Category Archives: Pop and rock

Eurovision winners Måneskin: ‘Cocaine? Damiano barely drinks beer!’

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Already multiplatinum in their native Italy, the swaggering rock quartet now have two singles in the UK chart. They discuss their rise to success – and that drug-taking allegation

Before their momentous Eurovision victory with Zitti e Buoni, placing Italian rock back on the world stage and earning praise from Simon Le Bon and Miley Cyrus; before a baseless accusation of snorting cocaine almost veered into a full-blown diplomatic crisis; and before their post-win ping-pong tournament became a twee secondary narrative, the Italian band Måneskin had already raised eyebrows in Rotterdam, this year’s host city.

After a rehearsal session ended late, says the bassist, Victoria De Angelis, they were parched – but realised there was no drinking water in their hotel rooms. “We went to the hotel reception, but they said there was no water around,” De Angelis says. “So we made it into the kitchen and took some.”

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Martina Topley-Bird: ‘I wasn’t trying to be famous. I was embarrassingly earnest about being authentic’

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The vocalist breaks her long silence to talk about grieving for her daughter, her pioneering work with Tricky on Maxinquaye and finally making an album she’s 98% happy with…

Martina Topley-Bird is struggling with her voice today. “It was awful last night,” she says, croakily, down the line from her home in Valencia. “My first interview in 11 years and then this happens!” As it turns out, Topley-Bird’s will hold out for well over an hour. But it won’t always take her to where she wants to go. She’s agreed to an interview to promote Forever I Wait, her first album since 2010’s Some Place Simple, but she doesn’t enjoy talking about herself; she’s fully aware of her tendency to let conversations drift, leave sentences unfinished, not quite pin down the message she wants to deliver. Speaking to her can be like listening to some of her dreamier music: captivating, meditative, yet somehow with a sense of her barely being there at all. A typical anecdote might grind to a halt midway through: “But yeah… I don’t know… sorry, vagued out again!”

There is also a subject that is never going to be easy to talk about. In 2019, Topley-Bird’s daughter, Mazy, also known as Mina, killed herself at the age of 24. She had suffered a psychotic episode following a gig with her band 404 and died after being admitted to West Park hospital, Darlington. An inquest led to the coroner saying he would make two prevention of future death reports to reduce the risk of patients self-harming on the ward. At the time, Topley-Bird put out a statement saying: “Sweet baby, life won’t be the same without you.” But she hasn’t spoken since. She’s said in advance today that the subject can be broached, but that doesn’t make it any less difficult. “I’m only just beginning to process it,” she later admits.

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Powfu: the lo-fi rapper who became a Covid-era star without leaving his bedroom

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Last year the Canadian musician scored a global hit with Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head) – now he’s finally ready to meet his fans

For the lockdown superstar, omnipresent fame feels very much like obscurity used to. “I’ve been waiting a long time to go play with the fans,” says Powfu – AKA 22-year-old, Canadian lo-fi rapper Isaiah Faber – gazing around at the same four walls he was staring at before his breakthrough track Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head) unexpectedly racked up 360m YouTube streams, 4bn TikTok plays in March 2020 alone, and major chart placings worldwide at the very start of the pandemic. “But it’s made it a bit easier because it wasn’t like everything hit me at once. It’s not full-level yet.”

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‘Africa has so much talent – we can’t even grasp it’: Angélique Kidjo on pop, politics and power

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She’s played with everyone from Tony Allen to David Byrne. Now the Grammy winner is singing with a new generation of African stars, celebrating their continent while confronting its failings

On a video call from Paris, Angélique Kidjo, 60, shifts and leaps in her seat with the restive energy of a teenager. “I’m always changing and innovating and this album is no different,” she says. “Change brings life to things; it keeps me going. In life, you never know what to expect.”

Over a career that spans five decades, the Beninese artist has crossed paths with everyone from Gilberto Gil and Tony Allen to Talking Heads, Bono and Vampire Weekend. She has four Grammy wins in “world music” categories – second only to Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

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‘That was the day I knew I had died … ’ José Mauro, the reborn genius of bossa nova

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The melancholic singer was a gem in Brazil’s musical history, but many thought he had been killed in a motorcycle accident. At 72, he is releasing his lost recordings and finally reclaiming his legacy

It was the summer of 1995 when José Mauro discovered he was dead. The Brazilian musician, then 46 years old, was living on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, teaching guitar, when a friend called from London saying he’d spotted a CD of Mauro’s long-deleted 1970 LP, Obnoxius, on sale in a London record shop.

“He called and explained about this CD, and about how it said I’d been killed in a motorcycle accident,” says Mauro today, now 72. “That was the day I knew I had died.”

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‘They had soul’: Anton Corbijn on 40 years shooting Depeche Mode

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He thought they were pop lightweights – then turned them into moody megastars. The photographer recalls his adventures with the band, from desert trips to drug-induced near-death experiences

By his own cheerful admission, Anton Corbijn’s relationship with Depeche Mode did not get off to a flying start. It was 1981 and Corbijn was the NME’s new star photographer, having previously been lured to the UK from his native Netherlands by the sound of British post-punk, particularly Joy Division. His black and white portraits became iconic images of that band’s brief career, and Corbijn had gone on to take equally celebrated shots of everyone from Captain Beefheart to David Bowie.

