a lengthy appeal process, he was released in July last year after the ruling was overturned by the UK privy council (which is the final court of appeal for Jamaica due to the nation being a former British colony).
Overpowering, explosive and intense, the trio’s contemporary form of psychedelia is rebooted for the troubled, disturbing climate of 2025
From Brighton Recommended if you like Osees, Ty Segall, the noisier bits of King Gizzard Up next Currently working on a debut album for release next year.
A city with its own psych festival, and indeed a gig promotion company called Acid Box, Brighton has no shortage of lysergic left-field rock bands. But while most of their local contemporaries tend to the more recumbent end of the psychedelic spectrum, Oral Habit deal in what they call “the ear-rattling psychic dream of choked-up acid punks”, a sound that feels overpowering, explosive and intense: you could say it’s more closely aligned to the disoriented racket of mid-60s freakbeat than the pie-eyed beatitudes of the Summer of Love; equally you could suggest it’s a very contemporary form of psychedelia, rebooted for the troubled, disturbing climate of 2025.
Singer-songwriter revered in Brazil for founding the Clube da Esquina collective and releasing two landmark albums of the 1970s
The year of 1972 was an extraordinary one for the young Brazilian singer, guitarist and songwriter Lô Borges. Along with his friend Milton Nascimento, he created one of the most celebrated albums in Brazilian music history, Clube da Esquina, featuring many of his compositions. In the same year he also released his first solo album, which gained similar recognition as a Brazilian classic. Borges, who has died aged 73, may not have achieved Nascimento’s international celebrity, but he played a key role in transforming his country’s music.
(Otoroku) The British free-jazz pianist Pat Thomas leads his quartet through a powerful fusion of Sufi inspiration, rhythmic intensity and improvisational fire
In April 2022, the wild and inquisitively wilful British free-jazz keyboardist and composer Pat Thomas was improvising with his eyes shut in the company of his quartet أحمد [Ahmed] at Glasgow’s Glue Factory. The music was dedicated to the 1950s-70s legacy of the late Art Blakey and Thelonious Monk bassist, oud player and early global-music pioneer Ahmed Abdul-Malik, the inspiration for the group’s work. When Thomas emerged from his trance, he was astonished to hear that an ecstatic crowd had been dancing the night away around him.
He shouldn’t have been surprised. Since أحمد [Ahmed]’s inception, their collective heat has fused abstract improv and groove music from all over the world: Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, dub, jungle, electronics, and the 1990s free-improv of Derek Bailey, Lol Coxhill and drummer Steve Noble have all inspired Thomas. Saxophonist Seymour Wright has absorbed the sax vocabulary of Evan Parker and the insights into collective improv and avant-swing of AMM drummer and teacher Eddie Prévost. Eclectic partners Joel Grip (bass) and Antonin Gerbal (drums) power and expand these infectious, volatile energies.
(Shelter Press) The New York poet and multi-instrumentalist uses granular synthesis alongside their ‘dysfluency’ to craft a moving meditation on listening, identity and freedom
In JJJJJerome Ellis’s magical compositions, their stutter is a guiding light. Pauses and repetitions spark new life, new ideas, new possibilities, as Vesper Sparrow explores their “dysfluency” in the context of Black musical traditions. The Grenadian-Jamaican-American artist and former Yale lecturer is heady, intellectual company: in the manner of Alvin Lucier, they gently talk the listener through the sonic and political reverberations of their work. “The stutter … (cc)can be a musical instrument,” Ellis announces, before an exhilarating rush of tiny noises – made from hammered dulcimer, flute, piano, voices – fizz into being.
Fuelled by a loathing of Trump, the war in Gaza and anger at ‘the same old chauvinistic crap’, the 75-year-old – who cut her teeth with Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins and more – has no plans to stop protesting
When I speak to Dee Dee Bridgewater, the jazz singer is preparing for a concert that evening in Des Moines, Iowa, performing classy selections from the Great American Songbook. But even though she has also recorded this material for her recent album Elemental, Bridgewater is not really in the mood. “I just don’t feel like it’s the time to be doing love songs and whimsical songs from the 1920s and 30s,” she says. “They’re beautiful, but there’s some kind of spirit and energy pushing me to sing songs saying: people, we have to protect our democracy.”
Bridgewater is one of American jazz’s foremost voices. Capable of crooning and confronting, the two-time Grammy winner has a career that spans six decades and has never stopped evolving. She cut her teeth sharing the stage with several of jazz’s greatest band leaders – Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon – before branching out into acting; singing pop and disco; and working out of France, the UK and Mali, always with a determination to create on her own terms.
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