The “Running Up That Hill” revival proves the best songs are timeless
It’s no wonder Gen Z have fallen in love with Kate Bush’s empathy anthem.
ByMusic reviews
Read about the best live performances, contemporary music and classic records here.
The BBC’s Glastonbury TV coverage is a hellish nostalgia generator
This year’s festival will be shown on TV for longer, and in higher definition. Ageing festival veterans should steel themselves.
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Why Grace Jones matters more than ever
At the 74-year-old’s Southbank Centre gig, it’s clear that the political and aesthetic reverberations of her art are still being…
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Drake’s Honestly, Nevermind: best served tepid
Drake used to be our Prince Hamlet – but on his underpowered new album he is a journeyman extra offering…
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Bob Stanley’s pre-history of pop breathes life into a lost musical era
In Let’s Do It, the musician and journalist reveals how ragtime, jazz, blues and swing still shape today’s popular culture.
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Muso snobs don’t own Kate Bush
Hoary gatekeepers mocking teenagers for finding “Running Up That Hill” through Stranger Things forget this is how it’s always worked.
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Wu-Tang Forever at 25: an audacious milestone in hip-hop
How the Wu-Tang Clan’s brooding, sprawling second album shaped popular culture at the turn of the millennium.
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Angel Olsen’s Big Time is a sensitive record about grief, loss and coming out
On her new album the 35-year-old turns to country music to come to terms with her sexuality and the death…
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Abba Voyage concert: a major technological and artistic achievement
All hail the “Abbatars” and the undeniable power of the band’s hits.
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Brian Eno: “We’re all hypocrites – but we can’t help it”
At 74, the music producer sees climate change not only as a crisis but as an opportunity – if we…
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Euphoria at Harry Styles’s intimate album release show
What happened at the pop star’s first UK gig in two and a half years before a small crowd in…
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Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers brings the darker side of Englishness to Glyndebourne
Described as the most important English opera composed between Purcell and Britten, this is its first proper revival in a…
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Harry Styles’ new album is a summery, Eighties-infused poolside record
The best songs on Harry’s House feel like a brief tickle of cool air on a warm, lazy day.
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Thom Yorke’s the Smile sound a lot like Radiohead – and that’s no bad thing
This is a sublime record that shows the benefits of only slightly rearranging a tried and tested formula.
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Bloc Party are back – and their musical identity is clearer than ever
On Alpha Games, their first record in six years, the band’s sound is unobscured by the littered indie music landscape…
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Abba Voyage: strange psychodramas, deadpan humour and sexy grandparents
Twinkly-eyed boomer romance abounds in the band’s first album in 40 years.
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Abba are back – with the old magic intact
Nostalgic, luxurious and mind-bogglingly complicated, Abba’s new music maintains its legacy of stadium hooks and pop song intelligence.
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How composer Kevin MacLeod became the king of royalty-free music
If you’ve ever spent time on YouTube or TikTok, you would have probably heard MacLeod’s work.
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I was a teenage Taylor Swift fan – before Fearless, she was our little secret
The success of Swift’s breakthrough record was a bittersweet moment for us, her earliest British superfans.
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Katy Kirby’s Cool Dry Place: soft but subversive folk-pop
Kirby’s sharp lyrics, layered melodies and complex manipulation of rhythm mark her out as an exciting and sophisticated songwriter.
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