For music stars, Las Vegas is a welcoming destination. It’s where you go to be validated for a job well done, to rest on a strong legacy at a time when the future may have grown less assured and any timid steps towards it may jeopardize that legacy. Once her struggles, it seemed to be […]

In Ronnie Spector’s 1990 book Be My Baby, there’s an interesting chapter about her singing voice among the jaw-dropping allegations of brutal torture. She claims she was intimidated by the other female vocalists in Phil Spector’s stable: she didn’t have Darlene Love’s or Fanita James’s huge, gospel-trained voices. The producer, on the other hand, had […]

I believe it’s OK to refer to myself as an outsider artist. It took a long time for me to join the group.” Michael Hurley, a freak-folk singer-songwriter and artist of over 60 years, is pondering his place in the world on Thanksgiving Friday. He’s phoning from his little house in rural Oregon, nestled amid […]

While the rest of the world was watching Tiger King or making bread during the first apparently endless lockdown in 2020, British pop maverick Charli XCX composed, recorded, and released a whole album. How I’m Feeling Now, a joint effort with her fans, condensed the boredom, anger, loss, thankfulness, and frenzy of the time into […]

Everything about the Lathums’ largest ever live event seems like it’s meant to announce something significant. This four-piece band, which formed at a Wigan music college in 2019, represents the newest phase of indie guitar revivalism. They have a No 1 album under their belts (their first, How Beautiful Life Can Be, knocked Drake off […]

Pre-party rituals, trips through the club, and echoes of nightlife that linger until the following day: nights out are a confluence of so many stimuli. Anz, a Manchester-based producer and DJ, incorporates these experiences throughout her work. “I always listen to garage before I go out,” she says at a Manchester pub, observing the amusing […]