Category Archives: Music

Viva Selena! How a murdered pop star gives hope to Latinos

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Twenty-five years after her death – and with a Netflix series on the way – Selena’s approach to straddling Mexican and American identities is proving invaluable in the age of Trump

On a sticky Sunday in August, more than 5,000 people are standing through sporadic torrents of rain to attend a free outdoor concert in New York’s Central Park. The event, Selena for Sanctuary, has been organised in response to the Trump administration’s severe policies on undocumented individuals, and the crowd has gathered to support immigrant-rights organisations such as Make the Road New York – all in the name of the pop star Selena Quintanilla.

Selena has been dead for nearly 25 years. The superstar was shot and killed in 1995, at the age of 23, by her fanclub manager, Yolanda Saldívar. Yet at the concert, she seems more present than ever: fans wear T-shirts emblazoned with her wide, red-lipped smile. Others wear one-piece jumpsuits and jackets with gleaming rhinestones, nods to the sparkling stage outfits Selena would often make herself. From the stage, a parade of up-and-coming bilingual artists belts out covers of her classic cumbia hits: Mexican-American indie star Cuco offers his take on Bidi Bidi Bom Bom, dream-pop newcomer Ambar Lucid sings Techno Cumbia, and Colombian-American singer Kali Uchis performs Como la Flor. Their songs are a celebration during a turbulent time, reflecting how Selena still serves as a symbol of hope in the fight for immigrants’ rights.

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Hungary pulls out of Eurovision amid rise in anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric

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No reason given for withdrawal from show, called ‘homosexual flotilla’ by pro-Orbán journalist

Hungary will not participate in next year’s Eurovision song contest, amid speculation the decision was taken because the competition is “too gay” for the taste of the country’s far-right government and public media bosses.

While no official reason has been given for the withdrawal, the move comes amid an increase in homophobic rhetoric in Hungary, where the anti-migration prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has launched a “family first” policy aimed at helping traditional families and boosting birth rates.

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Melanie C: ‘I’ve had an incredible career. It’s time I accepted myself’

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It’s 20 years since Spice Girl Melanie Chisholm went solo, but, she says, it has taken until 2019 – ironically, the year of the band’s reunion tour – for her to really find herself

It’s often said that meeting a Spice Girl feels a lot like encountering a cartoon character. You can see it with unfiltered Mel B, poised Victoria and Emma, still resolutely family-friendly at 43. Geri’s modern lady-of-the-manor act is the antithesis of her old outrageousness, yet she is still swimming in camp. But with Mel C – or Melanie C as she styles herself these days – that’s not the case.

Even if she was your favourite Spice Girl, and you have never met one before, and she turns up to your interview in a closed Kings Cross bar wearing a hoodie and trackies – just as she would have done when Melanie Chisholm became Sporty Spice 25 years ago – it’s still only the little things that nod to the fact she was in one of the biggest girl groups of all time. She speaks quietly, often in an awed whisper, and is not beholden to the propaganda-like version of the Spice Girls’ story that some of her bandmates uphold.

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Moroccan rapper jailed for one year over track about corruption

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Rights groups criticise treatment of Gnawi, whose video has been seen 15m times

A Moroccan rapper who recorded a viral track denouncing the state of the country has been sentenced to a year in prison for insulting the police in a case that rights groups have called “an outrageous assault on free speech”.

Mohamed Mounir, who performs under the name Gnawi, was also fined the equivalent of $103 (£79) after confessing to cursing about the police in a video he posted online in late October. He can appeal the sentence.

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K-pop singer Goo Hara found dead aged 28

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Police trying to establish cause of death of girl group Kara’s former member

The K-pop singer Goo Hara has been found dead at her home in Seoul, according to police.

The body of the 28-year-old, a former member of the girl group Kara, was found early on Sunday evening, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported. Police said they were trying to establish the cause of death.

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Adam Cohen on Leonard: ‘It was daunting finishing my dad’s last music’

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Leonard Cohen’s final songs can now be heard on the album Thanks for the Dance. Here his son Adam talks about their emotionally complex relationship

“There are some songs I’m half way through that are not bad,” Leonard Cohen said in his final interview, published in the New Yorker on 17 October 2016. “I don’t think I’ll be able to finish those songs.” Three weeks later, on 7 November, having released his 14th album, You Want It Darker, Cohen died in his sleep after a fall in his home in Los Angeles. The task of finishing those songs was passed, at Cohen’s request, to his son, Adam. The results can be heard on Thanks for the Dance, released last Friday.

