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Music

  • Testing fan loyalty … Liam Gallagher performing in Glasgow.

    Live review
    Liam Gallagher John Squire – fans left short-changed by duo devoid of chemistry

  • Pyramid schemes … Dua Lipa, Coldplay's Chris Martin and SZA.

    Glastonbury
    Dua Lipa, Coldplay and SZA to headline 2024 festival

    Coldplay become act to headline most times with their fifth top slot, while Shania Twain is booked for the Sunday teatime ‘legend’ set as the lineup is announced
  • Simon Usborne plays piano with his son.

    ‘There’s joy I haven’t felt for years!’
    How I got hooked on the piano craze

    Thirty years after failing his grade two exam, our writer is banging out Handel, Billie Eilish and Elton John - and he’s not alone. With apps to help with learning, there’s never been a better time to tinkle the ivories
  • Salt-N-Pepa at Radio City Music Hall, New York City in 1994.

    From Nina Simone and Bob Marley to Goldie and Salt-N-Pepa
    A who’s who of Black popular music – in pictures

  • Rodrigo smiles as she sits playing piano onstage

    Olivia Rodrigo
    Concert hands out free morning after pill in Missouri — where abortion is banned

  • Taylor Swift and her ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn pictured in October 2019.

    From Emily Dickinson to Joe Alwyn, Taylor Swift is a master of misleading messaging

    Laura Snapes
  • A performance by El Wali in Laayoune refugee camp in 2023.

    ‘This music survived in a network of phones’
    El Wali, the shapeshifting voice of Saharan struggle

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Interviews

  • ‘I wanted to understand what was behind that strangeness …’ Ado’s anime-style alter ego.

    ‘I express purely through my songs and silhouette’
    Ado, the platinum-selling pop star with a secret identity

  • ‘Life changing’ … Shabaka Hutchings says learning the flute has made him a better sax player.

    ‘I don’t want to be a legacy performer’
    Why Britain’s hottest jazz star is giving up his sax for the flute

  • Beverley Knight … ‘You’ve got to come out swinging.’

    ‘I was cancelled’
    Beverley Knight on gay rights, race and her West End renaissance

  • Rob Halford of Judas Priest on stage in Bogotá, Colombia in December 2022, wearing a studded leather jacket and shrouded in smoke

    The reader interview
    Judas Priest’s Rob Halford: ‘Coming out as gay? It’s unbelievable, the elation’

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Album reviews

  • Candid … Ariana Grande.

    Album of the week
    Ariana Grande: Eternal Sunshine – perceptive post-divorce album is nearly spotless

  • The Africatown neighbourhood in Mobile, Alabama.

    Folk album of the month
    Various artists: Africatown, AL: Ancestor Sounds – music that defies the darkest of pasts

    • Bleachers
      Bleachers review – uninspiring shades of Springsteen with Jack Antonoff and co

    • Kim Gordon
      The Collective – so close to the edge it sometimes falls off

    • Bolis Pupul
      Letter to Yu – delicate melancholy and banging beats

    • Discovery Zone
      Quantum Web – expertly rendered synth fantasias

    • Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble
      Open Me, a Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit

    • Kitty Empire's album of the week
      Liam Gallagher John Squire – a textbook collaboration that’s anything but

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Live reviews

  • the Smile’s Thom Yorke at Eventim Apollo, London.

    The Smile
    Thom Yorke on jolly and utterly joyful form

  • Lola Young performs at the Scala in King's Cross, London. 5/3/24

    Kitty Empire's artist of the week
    Lola Young – the back-to-front rise of a powerhouse pop star

    • Fred Again performs in the Sydney Opera House on Tuesday night.

      Fred Again at Sydney Opera House
      A record-breaking, turbocharged night

    • PinkPantheress at Alexandra Palace on 23 February

      PinkPantheress
      Deft mashups from TikTok star who stepped seamlessly into real life

    • L’Rain performing at Simple Things.

      Simple Things festival
      Trance, slow jams and toilet-rattling rock

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  • Gwen Stefani on stage with No Doubt in 2002.

    Ranked
    Gwen Stefani and No Doubt’s greatest songs

  • Toni Sancho looking to camera, with her elbow on a table strewn with spring flowers

    One to watch
    Toni Sancho

  • A prosaic vision … Olly Alexander.

    Olly Alexander
    Dizzy – it’s a sinful ripoff from the UK’s Eurovision entry

  • Some claimed Verka Serduchka’s 2007 entry Dancing Lasha Tumbai had anti-Russian messaging.

    ‘Peck the bait!’
    The political messages hidden in Eurovision songs

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Obituaries

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From the archive

  • Lorde: ‘It’s my joy to be patient zero on a harmony virus.’

    Lorde
    I’m not a climate activist. I’m a pop star

    As Lorde's debut album Pure Heroine turns 10, revisit our interview with the New Zealand musician on the cusp of her underrated third album, Solar Power
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  • Cleaning up for the semi-final allocation draw of the Eurovision song contest

    Eurovision mirrors how countries see one another. That’s why I can’t watch Israel take part

    Jeff Ingold
  • Guy Chambers and Robbie Williams

    ‘It’s terrifying’
    Songwriter behind Robbie Williams hits out at AI in the music industry

    Guy Chambers says future albums may need disclaimers about how they were made amid rise of AI’s use for writing songs
  • Raye winning the R&B award at the Brits.

    Raye’s record-breaking Brits defied the limited imaginations of the British music industry

    Laura Snapes
    Raye’s six Brit awards marked a huge vindication for the newly independent artist and rightly shamed the major label that apparently couldn’t see her potential
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