pop music
Thomas H. Green
Certain artists’ success lies in a direct ability to pastiche the past into something new and bumptious. Oasis, The Scissor Sisters and The Vaccines all had this in spades and, at their best, created music whose pizzazz and punch eventually rendered their retro allusions irrelevant. The musical back-references are still there but the albums in question long ago outgrew what was so obvious on first listening. The second album from bigger-in-America Derby rockers The Struts falls joyfully into such territory with a couldn’t-give-a-damn insouciance.The Struts look the part, adopting a dandy-ish Read more ...
Jo Southerd
Eight long years, Robyn fans have been waiting. Crazed tweets screamed #releasehoneydammit into the ether for weeks as the Swedish songwriter teased her new music.Comeback single and certified summer earworm “Missing You” was the first song Robyn wrote for the album, but there was a time when she didn’t know if she’d ever make another record. What began as a breakup song soon took on feelings of bereavement after Christian Falk, her friend, collaborator and La Bagatelle Magique bandmate, died, after a short period of illness.So Robyn isolated herself in the studio for a year, making lo-fi Read more ...
Owen Richards
It’s been a tough few years for Sŵn Festival. Once a genuine rival to fellow urban festivals Great Escape and Sound City, recent events have fluctuated between one-dayers and a string of ticketed gigs. 2018 marked the biggest change yet, but also a return to the multi-day, multi-venue format. Founders Huw Stephens and John Rostron announced they were handing over the reigns to Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff’s leading music venue. This fresh injection of enthusiasm and experience was just what the festival needed. This year, Sŵn was spread over four days: large single gigs on Wednesday and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Ex Mykah is a multi-instrumentalist and producer on the LA music scene who’s worked with the names such as Mark Ronson and Miike Snow. His own debut album sounds very far from either of those. Instead it comes from the warped, alt-hip hop end of the pop spectrum, while also recalling that brief Noughties blog flourish “chillwave” (the likes of Neon Indian and Washed Out). This is music dipped deep in a woozy, druggy feel, but which also never wanders far from an actual tune.Ex Mykah is Colombian-Cuban-American Bryan Senti who deeply resents the direction his country has taken and the PR Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
From 7.30pm on Thursday 19 January 1967, George Martin and The Beatles spent the next seven hours at the Abbey Road’s Studio 2 working through takes one to four of “In the Life of…”, a new song which, when completed, would be retitled “A Day in the Life”. In late May, fans would hear it as the final track of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.For many producers, that would have been a good day’s work. However, Martin, engineer Geoff Emerick and second engineer Phil McDonald – both of whom also worked on that evening’s Beatles session – had been in Studio 2 earlier in the day mixing “Never Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Think of Karen "MØ" Andersen and you may well picture one of her smash hit videos. "Lean On", for instance, where the singer gyrates to a Bollywood/ house mashup. Or "Kamikaze" set in post-apocalyptic Ukraine. Yet, for all the Zeitgeist-y imagery what really made those songs so popular was really just simple youthful exuberance. "Forever Neverland" sounds like it should offer much of the same. Instead, it feels curiously grown-up.MØ, it would seem, has moved in from her recent incarnation as the singer of Diplo pop songs. Diplo - the producer responsible for both "Lean On" and "Kamikaze" - Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
One marker arrived on 1 August 1981, when MTV began broadcasting. With its format based around screening pop videos, American radio had a competitor and would lose the edge it once had. And due to the lack of local product, a significant proportion of the videos seen by US TV viewers were British rather than American – America had some catching up to do if it is was going to compete with the UK’s dandified, polished and television-ready exports.Another marker was the arrival of digital instruments, digital recording and – with the CD – digital playback. Vinyl hung in there but daft formats Read more ...
Katie Colombus
The first release from Jess Glynne’s new album, “I’ll Be There” confirmed the North London singer as the first ever British female artist to have seven no.1 singles in the UK Chart.She’s been winning MOBOs, Grammys, Brit, Ivor Novello and MTV Awards for the last four years, and while some of the above successes have come from collaborations (major hits with Clean Bandit’s "Rather Be" and Route 94’s "My Love", for example) Jess has become a household name in her own right, with a distinctive sound of big vowels, mad vibrato, gospel underlay and a housey beat. Which is clearly a reliable Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
I come to this band from the perspective of one who’s only seen the words "YOU ME AT SIX" on endless T-shirts passing in the street. I’m no connoisseur, then. From the cultural detritus that’s wended my way during their 10-year career, they just seemed a band who had no “thing”, no breakout song, no look, no cultural space or loudly impressed belief. Just five normal-looking guys who tour a lot, hard-working meat’n’potatoes rockers (who’d bridle at that cliché). As their sixth album hits my ears, though, I can see why those T-shirts sell.My ignorance is relatively inexcusable, given that You Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Nile Rodgers is a pop juggernaut, up there with the very biggest. Aside from Chic's disco monsters “Good Times” and “Le Freak”, he’s also responsible for Sister Sledge’s career (“We Are Family”), “Let’s Dance” by Bowie, Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”, Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky”, Diana Ross’s “Upside Down”, and too many other hits to mention. Since 2011 he’s endlessly played the festival circuit, a euphoric show reminding us of his legacy. He has not, however, resurrected Chic in the studio until now.Apart from a 1992 comeback album, Chic has been dormant since the early Eighties (Rodgers’ Read more ...
Jo Southerd
Cher. Abba. The Mamma Mia films. If you're not excited by all of the above, I'm afraid we can't be friends. I will not apologise for being thoroughly giddy at the prospect of a Cher album of Abba covers. The Queen of Camp taking on some of the greatest pop songs of all time: it's unashamedly exhilarating.Well, the idea of it was, anyway. In reality, the album is – fine. A bit like a Chinese takeaway, or the finale of Bodyguard, the anticipation has somewhat outweighed the event itself. Dancing Queen opens with its title track. What's immediately striking is that the instrumentation of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 2016, a writer from The Washington Post thought they had found Bobbie Gentry. After announcing their presence via the entry phone system of a gated housing development near Greenwood, Mississippi, they were told “there's nobody here by that name.” Though Greenwood was where Gentry had attended school and taught herself to play multiple instruments, it was a predictable response. She has been called “the JD Salinger of rock ’n’ roll.” Jill Sobule recorded the song “Where is Bobbie Gentry?” in 2009, the year BBC radio broadcast the documentary Whatever Happened to Bobbie Gentry?The snippets Read more ...