Category Archives: Music

Bob Dylan at 80 – a little Minnesota town celebrates its famous son

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Hibbing, the birthplace of the musician, is paying tribute with a year of special events

Bob Dylan’s debut 1962 single began: “I got mixed-up confusion; man, it’s a-killin’ me”. It hasn’t yet – he turns 80 on Monday, and the pre-eminent custodian of American roots music, with its storytelling and protest traditions, is set to be celebrated by a public avalanche of events, programmes and tributes.

The occasion will be marked in his birthplace of Hibbing, Minnesota – where, inspired by the sounds of country and blues music drifting up from the south on AM radio, he wrote in his high-school yearbook that his ambition was to join Little Richard. St Louis county, in which Hibbing sits, has issued a proclamation declaring a “Year of Dylan Celebration”.

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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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Cher’s films – ranked!

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She has just turned 75 and there’s a new biopic in the works. What better time to look back at a film CV that’s full of memorable roles?

HBO produced this heavy-handed but affecting anthology film on the topic of abortion, premiering it at the Toronto film festival on the combined star clout of Demi Moore, Sissy Spacek and, of course, Cher, who also directed the third (and best) of its segments. It remains her only directorial credit, and she would have done well to keep at it. She shows a sure touch with actors, herself included, uncharacteristically restrained as a benevolent abortion doctor working through a violent anti-choice protest. It is enough to make you wonder whether HBO should have kept her on its books. Surely there could have been a place in The Sopranos for Cher.

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Vampires, naked apes and free booze! The 20 wildest Eurovision performances ever

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Baffling stunts and bizarre lyrics are de rigueur at europop’s premier competition – so it takes quite something to make this list

At Eurovision, you have three minutes to impress the world. While an unforgettable song and stonking vocals are key to getting douze points, how else can you make your performance stand out? With bewildering stunts, surreal lyrics and distracting props, of course! With the biggest event in europop returning this week, let’s revisit some of the weirdest performances over the years – the ones that really made Terry Wogan and Graham Norton wince.

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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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Mel B on domestic abuse, trauma and recovery: ‘In my mind there was no way out’

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Four years after escaping her marriage, the former Spice Girl talks about confidence, family – and why the pandemic has led to a rise in abusive relationships

Melanie Brown is in her tracksuit talking to me from her Leeds home. Her mother has popped round and is chomping away on an Easter egg she has just found, despite the fact that Brown has made her some “amazing” spicy curry soup for lunch. Her oldest daughter, Phoenix, is going to extreme measures to get her attention. Meanwhile, tiny yorkshire terrier Cookie has jumped into Brown’s arms, as her French bulldogs Yoshi and Yoda and golden doodle Luna wander around making mischief. It’s a picture of contented domestic chaos.

But it wasn’t always like this. Four years ago Brown, better known as Mel B or Scary Spice, was living in Los Angeles, married to the American film producer Stephen Belafonte and, she says, terrified for her life. In her 2018 memoir Brutally Honest, she documented the horror of her day-to-day existence – alleging physical, sexual, verbal and financial abuse.

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UK rapper Enny: ‘Black women are beautiful. They don’t get told that enough’

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Her track Peng Black Girls was a love letter to womanhood, and a huge lockdown hit. Now the rising south-London star is ready for her closeup.

Photography by Suki Dhanda. Styling by Barbara Ayozie Fu Safira.

In the depths of a bleak Covid winter, very few of us were feeling peng. With Zoom meetings and state-mandated daily walks our only form of socialising, there was little to dress up for, and few opportunities for us to feel beautiful.

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

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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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Shaun Ryder: ‘I was a heroin addict for 20-odd years, but there’s been no damage off that’

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From ADHD to alopecia and learning the alphabet at 28, the Happy Mondays singer has had a wild, eventful life. He discusses hedonism, parenting – and why he has to spend so much time correcting Bez

Shaun Ryder is being uncharacteristically quiet. That’s because he’s mistakenly stuck himself on mute and can’t work out how to turn on the microphone of the computer he’s on. We spend a rather amusing (and awkward) five minutes mouthing silently at each other, pointing fingers and shrugging shoulders, while Ryder wrestles with his device, occasionally spinning it around so that he appears upside down. Eventually, though, an unmistakable Salford accent comes crackling through my speakers: “Can ya hear me now?”

Loud and clear, Shaun, which is good because I’ve got a burning question that demands answering. Earlier this year, Ryder contracted Covid-19, along with his entire household (Ryder lives with his second wife, Joanne, and their two daughters). He was sick for three weeks, with bouts of fatigue that dragged on after that. But, according to best pal Bez – his partner in crime through the hedonistic days of Happy Mondays and Black Grape, and currently appearing with Ryder in the more family-friendly TV show Celebrity Gogglebox – the virus had a very unusual side-effect: it caused the hair Ryder had lost through alopecia to grow back. We’ve learned to be endlessly surprised by this virus, but is this really true?

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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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‘I did the vocals in the nude’ – the Bangles on how they made Eternal Flame

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‘It felt like skinny-dipping,’ says singer Susanna Hoffs. ‘I ended up doing it for most of the album’

In 1988, it felt like the Bangles had been touring endlessly. Our second album, Different Light, with the singles Manic Monday and Walk Like an Egyptian, had been released two years earlier. Now, finally, we could take a break from living on buses together.

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Zimdancehall dreams: the back yard studios helping Harare get heard

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Infectious hits produced on a shoestring allow Zimbabwe’s aspiring musicians to express their struggles and dream big

Inside a grimy flat in Mbare, Zimbabwe’s oldest township in the capital Harare, about 10 young musicians nervously rehearse their lyrical chants as they wait to be called into the recording booth.

Many celebrated musicians in Zimbabwe have been born out of this old flat. For those here now, this is their one shot at stardom, or at least a future in music.

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Billie Eilish says all her age group have suffered sexual misbehaviour

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US singer, 19, made claim in Vogue interview when discussing new single about abusive relationship

Billie Eilish has spoken about the prevalence of sexual exploitation of minors in an interview, saying “it’s everywhere”.

Speaking about her new single, Your Power, which addresses an abusive relationship between a minor and an older person, the 19-year-old singer told Vogue that all her peers had experienced some sort of sexual impropriety.

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

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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.”

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