“Essentially, I wanted to take the listener on an unconscious journey through the sonic signatures of my father’s career, without it sounding like a regurgitation,” says Adam Cohen, who, in his soft Canadian cadences and carefully constructed sentences, can sound uncannily like his father. “My dad always rejected invitations from producers like Rick Rubin and Don Was to make a retro record that sounded like his older stuff. He said he didn’t want to do the nostalgia act.”

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Selfies, influencers and a Twitter president: the decade of the social media celebrity

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From Gyneth Paltrow to Trump, today’s stars speak directly to their fans. But are they really controlling their message?

I have a friend, Adam, who is an autograph seller – a niche profession, and one that is getting more niche by the day. When we met for breakfast last month he was looking despondent.

“Everyone takes selfies these days,” he said sadly, picking at his scrambled eggs. “It’s never autographs any more. They just want photos of themselves with celebrities.”

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Bohemian Rhapsody and a BBQ: Stephen Colbert visits Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand

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Prime minister collects chat show host from the airport in first episode of ‘The Newest Zealander’

The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert engaged in potentially copyright-infringing carpool karaoke with prime minister Jacinda Ardern and pranked Lorde at a barbecue – aka a “New Zealand state dinner” – as he made good on a promise to get as far away as possible from news about Donald Trump.

The chat show host got straight to it in his sit-down interview with the New Zealand prime minister for Tuesday night’s opening episode, called the “Newest Zealander”, pleading to become a citizen and offering to marry Ardern and partner Clarke Gayford.

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Taylor Swift cleared to perform old songs at AMAs after label backs down

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  • Swift said Big Machine had said she could not sing old tracks
  • High-profile Democrats attacked label’s private equity backers

Taylor Swift has been cleared to perform Shake It Off and her older hit songs at Sunday’s American Music Awards (AMAs) after her former record label backed away from an increasingly bitter row with the music star.

Related: Taylor Swift's former label denies blocking her from performing

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Taylor Swift says she’s being banned from singing her old hits at AMAs

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Singer appeals to fans for help in escalation of feud with Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta

Taylor Swift’s performance at the American music awards is in doubt, as is the future of a new Netflix documentary about her, the singer has claimed, thanks to an ongoing feud with “tyrannical” music managers Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta.

Related: Taylor Swift returns to US court after appeal over copyright lawsuit

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Kesha: ‘The world’s going to burn up – I might as well have a good time’

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Traumatised by her legal struggles with producer Dr Luke, the once hedonistic pop star felt she didn’t deserve to be happy. But now she is back with a new album – and ready to party again

I’ve never forgotten the first time I saw Kesha. It was at T in the Park 2011, an otherwise unmemorable weekend festival in Scotland. During her main-stage performance, the woman then known as Ke$ha told the crowd that she had one pressing question. “Is there,” she said, prolonging the anticipation, “enough glitter on my titties?” The noisy consensus was no, there was not, so her accomplices doused her in a can of lager and an explosion of gold that left her looking like the daughter of C-3PO and Dolly Parton.

These gleeful exploits defined Kesha Rose Sebert as a pop star for a while. She followed her defiantly trashy 2010 debut, Animal, with the equally riotous Warrior in 2012, becoming a trailblazer for hedonistic pop. Then she disappeared. In 2016, a new image emerged: Kesha wearing a white suit, sobbing in court as she tried to escape her contract with the producer Dr Luke (AKA Lukasz Gottwald), whom she accused of sexual and emotional abuse including date rape and bullying that led to her developing an eating disorder. He denied the allegations. Her case was dismissed. While she could pick new collaborators, she still had to record for his label, an imprint of Sony, and he countersued for defamation.

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Punk persecution: how East Germany cracked down on alternative lifestyles – in pictures

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Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany’s secret police regarded punks as the most dangerous youth element in the country and ‘the leading force’ behind anti-government activities. These unnamed police mugshots from the former DDR demonstrate the lengths to which the security services would surveil, harass and detain punk ‘adherents’ and ‘sympathisers’.

  • Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution and the Fall of the Berlin Wall by Tim Mohr is published by Dialogue Books



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‘Stolen’ £250k Tecchler violin is returned undamaged to owner

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Musician reunited with 310-year-old instrument after it was hand back by man who took it from train

A 310-year-old antique violin worth £250,000 that was stolen from a train in London has been returned to its owner with no damage.