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Man in Black at 50: Johnny Cash’s empathy is needed more than ever

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The country star is not always remembered for his politics, but his about-face to withdraw support for Nixon and the Vietnam war may be his finest moment

“I speak my mind in a lot of these songs,” Johnny Cash wrote in the liner notes to the album Man in Black, released 50 years ago today. He might be better known now for the outlaw songs of his youth or the reckonings with death in his final recordings, but Cash used his 1971 album to set out his less-discussed political vision: long on feeling and empathy, and short on ideology and partisanship. The United States seemed hopelessly polarised, and Cash confronted that division head-on, demanding more of his fellow citizens and Christians amid the apparently endless war in Vietnam.

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Neil Finn on the return of Crowded House: ‘I am ultimately very optimistic about the world’

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As the band release their first record in a decade, the New Zealand songwriter reflects on their influences – from Fleetwood Mac to Donald Trump

Neil Finn, New Zealand music’s jovial elder statesman, is remembering his best friend and bandmate Paul Hester.

He recalls the Crowded House drummer holding Finn’s baby son Liam up to the heavens, recreating a scene from the 70s TV show Roots; how Hester taught Liam’s younger brother, Elroy, to play the drums. But Hester’s gone now – he took his own life in 2005.

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My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields: ‘We wanted to sound like a band killing their songs’

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The band have released only one album since 1991 classic Loveless, yet their influence remains undimmed. Their frontman discusses destroying buildings with noise, losing his mojo – and preparing new music

In early 1988, My Bloody Valentine decided that they were, as their de facto leader, Kevin Shields, puts it today, “finished”. You can see how they might have come to that conclusion. They had started life in the early 80s as a Dublin post-punk band, relocated to Berlin at the suggestion of the Virgin Prunes’ Gavin Friday and become a gothy proposition inspired by the Birthday Party and the Cramps, then moved to London and transformed into what Shields calls “a conceptual band”, their childlike record sleeves concealing songs about necrophilia and incest.

The problem was, no one had got the joke; the general consensus, as Shields sighs today, was “that we were this shit Jesus and Mary Chain copyist band”. Following the departure of their lead singer, Dave Conway, they had adopted a jangly 12-string guitar style, to negligible response.

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Enya’s greatest songs – ranked!

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This month, the Irish singer turned 60 – and her popularity belies how radical her Celtic futurism really is

With the plinking, clipped synths and infernally moreish chorus, Orinoco Flow is the Enya song that everyone knows, yet it is arguably the least interesting moment on her breakthrough album, Watermark. Indeed, for years it seemed that its ubiquity obscured the stranger treasures in her discography.

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‘It’s cooler to hang Lennon’s guitar than a Picasso’: pop culture wins out at auctions

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Sales of items from celebrities such as Janet Jackson and K-poppers BTS are trending – and reframing what goes under the hammer

Is celebrity merchandise the new Monet? Auction houses are in flux, with more and more pop culture items being sold under the hammer for six and seven-figure sums.

Last month, Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills hosted a three-day auction of Janet Jackson’s personal belongings, including some of her most iconic stage outfits. Buyers included Kim Kardashian, who snagged Jackson’s outfit from the music video for her 1993 classic If for $25,000 (£18,000) and, on Instagram, said she was “such a fan” of the singer.

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Lady Gaga says rape as teenager left her pregnant and caused ‘psychotic break’

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Speaking on Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry show The Me You Can’t See, the singer outlined further details of attack she first disclosed in 2014

Lady Gaga has told new details about sexual assault she suffered when she was 19. Speaking on The Me You Can’t See, Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry’s new Apple TV+ series about mental health, she said the rape – that she first disclosed in 2014 – was by a music producer and left her pregnant.

“I was 19 years old, and I was working in the business, and a producer said to me, ‘Take your clothes off,’” she said. “And I said no. And I left, and they told me they were going to burn all of my music. And they didn’t stop. They didn’t stop asking me, and I just froze and – I don’t even remember.” She said “the person who raped me dropped me off pregnant on a corner”.

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Eurovision 2021: the good, bad and weird songs to look out for

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Amid the German ukuleles, anti-colonial Dutch anthems and Ukrainian folk-techno, can the UK’s James Newman reverse a long run of disappointment?

Future scholars of camp will pen entire counterfactuals about the great cancelled Eurovision of 2020 and what might have been: while the majority of last year’s contestants are back for 2021, they must all perform different songs. It feels especially cruel to Daði Freyr, the Icelandic act who would surely have won with viral hit Think About Things, a charming study in nerdish twee full of homemade keytars and school-play dance moves. But led by Freyr himself – imagine fey Scandi singers such as Jens Lekman or Erlend Øye crossed with Napoleon Dynamite – the group are back and pretending that last year never happened, with more of the same disco-pop, if lacking maybe 10% of 2020’s magic.

