Music
You’re not special – just ask Google
My research assistant, John Steele, is also a songwriter. A friend emailed him with the lyrics of a Fleetwood Mac…
Beautiful voice, pretentious album: Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters reviewed
Grade: C+ Where did they all come from, the quirky yet meaningful rock chicks who don’t have a decent song…
From Middlemarch to Mickey Mouse: a short history of The Spectator’s books and arts pages
The Spectator arts and books pages have spent 10,000 issues identifying the dominant cultural phenomena of the day and being difficult about them, says Richard Bratby
The musical benefits of not playing live
Many performers hated playing live. But freed from the stage they often made their best and wildest work, argues Graeme Thomson
Haunting and beautiful: Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus’s Songs of Yearning reviewed
Grade: A It has taken 33 years — during which time this decidedly strange Liverpool collective have put out only…
Welder, banjo player, comedian, actor, and now artist – Billy Connolly interviewed
William Cook talks to Billy Connolly – welder, banjo player, comedian, actor, and now artist – about growing up in Glasgow, ditching the mike stand and living with Parkinson’s
Bleak humour, resourcefulness and wit: Budapest Festival Orchestra’s Quarantine Soirées reviewed
There’s a certain merit in bluntness. ‘Quarantine Soirées’ was what the Budapest Festival Orchestra called its response to the crisis,…
Beethoven wasn’t just history’s greatest composer but also one of its greatest human beings
Ludwig van Beethoven isn’t just my favourite composer: he’s my household god. There’s a bust of him on my mantelpiece.…
Rap that feels like a sociology lecture: Loyle Carner at Alexandra Palace reviewed
A few years ago, I asked the young American soul singer Leon Bridges — a latter-day Sam Cooke, with the…
Fascinating and compelling: Bruce Hornsby at Shepherd’s Bush Empire reviewed
In the unlikely event that Bruce Hornsby and Morten Harket, A-ha’s singer, ended up featuring in the Daily Mail for,…
The open-hearted loveliness of Hot Chip
Squeeze and Hot Chip are both great British pop groups. But they never defined a scene. Their ambitions extended further…
Woke slogans welded to incompetent grunge: Neil Young’s Colorado reviewed
Grade: B- Horribly woke boilerplate slogans welded inexpertly to the usual incompetent Crazy Horse grunge. Young and his pick-up band…
‘The only place I can’t get my plays on is Britain’: Sir Peter Brook interviewed
‘Everyone of us knows we deserve to be punished,’ says the frail old man before me in a hotel café.…
I was born to be on this Bob Dylan podcast, says Geoff Dyer
Podcasts will soon be like porn. Every interest, desire or idle flicker of curiosity will have been anticipated and catered…
What’s the point of the Today programme?
What else is there to write about in the week that John Humphrys, that titan of the BBC airwaves, retires…
‘Bob Dylan? He’s like Confucius’: Cerys Matthews interviewed
‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ was a Christmas classic for more than half a century until people suddenly began to worry…
Why a whole new generation of young Europeans are turning to old-school reggae
Acamera sweeps across the verdant, shimmering beauty of Jamaica before descending on to a raffishly charming wooden house built into…
Britain’s jazz scene is in full swing
Jazz died in 1959. At least, that’s what New Orleans trumpeter Nicholas Payton wrote in 2011 as part of a…
Sweet but formulaic: Blinded by Light reviewed
Once upon a time two men sat in a New York bar lamenting the state of Broadway. So they decided…
Reliably odd but the deranged proggery grates: King’s Mouth by The Flaming Lips reviewed
Grade: B- So a queen dies as her giant baby is being born. The baby grows very big indeed and…
Uncomfortable and distasteful: Marianne & Leonard reviewed
Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love is Nick Broomfield’s documentary chronicling the muse-artist relationship between Marianne Ihlen and Leonard Cohen.…
Kanye wipes the floor with David Letterman
My plan to cut the BBC out of my life entirely is working well. Apart from the occasional forgivable lapse…
Hideously tasteful elegies to useless country singers: Bruce Springsteen’s Western Stars reviewed
Grade: B– The first Springsteen song I ever heard was ‘Born To Run’, back when I was 14. I clocked…
The early death of Lili Boulanger is the most grievous of all among composers
Total immersion weekends can prove tricky. The established masters don’t need them, while lesser-known figures often turn out to be…
At her best Robyn is magical – but her contribution to pop is hardly unique
Last autumn, anyone who a) has an interest in pop music, and b) reads the weightier end of the press,…
