From a six-strong indie household in Glasgow to a trans DJ thruple in a remote log cabin, we meet the bands weathering the pandemic with each other
The London indie-pop band were recording at a studio in Devon when lockdown began
Continue reading...Category Archives: Pop and rock
Rapper Naira Marley: ‘It’s better to have a big bum than qualifications in Nigeria’
He’s been attacked by pastors and jailed by the authorities. But the outspoken rapper will not be silenced. He talks about his cult-like following – and the weird rules ‘Marlians’ live by
Depending on who you talk to, Naira Marley is either the scourge of the next generation of Nigerians or their saviour. But whoever’s talking, the pop star – arguably the most controversial in Africa – is spoken about in near-mythological tones, which makes his amiability very arresting when we meet in London a few weeks before lockdown.
He arrives flanked by an entourage, photoshoot-ready in a reflective puffer, and oscillates between class clown and deep thought. To some, the 25-year-old’s meteoric rise over the past two years has been sudden: selling out Brixton Academy in three minutes; accruing three million Instagram followers, tens of millions of streams, and a cult-like fandom. But the signs of stardom have always been there.
Continue reading...John Prine, US folk and country songwriter, dies aged 73 due to Covid-19 complications
Grammy-winning songwriter beloved of Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash died on Tuesday
John Prine, the US folk and country singer beloved of Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson and more, has died aged 73 due to complications from Covid-19.
Prine was hospitalised on 26 March, and was in intensive care for 13 days before dying on Tuesday, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee. Prine’s family confirmed his death to several US media outlets including The New York Times, Rolling Stone and Variety.
Continue reading...Bill Withers, influential soul singer behind Ain’t No Sunshine, dies aged 81
Lean on Me and Lovely Day singer dies of heart complications, according to a family statement
Bill Withers, the influential US soul singer who wrote Lean on Me, Ain’t No Sunshine and Lovely Day has died aged 81 of heart complications, according to a statement from his family.
Withers wrote and recorded several other major hits including Use Me and Just the Two of Us, before retiring in the mid-1980s and staying out of the public eye.
Continue reading...Rihanna: where to start in her back catalogue
In Listener’s Digest, our writers help you explore the work of great pop musicians. As fans eagerly await the album known as R9, here’s a guide to pop superstar Rihanna
Rated R (2009)
Continue reading...Manu Dibango, Cameroon jazz-funk star, dies aged 86 of coronavirus
Musician who influenced Michael Jackson dies in Paris hospital from Covid-19 infection
Manu Dibango, the Cameroonian musician celebrated for his blend of jazz, funk and traditional west African styles, has died aged 86 in a Paris hospital after contracting Covid-19.
A message on his Facebook page announced the news with “deep sadness”, and added: “His funeral service will be held in strict privacy, and a tribute to his memory will be organised when possible.”
Continue reading...Childish Gambino: 3.15.20 review – at the peak of the zeitgeist
The actor, comedian and musician Donald Glover has made the first truly outstanding album of the decade, offsetting cultural examinations with moments of sweet levity
In hindsight, music has always been Donald Glover’s true calling. Before the sitcoms, the Star Wars movie, the Saturday Night Live hosting gigs, and the well-worn gifs of the performer walking horrified into a burning room with a stack of pizza boxes, you could find him on YouTube as a member of Derrick Comedy. The group’s greatest sketch, B-Boy Stance, saw Glover play an ageing hip-hop pioneer who had his arms surgically attached to his back, ensuring he was forever pulling the iconic pose – it riffs on the distance between the New York acolytes who witnessed the birth of hip-hop and those who came to the music after it was commodified. Glover’s understanding of American culture shines with diamond clarity; Atlanta, his comedy-drama that goes deep into the city’s rap scene, is the evolution of those ideas.
Glover’s early forays into rap were corny and forgettable. The Childish Gambino project felt like the side hustle of a talented kid eager to test every limit of his creativity – that the moniker was taken from an online Wu-Tang Clan name generator seemed to reflect how low it fell on his list of priorities. In 2016, the funk record Awaken, My Love! was an artistic breakthrough. Then came 2017’s vicious This Is America and a video that encapsulates the racial prejudice, police brutality and vicious gun lust freezing the soul of the self-proclaimed greatest country in the world. The clip became a pop cultural juggernaut, anointing Glover as spokesman for the Black Lives Matter generation.
