Coldplay and Sting call for release of Toomaj Salehi, Iranian rapper sentenced to death

Posted on May 9, 2024 by Admin

Leading cultural figures including Margaret Atwood sign statement in support of rapper who criticised Iranian regime

More than 100 figures from the worlds of music, culture and human rights activism – including Coldplay and Sting – have signed a statement calling for the release of the Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi who has been sentenced to death in Iran after protesting in support of women’s rights.

The 33-year-old, who was a vocal supporter of the Women, Life, Freedom movement in Iran was sentenced to death by a court in the city of Isfahan on 24 April, according to his lawyer.

Worthy winners aside, the Brits is struggling to keep pace with modern pop

Posted on February 9, 2022 by Admin

TikTok voting and gaming stars haven’t altered the music awards’ predictable roster of chart-toppers

• News: Adele sweeps gender-neutral Brit awards
• Liveblog: Brit awards 2022 – as it happened

The actual Brit awards ceremony has changed its complexion over the years: from the old-guard backslapping of the 80s to the boozy chaos of the 90s and early 00s. Today’s offering is slickly professional – hipper than it once was, less tone-deaf when it comes to representation, but not a hair out of place to the point of seeming faintly uneventful, unless you count the sight of Anne-Marie falling over, or the sound of Ed Sheeran gamely attempting to turn Bad Habits into a metal anthem with the aid of Bring Me the Horizon: even the person in charge of the mute button for swearing had an easy night. There was a lot of talk from host Mo Gilligan about hedonistic behaviour, but not many actual signs of it. Nor did anyone attempt to say anything controversy-stirring or political.

This year, the onus appeared to have shifted slightly again. In what was clearly an attempt to attract a younger audience – an audience that don’t watch music shows on television – there were categories voted for by fans via TikTok; elsewhere, there were “afterparties” starring tweenage favourite PinkPantheress on gaming platform Roblox and the unmissable opportunity to buy Brits-related NFTs.

Women dominate 2021 Brit awards as Dua Lipa tops winners

Posted on May 11, 2021 by Admin

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

Brit awards 2021: every performance reviewed, from Coldplay to Arlo Parks

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.

Leigh-Anne Pinnock of Little Mix: ‘Being Black is my power. I want young Black girls to see that’

Posted on May 2, 2021 by Admin

In her early days with the girl band, Pinnock felt invisible and couldn’t understand why. Then the role of race became clear

Leigh-Anne Pinnock has been living the pop star dream ever since she was 19 and stepped on to a stage to audition for The X Factor, singing Rihanna’s Only Girl (In the World). She has now spent almost a decade in one of the UK’s biggest girl groups. But she had a difficult start with Little Mix, and not because she didn’t get on with her bandmates. She felt “invisible”, and would regularly cry in front of her manager. “I just couldn’t seem to find my place, and didn’t know why,” she said in a magazine interview in 2018. “I didn’t feel like I had as many fans as the other girls. It was a strange feeling.” She had, at that point, finally realised what the trouble was. “I know there are girls of colour out there who have felt the same as me,” she said. “We have a massive problem with racism, which is built into our society.”

If she expected the interview to change anything, she was disappointed. “I really did feel as if it fell on closed ears,” she says today, speaking from the Surrey mansion she shares with her footballer fiance, Andre Gray. “It was almost like people just weren’t ready to talk about race then.”