The K-pop group has also announced a 2026-2027 world tour

In the week that we mourn the death of the Guardian’s long-serving classical music critic, composers, performers, colleagues and others who knew and worked with him pay tribute to a writer whose passing is a huge loss to the music world

I owe Andrew Clements big time. He wrote so positively about my music early in my career and the last article he wrote was singling out my opera Festen for special praise. He did seem to go off me a bit in mid career but he was such a serious and thoughtful critic that I often agreed with him. I got to know him very well in the late 90s as he was the partner of the librettist and translator Amanda Holden. He had such a broad knowledge of music and a great enthusiasm for new music which he wrote and spoke about with such warmth and humour. We spent many evenings in Highbury talking about Stravinsky, politics and Arsenal football club – he cared about the most important things in life. Mark-Anthony Turnage, composer

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New record features collaborations with Gary Barlow, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, and Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi

The woodwind player who taught André 3000 music theory releases his searching debut album next month

From Los Angeles
Recommend if you like Miguel Atwood Ferguson, Shabaka Hutchings’s flute music, the Coltranes
Up next Debut album And So It Is released 13 February

For woodwind players, breath is everything: the lifeforce of artistry, the thing that furnishes sound with personality. But a few years ago, the Los Angeles saxophonist Aaron Shaw realised he was becoming increasingly breathless. In 2023, aged 27, he was diagnosed with bone marrow failure, meaning he wasn’t producing enough oxygen-carrying red blood cells. A change of approach was required.

(A$AP Rocky Recordings)
Now a father of three and burgeoning actor, Rocky finally comes back to music with his strongest album since his 2013 debut – though there’s plenty of flab

It has been eight years since A$AP Rocky, once and future king of New York rap, released an album. In the world of hip-hop, where even A-list stars such as Rocky’s friend and collaborator Tyler, the Creator are prone to releasing multiple albums a year, this is a lifetime. In the time since Rocky released his third album, 2018’s Testing, Kanye West has rebranded as a born-again Christian, swerved to the right and released five albums. Rocky hasn’t been sitting around: he’s been a press mainstay, thanks to his relationship with pop superstar Rihanna, with whom he now has three children, and last year was acquitted of firing a gun at a former friend, dodging up to 24 years in prison. He has also found acclaim as an actor, starring opposite Rose Byrne in the lauded dark comedy If I Had Legs I’d Kick You and Denzel Washington in Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest.

Aside from a few one-off singles, such as the Tame Impala collaboration Sundress, Rocky has released music in fits and starts in recent years. (In terms of mainstream stars, perhaps only Rocky’s romantic partner outpaces him when it comes to leaving fans waiting: it has been a decade since Rihanna’s last record.) Testing yielded the Skepta-featuring hit Praise the Lord (Da Shine), but otherwise fell flat with mainstream audiences and critics alike, lacking the dynamism and potent charisma of his breakout albums. That album seemed to leave Rocky at a crossroads. Would it serve him best to continue exploring its slipshod experimentalism, or to make an attempt at retrenchment, and return to the more straightforward music that made him famous?

Rock musician has spoken out against festival founder Michael Eavis on a number of occasions

(InFiné)
The composers’ first collaborative album ebbs from epic, cinematic heights to delicate and dreamy lullabies

After years of touring together, Los Angeles-based composers Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore have developed what the former refers to as a “musical telepathy”. Tragic Magic, the pair’s first collaborative album, evidences this bond: born out of a short series of improv sessions in Paris, it’s a wonderfully immersive set of new age and ambient tracks, where Barwick’s airy, reverbed vocals and atmospheric synth washes interweave with, and accentuate, Lattimore’s twinkling harp.

The album sessions took place shortly after last year’s California wildfires, which the two musicians experienced as residents. Accordingly, tragedy and hope cut through the dreamlike haze of these unfurling compositions. With its delicate harp loop and hushed whispers, opener Perpetual Adoration is as sweet and dreamy as a lullaby, while the gorgeous, moving Haze With No Haze carries a quiet desperation in the brittle, staccato melody and Barwick’s yearning high register. As always, her lyrics are indiscernible, words blurring into texture and shapeless whispers, but teem with feeling.

(Rough Trade)
The duo’s 13th album finds Jason Williamson as baffled and infuriated as ever at the state of the world, with help from some unexpected collaborators

Over the course of a dozen albums, Jason Williamson (words) and Andrew Fearn (music) have journeyed from DIY to the album chart Top 5 by providing a gut-punchingly bleak and amusingly absurdist commentary on the financial crash, austerity, Brexit and the rise of the far right. On their 13th LP, Williamson again convinces in the role of a potty-mouthed bystander, baffled and infuriated by what goes on around him, whether empty lives in the digital age (“Weights and wanking / Hard bodies and phone lights / That’s all we got”), Trump’s US (“Maga’s off their tits”) or minor daily irritants: “Lazy dog walkers on short walks, mate, wanker!”

However, developments here should gently broaden their appeal. Williamson displays a welcome new vulnerability on the harrowing Gina Was, about a childhood incident. Meanwhile, Fearn is subtly developing his production, venturing beyond electro-punk to use classical strings on Double Diamond and a broader range of collaborators. The combination of Willliamson, Game of Thrones actor Gwendoline Christie’s furious rap and Big Special’s David Bowie-ish crooning on The Good Life makes for one of the most hauntingly catchy things they’ve done.

