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

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The Dark Side of the Gold Rush

On November 21, 1852, Louise Clappe, a New Englander who had spent a year at a gold-rush mining camp in the Sierra Nevada, looked around in awe as she took her leave of the place. In a letter to her sister, she wrote, "Like an immense concave of pure sapphire without spot or speck, the wonderful and never-enough-to-be-talked-about sky of California drops down upon the whole its fathomless splendor."