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Post-punk band Au Pairs: ‘The Thatcher years gave us plenty of material’

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Forty years ago, the Birmingham band released their debut album, and its frank, forthright songs about sex and equality are still pertinent. They explain how music gave their anger a voice

Forty years ago this month, one of the best but often forgotten albums of the 1980s was released: Playing With a Different Sex by Birmingham band Au Pairs. The cover, an Eve Arnold photo showing female militia fighters heading into battle, is a good visual harbinger of the album’s friction-filled songs. Jane Munro’s monster basslines, Pete Hammond’s tight drum rhythms, and the jagged riffs of Lesley Woods and Paul Foad combine to form a tense backdrop for the myriad moods of Woods’ androgynous voice, singing songs that confront conformity and demand equality. “There was just so much to be angry about,” Woods says today. “We were four young people,” Foad adds, “who were pissed off with the political situation of the time.”

Au Pairs formed in Birmingham in 1978. Stewart Lee’s recent documentary King Rocker showcases the scene in the city at the time, with Birmingham’s first punk band the Prefects (later the Nightingales) playing venues like the legendary Barbarella’s, a venue they immortalised in the song of the same name as a place “where the beer tastes of prune juice” and “they sell tickets for the exits”. UB40 and the Beat were also on the same circuit, and Au Pairs, who formed from their city’s Rock Against Racism action group, would often team up with local bands to play gigs for the anti-racist organisation.

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The Carpenters’ 20 greatest songs – ranked!

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As their self-titled, third album and biggest hit turns 50, we pick their best work

The Carpenters’ greatest album remains the compilation Singles 1969-1973, on which the duo remixed, re-recorded and segued their hits into one glorious gush of sound, but 1972’s A Song for You runs it close, because the album tracks are as good as the singles, as on this gorgeous portrait of a tour-weary musician.

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Women dominate 2021 Brit awards as Dua Lipa tops winners

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2020’s heavily male ceremony reversed with wins for Arlo Parks, Haim and Billie Eilish, as Little Mix become first all-woman winner of British group

Dua Lipa has topped the winners at the 2021 Brit awards, calling for Boris Johnson to approve “a fair pay rise” for frontline NHS staff as she picked up gongs including the top prize of British album for her chart-dominating disco spectacular Future Nostalgia.

She also won female solo artist, bringing her total Brit award tally to five and cementing her position as one of the UK’s most successful and critically acclaimed pop stars.

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Juliana Hatfield: ‘Women turn our anger on ourselves’

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The indie-rocker is now a touchstone for a generation of young songwriters – and after learning to channel her pain and frustration, her 18th album is one of her best

Juliana Hatfield speaks with deliberation: her thoughts unfurl after pregnant pauses and are sharpened by astute clarifications. “I’m sorry, I lost my train of thought,” she says at one point, doubling back to ensure her meaning is clear. Such consideration isn’t a surprise, given the rippling effect of an infamous early-career interview.

Nearly 30 years ago, while promoting her debut solo album Hey Babe, 23-year-old Hatfield, who was brand new to interviews, admitted to an inquiring male journalist that she was still a virgin. The casual comment became the focus of his piece, and incited scrutiny that followed the American songwriter throughout her rise. “When I was in the thick of it, it wasn’t really computing for me,” she says on a phone call from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “It wasn’t until much later that I realised how intense it was, how gross it was, and how it affected my career in negative ways.”

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Arlo Parks: Gen Z star entrances all who hear her

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The 20-year-old’s debut album is up for three Brits this week – and has captivated fans from Billie Eilish to Michelle Obama

There were fewer than a dozen people out in east London on a Saturday night in Paper Dress Vintage when Arlo Parks arrived on stage. The clothes shop by day turned live music venue by night had the then 17-year-old second on the bill, where she performed with a band made up of schoolfriends. Most of the audience were mates from sixth form. But there was also a scout from Transgressive Records; he spent the first half of the show in total dismay.

“It just wasn’t very good,” said Mike Harounoff apologetically. As the artists and repertoire manager for Transgressive, Harounoff’s job is to find and bring in talent to sign. He had high expectations for Parks – her manager was a friend – and he had already hyped up the teenager to his colleagues. “No discredit to the band, they were just kids,” he told the Observer, “but it didn’t click. It was bad.”

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Van Morrison: Latest Record Project Volume 1 review | Alexis Petridis’s album of the week

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(Exile/BMG)
The veteran bluesman loudly wakes up the sheeple with this boring and paranoid double album, reminiscent of a dinner party with a bitter divorcee

Even a man as implacably opposed to lockdown as Van Morrison – who spent 2020 releasing songs rubbishing science as “crooked facts”, mocking people for wearing masks and describing the government as “fascist bullies” while also invoking the Berlin Wall – might be forced to concede it had its advantages. After all, it gave him the time to write the material for Latest Record Project Volume 1, a 28-song, two-hour-plus opus that allows him to set out his latterday worldview more fully than any previous work.

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