On her first album in a decade, Eyre stretches out on empowering pop tracks full of warmth and integrity

Prakazrel ‘Pras’ Michel was convicted in 2023 after a trial that included testimony from actor Leonardo DiCaprio and former US attorney general Jeff Sessions

The Grammy-winning rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of the Fugees has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for a case in which he was convicted of illegally funnelling millions of dollars in foreign contributions to former US president Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.

Michel, 52, declined to address the court before US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly sentenced him on Thursday.

Oscar-nominated star of two-part musical forced to cancel press stops as film is predicted to deliver year’s biggest box office opening

Ariana Grande has tested positive for Covid amid the whirlwind press tour for Wicked: For Good, precluding some promotional appearances in New York.

The Grammy award winner and Oscar nominee posted an Instagram story on Thursday captioned “moments before Covid” along with a photo from her appearance on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon from earlier this week. Grande, who plays Galinda/Glinda in the second part of Jon M Chu’s film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, will reportedly miss a few upcoming press appearances, including a slot on The Kelly Clarkson Show.

His love of ‘good northern soul and funk’ was always in evidence and had a lasting impact on alternative music

• Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield dies aged 63

• Mani: a life in pictures

By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a local cause of excitement in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely mentioned their most recent single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a more modest London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their performance was the big attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable state of affairs for most indie bands in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a far bigger and broader audience than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their cockily belligerent attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

(Berliner Philharmoniker)
Brahms’s Tragic Overture leaps to life while there is much interest in a careful reading of the composer’s First Symphony in this new recording from the Berlin Philharmonic with their chief conductor

The Berlin Philharmonic’s in-house label continues its mission to document chief conductor Kirill Petrenko’s considered interpretations of the classical canon. In this case, it’s Brahms’s First Symphony, captured live at the Philharmonie just two months ago, coupled with the Tragic Overture, recorded last year.

For this performance, Petrenko examined Meiningen Court Orchestra scores marked up with specific directions given by the composer himself. The results may strike some as interventionist, however there’s an organic momentum here that is hard to resist with a pronounced flexibility that, according to the excellent booklet essay, clarifies Brahms’s “furious struggle against the bar line”. Balance is impeccable, although solos seem over spotlighted at times by the recording engineers.

• Hunt backs Turning Point USA’s rival half-time show

• Goodell stands firm despite Trump-driven backlash

Gracie Hunt, the daughter of Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, is throwing her support behind Turning Point USA’s plan to stage an alternative Super Bowl half-time show, a direct counter to the NFL’s decision to feature Bad Bunny at Super Bowl LX.

Hunt said in an appearance on Fox News Channel’s The Will Cain Show on Tuesday that she “most definitely” backs Turning Point’s counter-programming effort, spearheaded by Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk. The NFL’s choice of Bad Bunny for the half-time show has attracted strong pushback from many on the right, who object to his criticism of Donald Trump and US immigration enforcement.

The daughter of the British composer Samuel made controversial choices that took her on a different path to her father’s activism. Ahead of the premiere recording of her piano concerto, its soloist looks at a musician who learned the hard way about ‘belonging’

Avril Coleridge-Taylor always felt the weight of her father’s legacy. As the daughter of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the most famous British composers of the early 20th century, Avril’s was a name enveloped in the long shadows of history.

Earlier this year, I sat with these shadows as I prepared to make the world premiere recording of Avril’s 1936 piano concerto with the BBC Philharmonic. With its impassioned harmonies, soulful lyricism and valiant rhythms, Avril’s work will grant new listeners fascinating insight into how she – a wartime composer, born in 1903 – conceived of her world as a woman of colour.

Ian Brown and Tim Burgess were among those to pay tribute to Mani, whose death was announced by his brother and nephew

• Alexis Petridis: ‘Mani’s writhing, relentless bass was the Stone Roses’ secret sauce – it taught indie kids how to dance’

• Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield: a life in pictures

Gary “Mani” Mounfield, best known as bassist of the Stone Roses and later a member of Primal Scream, has died aged 63. The cause of death has not been shared.

His brother Greg Mounfield posted the news on Facebook on Thursday: “It is with the heaviest of hearts that I have to announce the sad passing of my brother.” His nephew also shared the news.

