↩ Accueil

Vue lecture

‘If you want to nuke your life, do crack’: raw Courtney Love documentary hits Sundance

Antiheroine, a new film about the musician’s tumultuous life and career, premiered at the festival with some frank admissions but the star not present

A new documentary about the gen X icon and “queen of grunge” Courtney Love caused a stir at the Sundance film festival – without the legendary Hole frontwoman in attendance.

The musician and actor, now 61, was supposed to attend the premiere of Antiheroine, a new retrospective documentary by Edward Lovelace and James Hall that traces her storied life and career, but did not make it for undisclosed reasons. “We’re really gutted that Courtney couldn’t make it tonight to celebrate this moment with us all,” said Lovelace in his introduction for the film’s premiere in Park City, Utah, calling Love “so unfiltered, so truthful”.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Edward Lovelace

© Photograph: Edward Lovelace

© Photograph: Edward Lovelace

  •  

Infinite Icon: A Visual Memoir review – Paris Hilton’s act of self-love shows there’s nothing behind the mask

A look behind the scenes of the star’s second album turns out to reveal exactly what you’d expect, at arduous length

Paris Hilton here presents us with an unbearable act of docu-self-love, avowedly a behind-the-scenes study of her second studio album, Infinite Icon, and where she’s at as a musician, survivor and mom. But maybe there is, in fact, nothing behind the scenes; judging by this, the scenes are all there is: Insta-exhibitionism, empty phrases and show.

Hilton’s second album no doubt has its admirers and detractors, and her fans are perfectly happy with it. But this film, for which she is executive producer, is an indiscriminate non-curation of narcissism and torpid self-importance that seems to go on and on and on for ever; the longest two hours of anyone’s life, finally signing off with a splodge of uninteresting and unedited concert footage.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Publicity image

© Photograph: Publicity image

© Photograph: Publicity image

  •  

‘Fascists threatened us but we always took them on’: the anarchic Bradford club still fighting after 45 years

A new book and podcast tell the story of a 1 in 12, a venue that used community and artistic passion as bulwarks against poverty and grim politics. Its founders and key acts recall gigs, plays and pranks on the NME

“Things were getting grim,” says Gary Cavanagh, reflecting on Bradford in the early 1980s. “There was a hell of a lot of unemployment, and people were thrown on the scrap heap.”

Cavanagh was working for Bradford’s claimants union in 1981, helping the city’s poor and unemployed get benefits, when a government report stated that one in 12 dole recipients were defrauding the state. So he and some friends reclaimed this statistic – which they thought was ludicrous – as an identity. “We became the 1 in 12 Club,” he says.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: courtesy Andy Bryant

© Photograph: courtesy Andy Bryant

© Photograph: courtesy Andy Bryant

  •  

Why Max Richter’s Hamnet needle-drop left me cold | Tom Service on music

In a new weekly column about the world of classical music, Tom Service bemoans Hollywood turning pieces into slop through overuse. Plus: Philip Glass withdraws his symphony from the Kennedy Center

Back in 2008, Transport for London came up with a ruse to dispel antisocial behaviour: it piped classical music into supposedly problematic stations in the crime hotspots of south London. I think that was when I realised just how far the association of classical music with relaxing affect instead of real emotion had gone. Once an entire genre has become associated with relaxification, it’s enough for you to hear the sound of an orchestra and think, “This isn’t for me”. Whatever its BPM, classical music will only be a backdrop, the sound of luxury goods, the sound of cultural anaesthetic.

The playlist included the finale of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony – music that is obsessive and wild, the sound of barely controlled hysteria, full of harmonic grind and rhythmic assault. This radical and Dionysian music, that was literally made to push communities of orchestras and listeners to their extremes in the early 19th century, was being reduced to calming and inoffensive aural wallpaper.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: 2025 Focus Features LLC./PA

© Photograph: 2025 Focus Features LLC./PA

© Photograph: 2025 Focus Features LLC./PA

  •  

Lucinda Williams review – Americana legend brilliantly rails against a world out of balance

Limelight, Belfast
At 73, the lodestar of Americana still writes with urgency, as the patient force of her band sends the music grooving skywards

‘Thanks for being receptive to my complaining,” Lucinda Williams says late on, deadpan, after a run of songs circling power and consequence. Outside, Storm Chandra keeps the streets jumpy. Inside Belfast’s Limelight, a sold-out crowd sits on fold-up seats for a show shifted from Mandela Hall at short notice, the room oddly calm for a venue known for sweat and shoving.

