pop music
theartsdesk on Vinyl 35: Christmas 2017 Special with Pink Floyd, Mariah Carey, ELO, Madness and moreWednesday, 13 December 2017
The music business is about to disappear on holiday wholesale and we won’t see hide nor hair of it until mid-January. There’s just time for one last 2017 vinyl celebration. Regular readers should be warned that theartsdesk on Vinyl becomes rather... Read more... |
CD: Tom Chaplin – Twelve Tales of ChristmasSaturday, 09 December 2017
It’s easy to be cynical about Christmas pop albums. This is, of course, because so many of them are awful, hastily cobbled together collections of nothing, and about as much fun as munching your way through a kilo of sixpences hoping to find a tiny... Read more... |
CD: Sia - Everyday Is ChristmasThursday, 07 December 2017
Sia is a 21st century pop behemoth, an unstoppable figure who, despite no longer wishing to take part in the increasingly visual aspects of our social media age, still maintains a top-flight career. The best of her output hits the Venn diagram sweet... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The Rolling StonesSunday, 03 December 2017
Until now, the easiest non-bootleg way to hear the early Rolling Stones live was via the various home cinema editions of October 1964’s T.A.M.I. show. Otherwise, although they employed backing tracks for broadcast, the American DVDs of their Ed... Read more... |
CD: U2 - Songs of ExperienceThursday, 30 November 2017
When Irish rock band U2 marked the release of 2014’s Songs of Innocence by loading it into everyone’s iTunes for free, it was an attempt to find a new angle on the "event release". While it was certainly that, it wasn’t, shall we say… universally... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Phil SeymourSunday, 19 November 2017
“Precious to me” is a high-carat gold nugget. A guitar-pop song with cascading, lush Everly Brothers harmonies drawing on The Searchers’ version of “When You Walk in the Room”, its immediate tune instantly lodges itself in the head.Instead of being... Read more... |
Iceland Airwaves 2017 review - political change at Reykjavík's major music festivalMonday, 13 November 2017
Óttarr Proppé, the stylish chap pictured above, was appointed Iceland’s Minister of Health in January this year. Last Saturday, when the shot was taken, he was on stage in his other role as the singer of HAM, whose invigorating musical blast draws a... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The Moody BluesSunday, 12 November 2017
In early 1965, Birmingham’s The Moody Blues topped the British charts with a forceful reinterpretation of Bessie Banks’ R&B ballad “Go Now”. In early 1968, after some line-up changes and a radical musical rethink, they hit 19 with “Nights in... Read more... |
CD: Taylor Swift - ReputationSaturday, 11 November 2017
In “Look What You Made Me Do”, the tabloid-level diss track that heralded the arrival of Taylor Swift’s sixth album, the one-time darling of Nashville declares the "old" Taylor “dead”. That song, and its follow-up procession of lukewarm singles in... Read more... |
CD: Sam Smith - The Thrill of It AllSaturday, 04 November 2017
In a sense, the air of tedium that surrounds Sam Smith is a wonderful thing. This is a person who can talk about having fluid gender identity and make it sound as if he's simply unsure whether he prefers boiled or mashed potatoes: that is, he's... Read more... |
CD: Squeeze – The KnowledgeSunday, 29 October 2017
When the songwriting partnership of Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford returned two years ago, it was with a renewed sense of vim and vitality following nearly two decades away. The Knowledge continues that revival with a collection of songs that... Read more... |
Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami review - a slow study of pop’s enigmaWednesday, 25 October 2017
Who is the real Grace Jones? This is the central question that drives Sophie Fiennes’s documentary, Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami. After 115 minutes, you might be less sure of the answer than when you go in. The title is Jamaican for a recording... Read more... |