Women allege Spanish singer subjected them ‘to inappropriate touching, insults and humiliation … in atmosphere of control’

The Spanish singer Julio Iglesias has broken his silence over allegations that he sexually abused two women who worked in his Caribbean mansions, saying he has never “abused, coerced or disrespected any woman”.

The 82-year-old entertainer, whose career spans six decades, had been accused by two female former employees who allege they had been sexually assaulted and subjected “to inappropriate touching, insults and humiliation … in an atmosphere of control and constant harassment”.

The title is loaded with meaning for all Koreans, and will give fans globally an insight into the folksong culture that shaped the world’s biggest K-pop group

BTS announced their long-awaited comeback and world tour this week, with their first full-length album in nearly four years set for release on 20 March.

On Friday, the K-pop group revealed its title – Arirang – a choice that carries profound emotional weight for Koreans. So what does it mean, what is its significance for the Koreas, and why did BTS choose it?

An appetite for self-destruction left Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible and Rat Scabies hugely influential but financially insecure. They’re back with a big show and their first album together since 1995

‘There isn’t one songwriter, and so the flavour of the band is always going to change,” says Dave Vanian, reflecting on 50 years of the group of which he has been the sole constant member, the Damned. “Captain Sensible is a great fan of syrupy pop music and prog and glam rock. So his writing is very poppy, melodic and quite wonderful. My writing is more melodramatic, more theatrical. And Rat Scabies was a mod who really loved bands like the Who. That melting pot would either not work at all, or be an absolute firecracker.” As the history of the Damned attests, it has, on occasion, been both.

There have been three break-ups: in the late 70s, late 80s and early 90s; Sensible and Scabies have had repeated spells out of the band; Scabies only started working with them again in 2022, after 27 years away. “The rift was really between him and Captain,” says Vanian, though at one time or another, it seems as though each of the three principals has been in a relationship-ending rage with one or both of the others.

Former Take That singer is on top form for his first proper album in a decade, throwing in a Gary Barlow reunion just for the hell of it

The US pop singer navigates the trauma of early fame and the pain of a recent breakup on this sultry, bold third album

(Columbia)
Framed as the music Williams wanted to make post-Take That, Britpop surpasses pastiche and swerves unpredictably. Homoerotic paean to Morrissey, anyone?

The arrival of Robbie Williams’s 13th album has been a complicated business. It was announced in May 2025 and was supposed to come out in October, when its title would have chimed with the 90s nostalgia sparked by the Oasis reunion. Williams spent the summer engaging in promotion, unveiling fake Britpop-themed blue plaques around London and staging a press conference at the Groucho Club. There was a launch gig at storied Camden venue Dingwalls, at which he performed not just his new album in full, but his 1997 solo debut Life Thru a Lens.

It was a bold choice, given that Life Thru a Lens initially threatened to derail his solo career: at the time, the now nakedly obvious supernova hits Angels and Let Me Entertain You were overlooked while people criticised Williams’s muddled attempts to fit in with, well, Britpop. On stage at Dingwalls, he made the surprise announcement that the album now wasn’t coming out until mid-February, admitting with winning candour that he didn’t want to compete with Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl. Now it’s suddenly appeared, without explanation, two weeks into January: presumably because Williams will have fewer competitors in the albums chart this week, giving him a greater chance at breaking the record he currently jointly holds with the Beatles for the most UK No 1 albums ever.

The Police frontman’s ex-bandmates Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland are arguing they are also owed a portion of his income from streaming and download sales of the band’s music

‘Iconic performers’ will visit 10 European cities, as event reels from boycott over Israel’s 2026 participation

The Eurovision song contest will go on its first ever tour to celebrate its 70th anniversary, its organiser has said, as it reels from a boycott due to Israel’s participation.

Five countries have pulled out of the contest over Israel’s war in Gaza, leaving 35 to participate in the world’s biggest live televised music event – the fewest since entry was expanded in 2004.

‘Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally,’ Styles’s fourth album, will be released on 6 March

After a series of cryptic billboards teasing fans, the As It Was singer reveals the title and release date of his first record since 2022

After a brief teaser campaign in which billboards around the world promised “we belong together” and “see you very soon”, Harry Styles has announced his fourth solo album.

Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally will be released on 6 March. It was produced by Kid Harpoon, the British songwriter and producer who has worked on all of Styles’ previous albums. The artwork shows the 31-year-old pop star wearing sunglasses and ducking beneath a disco ball seemingly suspended from the night sky.

The Renaissance composer wrote hauntingly sublime music – and committed a grisly double murder before descending even further into psychosis. As a new stage work revisits his life, its director asks if art can be separated from artist

Carlo Gesualdo wrote some of the most darkly sublime music of the late Renaissance. He also savagely murdered his wife and her lover in their bed. Now be honest: which would you like to discuss first?

The art will always be secondary to the atrocity, however magnificent the madrigals and sacred music. Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, had been cuckolded by the Duke of Andria in a long-running tryst that had become the scuttlebutt at court. The premeditated double murder of 1590 was a truly grisly affair, concluding in the public display of their mutilated bodies on the steps of the palazzo for several days.