Category Archives: Music

Keen spirit: Australian cyclist uses GPS to recreate Nirvana’s Nevermind cover

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Enthusiast marks album’s 30th anniversary with 150km ride around Adelaide using Strava to sketch naked baby

The naked Nirvana baby has been recreated yet again – this time on the unsuspecting streets of Adelaide.

Pete Stokes rode about 150km on a single-speed bike to sketch the outline of the famous Nevermind cover. His efforts, tracked by GPS-based site Strava, show the baby’s (slightly angry) face over the CBD and the banknote over the leafy eastern suburbs of Burnside and Kensington.

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‘We’re like Mork and Mindy!’ Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, music’s odd couple

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Fourteen years after their Grammy-winning debut, the roots duo have reunited – facing high expectations. They explain how they left their comfort zones with a ‘nuts but tasteful’ all-star band

More than half a century since arriving to play his first show in the US with Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant was in the strange position of having to explain himself to the authorities.

“I had to prove that I was contributing to the betterment of the American system somehow, which is kind of cute, really,” Plant says of this post-lockdown trip to Nashville. He is sitting in the city’s famous Sound Emporium studio with his collaborator, the bluegrass legend Alison Krauss. It is the same place where they recorded their second, highly anticipated record as a duo, Raise the Roof, before the pandemic put the world on pause.

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Fugees return to New York for their first gig in 15 years … after a three-hour wait

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The rap trio kick off their just-announced world tour to an eager audience but fall into old habits of tardiness

Dressed in a red frock that flounced as she performed, the rapper, singer and musician Lauryn Hill told the eager but weary crowd: “Respect the miracle. Respect the miracle of this union” three and a half hours later than billed.

Related: Fugees announce reunion world tour, 25 years after The Score

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Violinist Nigel Kennedy cancels concert after Classic FM stops Hendrix tribute

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Performer pulls Royal Albert Hall gig over decision he compared to musical segregation

Violinist Nigel Kennedy has pulled out of a concert at the Royal Albert Hall with only days to go after accusing the radio station Classic FM of preventing him from performing a Jimi Hendrix tribute.

Kennedy said the “culturally prejudiced” decision amounted to “musical segregation”, with the station he now calls “Jurassic FM” preferring him to play Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in Wednesday’s show.

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Rebellion and redemption: how the Slits gave a voice to female prisoners

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Playwright Morgan Lloyd Malcolm on how the groundbreaking female punk band helped her tell the story of women suffocating in the prison system

It was a bit of a “pinch me” moment, to be honest. Earlier this month I sat in the rehearsal room for Typical Girls and watched our incredible cast play the music of the Slits to Tessa Pollitt, an original member of the band.

When I first started writing this show, never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined we would get to this point. This absolute legend, punk royalty, was beaming at the liveness of it all and so were we. This is what we’ve all been aching to do.

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Iggy Pop on finding new music: ‘At my age, it helps to remain curious’

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The source of the rocker’s enviable eternal youth? In the words of the man himself, it’s avidly rooting out new artists into his 70s (and beyond)

I keep reading that we decline in our 70s so I try to keep using my brain. Discovering new music opens my mind and the element of surprise keeps me connected. I feel like I’m mining for diamonds – and when you find the diamond, you know. When I heard Chaise Longue by Wet Leg I got really excited: it’s cheeky, with a wicked groove, but it’s the vocals – they’re almost metronomic. You could ask 100 people to sing it and it wouldn’t sound the same.

Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips

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Britney Spears’ 30 greatest songs – ranked!

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As she celebrates her engagement and fights for her autonomy, we celebrate the best of an artist who helped to define 21st-century pop

Spears previously flirted with dubstep on 2007’s Blackout, but it was Hold It Against Me that dragged the then-underground dance music into the mainstream. A decade later, and its blistering amalgamation of industrial EDM and saccharine pop melodies still feels every bit as audacious and innovative.

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The Activist: reality TV show to be ‘reimagined’ as documentary after backlash

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CBS says it will drop X-Factor-style competition from celebrity-fronted show after widespread criticism

A reality TV show that planned to pit activists against each other in an X-Factor style contest judged by celebrities is to be drastically “reimagined” after it sparked a backlash from campaigners.

The Activist, which had been due to air in the US in late October, prompted incredulity among many campaigners and elsewhere when its format was revealed last week, with many labelling it a “tone-deaf” distortion of true activists’ values.

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Alanis Morissette criticises ‘salacious agenda’ of HBO film about her life

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The singer has spoken about about Jagged, premiering at the Toronto film festival, for its ‘reductive take’ on her life

Alanis Morissette has spoken out against a new HBO documentary about her life and its “salacious agenda” as it premieres at the Toronto film festival.

The 47-year-old singer had agreed to be interviewed for the film Jagged but has released a statement to express disappointment in how her story has been told. She said she was interviewed “during a very vulnerable time” during her third postpartum depression amid lockdown.

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Hurry up and wait: the joys of slow culture

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In the streaming age, sleeper hits such as Schitt’s Creek and The Morning Show have replaced quick successes, confirming culture is a marathon not a sprint

If one thing guarantees a TV hit in 2021, it’s a lukewarm reception. Take Ted Lasso, a sitcom about a perky, naive American football coach transplanted on to British soil. Its first season premiered last summer to barely any fanfare – but little by little came mass critical reconsideration. The show ended up a smash hit, breaking the record for most Emmy nominations for a first season of a comedy. Its second series, concluding next month, has made it one of the most talked-about shows of the year.

Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips

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Alanis Morissette says she was victim of multiple statutory rapes as a teenager

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Canadian music star says in new documentary: ‘I would always say I was consenting, and then I’d be reminded … you’re not consenting at 15’

Speaking in a new documentary, Alanis Morissette has said she was the victim of multiple statutory rapes as a teenager.

The documentary, Jagged, is screening at the Toronto film festival this week. The Washington Post has reported that Morissette describes the attacks during the film. “It took me years in therapy to even admit there had been any kind of victimisation on my part,” she says. “I would always say I was consenting, and then I’d be reminded like ‘Hey, you were 15, you’re not consenting at 15.’ Now I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, they’re all paedophiles. It’s all statutory rape.’”

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Super teens: Raducanu and five other young people reaching career heights

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The 18-year-old’s US Open victory puts her among a super-successful group of under-20s

Emma Raducanu’s remarkable victory in the US Open was, among other things, a victory for the fearlessness of youth. The Guardian has picked out six teenagers, including Raducanu, who despite their tender years have already had a huge impact.

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Maria Mendiola, half of Spanish vocal duo Baccara, dies aged 69

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Group’s 1977 disco hit Yes Sir, I Can Boogie has become the unofficial anthem of Scotland football fans

Maria Mendiola, one of the members of Baccara, whose 1977 disco hit Yes Sir, I Can Boogie is the unofficial anthem of Scotland football fans, has died.

Mendiola, who was one half of the Spanish duo, was best known for her rendition of the hit song. She died in Madrid surrounded by her family on Saturday morning at the age of 69. Cristina Sevilla, her partner in a later iteration of the group, expressed her gratitude on social media in a message written in Spanish.

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Louis Armstrong and the spy: how the CIA used him as a ‘trojan horse’ in Congo

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Book reveals how the jazz musician unwittingly became party to secret cold war manoeuvres by the US in Africa

It was a memorable evening: Louis Armstrong, his wife and a diplomat from the US embassy were out for dinner in a restaurant in what was still Léopoldville, capital of the newly independent Congo.

The trumpeter, singer and band leader, nicknamed Satchmo as a child, was in the middle of a tour of Africa that would stretch over months, organised and sponsored by the State Department in a bid to improve the image of the US in dozens of countries which had just won freedom from colonial regimes.

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A decade after she died, I can finally grieve the Amy Winehouse I knew and loved

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Coming to terms with the loss of my friend Amy Winehouse, amid the media frenzy that surrounded her death, has taken me 10 years

God knows what I must have looked like: a bedraggled 25-year-old dressed as a psychedelic game hunter with glitter smeared across my face crying hysterically in a Cambridgeshire field. It was 4pm on 23 July 2011, and a friend of mine had broken the news to me: Amy was dead. I was totally inconsolable, while around me fellow-revellers danced.

It was the Saturday of Secret Garden Party and my friends had been deliberating among themselves how best to tell me. Their hands were forced when they realised it was about to be announced on the festival stage. In the end, a guy called Jamie opted for directness: “Amy Winehouse is dead.”

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Musician Phil Collins can ‘barely hold’ a drumstick as health deteriorates

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The 70-year-old singer and drummer calls his upcoming Genesis tour putting the band ‘to bed’

British musician Phil Collins says he can barely hold a drum stick because of deteriorating health that has also forced him to sit while singing during live performances.

The 70-year-old drummer and singer told the BBC in an interview broadcast on Thursday that he was frustrated at the challenges he faced. He underwent surgery on his back in 2009 and again in 2015 that affected his nerves, and he also has diabetes.

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Pavel Kolesnikov, the pianist making ‘a palace of sound built by your own imagination’

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The Russian star brings his take on Bach’s Goldberg Variations to the Proms, having recently torn the piece apart with choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. He explains his new, ‘tree-like’ twist

“Like climbing an infinite stairway, one step at a time.” That is how Pavel Kolesnikov describes working on JS Bach’s Goldberg Variations, one of the outstanding releases of last year. On Friday 10 September, he will perform them at the penultimate night of the Proms.

“I’ve never had the chance to dedicate so much quality time to a piece before,” he says when we meet in a tiny cafe in central London. The city has been home since the Siberia-born Kolesnikov, now in his early 30s, came to study at the Royal College of Music. He had grown up listening to recordings of the Goldbergs by Glenn Gould and Rosalyn Tureck, but had never considered performing them himself – “I did not feel I had anything to add”.

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Britney Spears’ father files to shut down conservatorship that controls his daughter’s life

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Jamie Spears, conservator of the pop singer’s estate since 2008, says ‘recent events’ called the arrangement into question

Britney Spears’ father has filed an unexpected request to terminate the controversial conservatorship that has controlled the singer’s life for 13 years.

In a stunning move, Jamie Spears, who is the conservator of his daughter’s estate, said “recent events” called into question whether she still needed a court to oversee her personal affairs and finances.

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Australian music legends join forces in ‘vax the nation’ campaign

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An industry brought to its knees by Covid-19 lockdowns calls on Australians to help bring back live performance in a national advertising campaign

Dozens of the biggest names in the Australian music industry have joined forces for a pro-vaccination advertising campaign launched on Monday.

Tim Minchin, Jimmy Barnes, Amy Shark, Paul Kelly and the Hilltop Hoods are just some of the more than 200 acts who have joined forces with major Australian record labels, ticketing agencies, tour promoters and festival organisers for the #Vaxthenation campaign.

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