Continue reading...Duffy debuts first new music since rape ordeal revelation
Welsh star’s song Something Beautiful played on Radio 2 to ‘lift spirits during these troubling times’
Duffy, the pop star who recently said she retreated from public life due to a kidnap and rape ordeal, has debuted her first new music since the announcement.
Related: Duffy has made peace. But social media won't let her
Continue reading...David Bowie’s 50 greatest songs – ranked!
What more could you ask for, at this bizarre, unnerving and outlandish time, than a roundup of the greatest hits of one of the most bizarre, unnerving and outlandish musicians of all time
A rejected single finally released on a 1970 cash-in compilation, Bowie’s first collaboration with the producer Tony Visconti is better than anything on his debut album. Driven by acoustic guitar, its sound points the way ahead and there’s something appealingly odd, even sinister about the lyrical come-ons: “Wear the dress your mother wore.”
Continue reading...Katy Perry wins appeal in $2.8m plagiarism case
Judge rules against jury verdict in case over song Dark Horse, which had previously been found in favour of rapper Marcus Gray
Katy Perry has won an appeal in a copyright case involving damages of $2.8m (£2.3m).
In July 2014, Perry was accused of plagiarising the song Joyful Noise by a Christian rapper named Marcus Gray (AKA Flame), for her US No 1 hit Dark Horse, which was the second biggest-selling song worldwide that year. The songwriters sued, with Perry and her team defending themselves by saying they had never heard Joyful Noise.
Continue reading...‘A generation that decided to fight’: making music amid chaos in Venezuela
As they endure a political crisis that has led millions to flee, Venezuela’s musicians are striving to make life worth living
‘Everything here happens at gunpoint,” someone tells me when I arrive in Caracas. Venezuela is in crisis, suffering from a lack of power, water and basic supplies and enduring widespread violence on the streets: the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence estimates that the country has the world’s highest murder rate at 81.4 per 100,000 people. According to the UN, around 4.5 million people have fled since 2015, escaping an economy in a state of hyperinflation and the authoritarian rule of president Nicolás Maduro.
The chaos has intensified recently, as opposition leader Juan Guaidó – recognised as the true president by more than 50 countries – was forced to storm a barricade of riot police to gain access to the country’s national assembly. Donald Trump has now rolled out economic sanctions to try to squeeze Maduro out of power – but they will squeeze an already embattled Venezuelan public, too.
Continue reading...‘The road will kill you’: why older musicians are cancelling tours
Health concerns have caused a number of high-profile singers to quit the road but what will it all mean for the industry at large?
In a chilling quote from much-loved music documentary The Last Waltz, about The Band’s final concert in 1976, leader Robbie Robertson looks straight into the camera and ominously says: ‘The road will kill you.”
At the time, he was just 34. Yet, over four decades later, musicians of his storied era are still on the road – and facing escalating health issues as a consequence. Since the start of this year, Ozzy Osbourne, 71, had to cancel his 2020 tour to seek treatment for issues related to his recent diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. Elton John, 72, had to ditch dates on what was already advertised as his goodbye tour, after declaring himself “extremely unwell”. Madonna, 61, was forced to scratch a bunch of shows from her British tour due to “overwhelming pain” from injuries she sustained on the road which already caused her to nix some US dates. Meanwhile, Aerosmith felt compelled to disinvite drummer Joey Kramer from their Grammy performance, over alleged difficulties the 69-year-old was having keeping the beat, while the group itself has had to scratch dates due to various health issues experienced by Steven Tyler. Then, just this last week, the 56-year-old frontman of Metallica, James Hetfield, needed to cancel shows to, in his words, “look after my mental, physical and spiritual health”.
Continue reading...‘She exists out of time’: Umm Kulthum, Arab music’s eternal star
With a voice adored by Bob Dylan, Robert Plant and millions across the Arab world, Umm Kulthum rejected gender norms with her powerful, political music. But can her 90-minute songs work in a new stage musical?