Williams is a lodestar in the broad galaxy of music still called Americana, and two days after turning 73, she has the authority of a multiple Grammy winner who writes with urgency. She is living with the after-effects of a stroke, stepping on and off stage with care, yet once she’s behind the mic she radiates resolve. If anything, the voice sounds newly burnished; the phrasing more deliberate, the vibrato catching the light.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Paul Faith/The Guardian

© Photograph: Paul Faith/The Guardian

© Photograph: Paul Faith/The Guardian

  •  

TikTok virality gives Jeff Buckley his first US Top 100 hit 29 years after his death

Lover, You Should Have Come Over enters charts at No 97, after becoming popular on social media platform

Jeff Buckley has achieved his first US Hot 100 hit single, 29 years after his death, with Lover, You Should Have Come Over at No 97 this week.

TikTok virality is behind the success, as a new generation of listeners discover Buckley’s spirited, romantic songwriting and pair it with videos on the social media platform. TikTok videos don’t count towards US chart positions, but viral trends drive listeners towards songs on streaming services that do count.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Dave Tonge/Getty Images

© Photograph: Dave Tonge/Getty Images

© Photograph: Dave Tonge/Getty Images

  •  

Why would anyone buy Lily Allen’s haunted house? I have an inkling ... | Polly Hudson

The Brooklyn townhouse is filled with spectres of her ill-fated marriage to David Harbour. But perhaps the buyer has some creative ideas

How long a minute is depends which side of the bathroom door you’re on. Now it appears that how much a $1m loss matters depends how eager you are for your business to be concluded.

That’s pretty eager apparently – and unsurprisingly – if you’re Lily Allen and David Harbour. The former couple have just accepted $7m for the Brooklyn townhouse they listed for $8m in October.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Gambino Group

© Photograph: Gambino Group

© Photograph: Gambino Group

  •  

Gonna be golden? Who will – and should – win the big awards at the 2026 Grammys

The top categories are stacked with quality, from Bad Bunny to Kendrick Lamar, Chappell Roan and K-pop hits – but here are the artists who most deserve to triumph

Bad Bunny – DTMF
Sabrina Carpenter – Manchild
Doechii – Anxiety
Billie Eilish – Wildflower
Kendrick Lamar & SZA – Luther
Lady Gaga – Abracadabra
Chappell Roan – The Subway
Rosé & Bruno Mars – APT.

Continue reading...

© Composite: Getty

© Composite: Getty

© Composite: Getty

  •  

David Bowie and the Search for Life, Death and God by Peter Ormerod review – the making of a modern saint

An exhilarating account of Bowie’s spirituality and the quasi-religious nature of his work, from Space Oddity to Blackstar

It has become a tired cliche among fans to say that everything went wrong in the world after Bowie died in 2016. It also misses the point: rather than being one of the last avatars of a liberal order that has crumbled around our ears, Bowie prophesied the mayhem that has replaced it.

In his later years, he thought that we had entered a zone of chaos and fragmentation. This is what allowed him to be so prescient about the internet – not its promise, but its menace. There is no plan and no order. There is just disaster and social collapse. Those looking for reassurance should not listen to Bowie (please listen to something, anything, else). His world, from Space Oddity through to the background violence of The Next Day and Blackstar, was always drowned or destroyed or incinerated: “This ain’t rock’n’roll, this is genocide” as he exclaims at the beginning of Diamond Dogs.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Nicky J Sims/Redferns

© Photograph: Nicky J Sims/Redferns

© Photograph: Nicky J Sims/Redferns

  •  

Placebo make theatre debut with score for Brecht production by Royal Shakespeare Company

Alt-rockers will score Hitler allegory The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, with Mark Gatiss in the title role

Alt-rockers Placebo are set to collaborate with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) by scoring a new production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.

Written in 1941, the play is about a Chicago mobster who seeks to control the city’s vegetable trade through corruption, intimidation and violence: a clear allegory of how Adolf Hitler had swept to power during the 1930s.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Mads Perch

© Photograph: Mads Perch

© Photograph: Mads Perch

  •  

Marilyn Manson: US judge reopens sexual assault case against musician

Singer’s former assistant alleges he sexually assaulted her when she worked for Manson Records between 2010–2011

A judge in Los Angeles has reinstated a lawsuit against heavy metal star Marilyn Manson under a new law enabling old sexual assault cases to be heard in court.

The lawsuit, filed in May 2021 by a former assistant to the musician, had been dismissed in December because it exceeded the statute of limitations, a maximum time period for initiating legal proceedings after the related events took place.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

© Photograph: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

© Photograph: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

  •  
❌