Parton announced Dean’s death at 82 on Monday

The star has spent a decade in a jazz and soft-rock haze, her newer pop efforts oddly anonymous for an artist once so electrifying. Her new album ‘Mayhem’ does feel like a return to form – but it’s her recent comments on her regained confidence as an artist that sound most promising, writes Adam White

After a few years of peddling to millennial nostalgia or boomer rock, the organisers of the Worthy Farm festival are placing their bets on a new generation of future stars. Hallelujah, says Roisin O’Connor

Music fans still have a chance of seeing Olivia Rodrigo, The 1975 and Neil Young headline this year’s festival

‘Many more acts and attractions still to be announced’ said the Festival

British rock band The 1975 and pop star Olivia Rodrigo will each make their debut as headliners

Charli xcx, the Prodigy and Loyle Carner will headline the Other stage, with first-time sets from Alanis Morissette, Doechii and En Vogue

This year’s Glastonbury set will feature two first-time headliners in the British pop-rock group the 1975 and the US pop-punk songwriter Olivia Rodrigo.

The band, led by Matty Healy, will top the Friday night billing on the Pyramid stage. Rodrigo will perform on Sunday. In 2022, the Drivers License singer performed on the Other stage, a set that boasted a guest spot from Lily Allen and an excoriation of the US supreme court following the overturning of Roe v Wade a day earlier.

Family announces on Facebook that the musician died in New York City after a long illness

Roy Ayers, the jazz-funk pioneer whose hit Everybody Loves the Sunshine has become a summer staple across the globe, has died aged 84.

A post on the musician’s official Facebook page said: “It is with great sadness that the family of legendary vibraphonist, composer and producer Roy Ayers announce his passing which occurred on March 4th, 2025 in New York City after a long illness.

Musician died on Tuesday after long illness

Musician said she never claimed to be Canadian, following an investigation that called her purported Indigenous heritage into question

‘I haven't been through a cyclone before. I can check this off my bucket list for sure’

Lashes were part of agreement to end criminal case against Yarrahi over song against Iran’s strict dress code for women

Mehdi Yarrahi, a well-known Iranian protest singer who spoke out against the country’s strict dress code for women, has been given 74 lashes as part of an agreement to end a criminal case against him.

Yarrahi was initially convicted in January 2024 of acting unlawfully by releasing a protest song in September 2023 entitled Your Headscarf (Roo Sarito) on the first anniversary of the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising.

Written off in her youth, the unstoppable Belize-born musician has overcome indifference, mockery and abuse to become one of Britain’s most acclaimed composers. You have to hang onto your own worth, she says

For at least half her life, the Belize-born British composer Errollyn Wallen, appointed last year to the title of Master of the King’s Music, has steered herself through a web of invisible rules. Classical composers, dead or alive, were male and white. Their Black and female counterparts were derided or ignored, excised from history. Then, slowly but definitively, things changed, and the institutions that used to give her the cold shoulder started to open up to the music they had dismissed. “People always want to put labels on things, on people,” Wallen says, without rancour. “Let them. You have to hang on to your own worth, see what needs doing. I was written off young, but then found a way through. There’s still so much work to be done.”

Wallen’s musical range is ambitious, eclectic, often immediately appealing and expressive. Her huge catalogue includes works for ballet, brass bands, orchestras, choirs, solo singers, duos, pianists, chamber ensembles; her 22 operas make her almost as prolific as Verdi and nearly twice as productive as Puccini. She was the first Black woman to have music performed in the Proms, in 1998. Now among the most performed of living composers, she can’t quite remember how many world premieres she has in the next few weeks (after a recount, she decides it’s five), including two on the same night in different venues. She also has a new album out later this month: Errollyn Wallen Orchestral Works, played by the BBC Concert Orchestra. By any measure this is an achievement.

Singer Miriana Conte told to change title and lyrics owing to suggestive play on Maltese word for ‘singing’

Malta’s contestant at this year’s Eurovision contest will have to change the title and lyrics of her song owing to the phonetic resemblance between the Maltese word for “singing” and the C-word, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has ruled.

Miriana Conte, 23, will represent Malta at the five-day music event in Basel, Switzerland, on 13 to 17 May after winning the Maltese song contest last month with her song Kant.

Ex-Migos member plans Moscow arena concert despite his label’s parent company Universal halting operations there

The rapper Offset has announced an arena concert in Moscow despite a boycott from his label.

The former member of Migos, whose hits included Bad and Boujee, shared an Instagram story to reveal the news. He will play at the MTS Live Hall on 18 April after completing a solo tour last year in the US.

The frontman of the J Geils Band has had an extraordinary life, living and working with celebrities along the way, detailed in a fascinating new book

During the peak of the pandemic, when many musicians spent their time writing songs, Peter Wolf did nothing but read. During that prolonged period of isolation and uncertainty, he comforted himself by devouring shelves full of books, including memoirs penned by other musicians. “After a while all those memoirs started to seem the same,” he said. “And I came to the realization that, unless you were a huge fan of that musician, the details of their story wouldn’t seem particularly captivating.”

Such thoughts had a major impact on Wolf when he was approached to tell his own story. As a result, his new book, titled Waiting on the Moon, threads the outlines of a memoir – highlighted by his years fronting the hit group J Geils Band – through a host of colorful anecdotes about what he describes as the “artists, poets, drifters, grifters and goddesses” he met along the way.

Singer behind ‘The Lady in Red’ said you need ‘a neck of brass’ to survive the music industry: ‘But it’s a fantastic life’

‘I haven't been through a cyclone before. I can check this off my bucket list for sure’

The trio’s playful mix of heft and traditional instrumentation sent them viral. But they’re also confronting racism and rape culture, and struggling in a Bollywood-dominated music industry

‘We’re serving a really nice dish called metal tikka masala,” jokes Bloodywood guitarist Jayant Bhadula. “It’s metal but with so many spices that it’ll overwhelm your senses. You will headbang and you will end up dancing with us.”

This is the tongue-in-cheek mission statement of one of metal’s most original bands. Formed in 2016, Bloodywood flavour the conventions of nu-metal with traditional Indian instruments, meaning their songs are as likely to feature crunching riffs as they are the flute or the dhol. The trio – bulked out to a six-piece on stage – became viral sensations covering pop songs and alternative hits on YouTube before writing original material. From there, their fortunes soared. Their first ever gig was at German metal festival Wacken Open Air in 2019. Four years later they drew a massive crowd to the UK’s Download festival, despite the tricky task of opening the main stage early on a Sunday. More recently, their song Dana-Dan was used in a pivotal action sequence in Dev Patel’s action thriller Monkey Man.

Musician said she never claimed to be Canadian, following an investigation that called her purported Indigenous heritage into question

Woman who accused the rapper and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs of raping her in 2000 dropped her lawsuit last month

The rapper was interviewed on the red carpet during the Vanity Fair Oscar Party on Sunday

Taime Downe’s fiancée, Kimberly Burch, missing after fall from cruise ship that departed Miami on Sunday