Barclays Center, New York City

A rescheduled date, after an accident earlier this year, sees the 77-year-old take on sparkling form, regaling fans with tales and fan favourite anthems

Stevie Nicks would like to get the matter of her possible near-death experience out of the way as soon as possible. A few months ago, the Fleetwood Mac singer and rock legend suffered an accident that forced her to postpone a string of tour dates, including this show in Brooklyn which was rescheduled from August to November. “I was airborne,” she recalls of the incident around five minutes after hitting the stage tonight. “I thought: ‘Is it over?’” A voice at the back of the arena lets out an animalistic yell. “No!!!!”

It’s a safe bet that everyone in the 17,000-capacity Barclays Center arena shares the sentiment. Tonight, a noticeably varied audience of fans has shown out for Nicks’s rescheduled date, ranging from witchcore-styled teens to longtime fans who retain a love for the 70s’ bohemian style as well as the decade’s social consciousness: the venue is sold out of veggie burgers.

As she releases music from her upcoming soundtrack to Wuthering Heights, we count down the best of her frank, futuristic tracks

Such was the extent of fan involvement in the How I’m Feeling Now album that the title of Claws was decided by online vote. The opposite of the album’s more fraught depictions of lockdown, it celebrates being trapped with someone you love, although the clanking rhythm track adds a vague sense of unease.

Musician’s death was announced by his brother on social media

Motown singer has denied all allegations against him

The ‘2024 period piece’ stars the Grammy-winning musician with Kylie Jenner, Rachel Sennott and Alexander Skarsgård

Charli xcx’s 2026 big screen onslaught is set to kick off with The Moment, a mockumentary starring the musician as a self-described “hell version” of herself.

The film, based on an idea by the Grammy winner, is fiction but Charli has called it “the realest depiction of the music industry that I’ve ever seen”.

(Deutsche Grammophon)
Olafsson’s account of Beethoven’s Op 109 is one of the most beautiful on record, the centrepiece of a recording that links the composer to Bach and Schubert

Disinclined to follow the herd and record Beethoven’s three final piano sonatas as a job lot, Víkingur Ólafsson has chosen to circle one of them, No 30 in E major, Op 109, locating it in a musical timeline that reflects both the composer’s past and the Viennese milieu of the early 18th century.

For Ólafsson, looking backwards means turning to Bach, whose musical fingerprints he detects all over late Beethoven. The latter’s uninhibited invention, he argues, has its roots firmly in the baroque with its improvisatory elements and enthusiasm for the dance.

Musician’s Brixton and Dublin performances go viral after she performs Sinéad O’Connor’s anti-racism anthem Black Boys on Mopeds

The UK and Ireland are entering a “dark time”, according to the singer Joy Crookes, who said the influence of far-right ideology on mainstream politics was comparable to the 1970s when the National Front was at its peak.

Crookes, who has just played two sold-out shows at the O2 Academy in Brixton, said the recent wave of nationalism and the far-right march through central London in September made her feel unsafe in the UK.

(Warp)
Made using a cache of Y2K sample CDs that Daniel Lopatin salvaged from the internet’s fringes, the kaleidoscopic result speaks to contemporary information overload

It should come as no surprise that the new album by Oneohtrix Point Never comes with a concept attached. They usually do. When not composing film soundtracks, or producing an eclectic range of other artists – the Weeknd, Anohni, Charli xcx, Soccer Mommy – Daniel Lopatin has released a string of acclaimed works, each with their own overarching idea.

The “hyperreal world music” of 2010’s Returnal was inspired by the fact that people now see more of the world than ever without actually leaving their homes. In 2015, Garden of Delete had an accompanying origin story about an adolescent humanoid alien called Ezra; 2018’s Age Of imagined artificial intelligence attempting to recreate human culture after humans themselves had been rendered extinct. Lopatin also has an all-consuming obsession with nostalgia and forgotten pop cultural artefacts: he’s made albums based around warped loops of 80s pop hits, preset sounds on obsolete synthesisers and recordings of US radio stations changing formats, discarding the musical genres in which they previously specialised in favour of the current vogue.