You hear the Umm Kulthum cafe before you see it. Violins swoon and a monumental voice surges from a doorway in Cairo’s Tawfiqia neighbourhood. Outside, couples smoke shisha on plastic chairs, dwarfed by two immense golden busts depicting the singer known variously as “the star of the east”, “mother of the Arabs” and “Egypt’s fourth pyramid”.
Umm Kulthum recorded about 300 songs over a 60-year career and her words of love, loss and longing drift reliably from taxis, radios and cafes across the Arab world today, 45 years after her death. Despite singing complex Arabic poetry, she influenced some of the west’s greatest singers. Bob Dylan said: “She’s great. She really is.” Shakira and Beyoncé have performed dance routines to her music. Maria Callas called her “the incomparable voice”.
Continue reading...Pop star Duffy says she was raped, drugged and held captive
Welsh singer made statement on Instagram saying she was held captive for several days
Aimee Duffy, the Welsh pop singer known as Duffy who retreated from the public eye following her hugely successful debut album Rockferry, has said she was drugged, held captive and raped by an unidentified person.
In a statement on her official Instagram account she said: “The truth is, and please trust me I am OK and safe now, I was raped and drugged and held captive over some days. Of course I survived. The recovery took time. There’s no light way to say it. But I can tell you in the last decade, the thousands and thousands of days I committed to wanting to feel the sunshine in my heart again, the sun does now shine.”
Continue reading...‘I want to scream when I hear The Specials’: readers on the songs they can’t listen to any more
Following Guardian writers on the songs they can no longer listen to, here are some of the soundtracks you mentioned
Third year at university, the bloke I was flat sharing with played Ghost Town by The Specials every morning as his alarm. Every morning for a damn year. I used to like Ghost Town, it’s one of the great protest songs (and its appearance on Father Ted is sublime). Now I want to scream whenever I hear it. It was like torture. Melvazord
Continue reading...Andy Gill, influential guitarist with Gang of Four, dies aged 64
Gill’s guitar sound inspired Kurt Cobain, Michael Stipe and Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose debut album he produced
Andy Gill, the guitarist with Gang of Four, whose sound influenced generations of post-punk bands, has died aged 64.
The news was announced by the band on their social media channels on Saturday. No cause of death has yet been announced, but they referred to him as “listening to mixes for the upcoming record, whilst planning the next tour from his hospital bed”.
Continue reading...Taylor Swift discloses fight with eating disorder in new documentary
‘There’s always some standard of beauty that you’re not meeting,’ she tells Miss Americana director Lana Wilson
Taylor Swift has disclosed her experiences with an eating disorder in a new documentary. In Taylor Swift: Miss Americana, which received its premiere at the Sundance film festival last night, Swift says that she would starve herself to the extent that she felt as if she might pass out during live performances.
The 30-year-old star said she would make a list of everything she ate, exercised constantly and shrank to a UK size two; she is now a size 10. “I would have defended it to anybody who said ‘I’m concerned about you,’” she tells the film’s director, Lana Wilson.
Continue reading...‘It hurts to be torn apart’: Justin Bieber’s wife Hailey hits out at online trolls
The frequent target of trolling tells her 24m Instagram followers social media ‘is SUCH a breeding ground for cruelty towards each other’
Hailey Bieber has hit out at online trolls and said “it hurts to be torn apart on the internet”.
The model and wife of Justin Bieber is frequently targeted by fans of Selena Gomez, who previously dated the Canadian pop star.
Continue reading...Madonna, Motown and Mongolian metal: the music to listen out for in 2020
The queen of pop gets intimate, Taylor Swift feels the sunshine and Stormzy takes on the world … plus, classical celebrations begin for Beethoven’s 250th
Continue reading...Kelly Fraser, Inuit singer-songwriter, dies at 26
Fraser, from Canada, gained attention for Inuit-language cover of Rihanna’s Diamonds and advocacy for indigenous culture
Kelly Fraser, a Canadian pop artist who gained attention for an Inuit-language cover of Rihanna’s Diamonds, part of her advocacy efforts for her indigenous culture, has died. She was 26.
Thor Simonsen, Fraser’s friend and producer, said he was told the day after Christmas by the singer-songwriter’s family that she had died. The family declined to release details, including the cause of death, Simonsen said.
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