Californian by birth, Oregonian by choice Margo Cilker has spent years honing her story-songs on the road, touring throughout the United States and the Basque Country of Spain, where she created a covers band and sang songs by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young. “You have to face your fears,” she says, “and […]

The road to Voyage, Abba’s last studio album and their first in 40 years, started in August with a post from their gleaming new Twitter account, inviting fans to “join us.” Billboards appeared all over London, depicting a solar eclipse and a glitter ball in a sci-fi shape. A week later, a 10-track album and […]

Smash Hits magazine interviewed Diana Ross in 1982. Her ongoing commercial success two decades after the Supremes’ initial song was shown by her appearance amid the breathless coverage of Duran Duran and Haircut 100. She mentioned the band’s peak in the 1960s, but argued, as befitting an artist who had just released two platinum albums […]

Eva Cassidy and her bandmate Chris Biondo travelled to a distant plant in rural Virginia on a late May day in 1996 to collect copies of the recording that would turn out to be her last. Biondo recalls, “We picked up about 1,100 cassettes and CDs in total.” “As soon as we got in the […]

Dandy, a Shropshire-based alternative pop performer, has every right to be enraged. She claims that an abusive relationship in her early twenties rendered her impotent, while the deaths of thousands of fellow handicapped people as a result of the benefits system has filled her with anguish and hatred. “When she’s at the assessment / She […]

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 […]