Professional musician Stephen Morris, who said it was “devastating” to lose the instrument made by craftsman David Tecchler in 1709, reported the violin missing on 22 October.

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A duel with Van Morrison: ‘Is this a psychiatric examination? It sounds like one’

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The singer-songwriter is releasing his sixth album in three years – his best since 1997. Would he like to expand on how he made it, or why he chose his collaborators? He would not

There is a song on Van Morrison’s 1991 album Hymns to the Silence called Why Must I Always Explain? in which the Northern Irish singer-songwriter appears to rail against the endlessly tiresome process of giving interviews. “And I never turned out to be the person that you wanted me to be,” he sings. “And I tell you who I am, time and time and time again / Tell me why must I always explain?”

The song is in my mind when I meet Morrison on a midweek morning in Cardiff. The singer sits by the window in a fourth-floor hotel room; a pale white knuckle of a man in a blue patterned shirt, his hair a sweep of bracken red. Beyond him, the view over the bay has been obscured by heavy autumn mist.

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Calypso calamity! Hunt for the lost tapes of 100-year-old Walter Ferguson

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The songwriting storyteller recorded thousands of cassettes for visitors to Cahuita, his paradise town in Costa Rica. Now the race is on to rediscover them

‘Welcome to Cahuita town, welcome one and all,” Walter Ferguson sings on the song Cahuita Is a Beautiful Place, offering an invitation to drink some rum and listen to calypso in this corner of Limón, Costa Rica. Its charming lyrical bounce and layered guitar sounds like the work of more than one man, although it is his work alone – and a song that might never have been heard if not for a project aimed at locating the thousands of one-of-a-kind cassettes that Ferguson recorded at home for friends and visitors wanting to take home a piece of this “beautiful place”.

In the run up to Ferguson’s 100th birthday in May, his son Peck (the 10th of Ferguson’s 11 children) and Swiss calypso fan Niels Werdenberg have spent two years on a labour of love: the Walter Gavitt Ferguson Tape Hunt. Their goal is to track down these lost gems, digitising songs that, in 2018, the Costa Rican government designated part of the country’s cultural heritage.

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Meghan and Stormzy named among most influential black people in UK

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Ismail Ahmed, boss of money transfer firm WorldRemit, tops list of star names and entrepreneurs

The grime artist Stormzy, the Duchess of Sussex and the footballer Raheem Sterling have been named among the most influential black people in Britain.

However, it was the founder of pioneering money transfer firm WorldRemit, Ismail Ahmed, who topped the Powerlist 2020, an annual list of the 100 most powerful people of African, African-Caribbean and African American heritage across Britain.

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Björk – her 20 greatest songs ranked!

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Ahead of her ambitious Cornucopia tour reaching the UK in November, we select the greatest work by the Icelandic pop-polymath

An overlooked gem, tacked on to the end of her fan-selected Greatest Hits collection, It’s in Our Hands is a sublime slice of future R&B conjured up in collaboration with the avant-techno duo Matmos. There is a particularly spicy and formidable version included on the Vespertine Live album.

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Coldplay use classified ads in local papers to reveal new album tracks

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Band reveal details of double album Sunrise and Sunset among ads for bales of hay and whitegoods

Coldplay has revealed the tracks of its new album by placing ads in the classified sections of newspapers around the world.

They started close to home with local papers in north Wales and Devon but also included Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald, the Otago Daily Times in New Zealand and Le Monde in France.

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K-pop under scrutiny over ‘toxic fandom’ after death of Sulli

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Anger grows at culture of exploitation and failure of agencies to protect performers

The death this week of the South Korean singer and actor Sulli has turned the spotlight on the darkest corners of the highly pressurised K-pop industry and sparked anger over the failure of management agencies to protect their stars from the menace of “toxic fandom”.

Sulli, a former member of the group f(x), had spoken publicly about her mental health problems and shock at her death has led to calls for greater support for performers. Authorities said she was suffering from severe depression and are investigating suicide as a possible cause of death.

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Sulli, K-pop star and actor, found dead aged 25

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The singer and former f(x) member, who was the victim of online bullying, had severe depression, according to police

The K-pop star and actor Sulli has been found dead at the age of 25. Police said that the celebrity, born Choi Jin-ri, was discovered unconscious at her Seongnam residence on 14 October.

“Her manager visited her home after failing to reach her since their last call the night before,” Seongnam police said, adding that Sulli had been experiencing severe depression. “It seems that she took her own life but we are also looking into other possibilities.”

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