You are here

Tag: Music

Headlines 

Britney Spears: where to start in her back catalogue

NewsEditor, , ,

Our Listeners Digest series continues with the bold and experimental stylings of the pop princess turned showstopping star The album to start with Blackout (2007) Britney Spears sang on the title track of her 2008 album, Circus. The ones that entertain and the ones that observe / Well, baby, Im a put-on-a-show kinda girl. Quite right: her DNA was encoded with the drive to perform, and each successive album Blackout was her fifth took putting on a show to another level, as she grew away from chaste small-town beginnings toward…

Read More
Headlines 

Kim Wilde: I look miserable, but I was having the time of my life

NewsEditor, , , , ,

The singer on pouting like Lauren Bacall, DIY hairdos, gardening in nightwear and discovering the joys of colour This was taken in 1981 or 1982, right at the beginning of my career. All my clothes at that time were secondhand a hangover from being at art college. The top that I wore in the Lauren Bacall I really loved that she didnt smile for the camera. When I first started having my photograph taken, lots of male photographers would say: Come on Kim, give us a smile! and it used…

Read More
Headlines 

7 New Songs to Help You Feel Less Socially Distant

NewsEditor

Music is insistent on the collective. The best music is built on community, and what truly gives any particular song staying power is how it’s regarded among the masses. Sure, we carry songs with us as we go about our day, shuffling through them on Spotify or assembling playlists on Soundcloud for personal pleasure. We like to tell ourselves that they exist in a vacuum, that sometimes these aural trinkets are just for us. Intimacy certainly affords your favorite songs a particular fire, but, ultimately, it is the spirit of…

Read More
Headlines 

Code Orange: Underneath review a thrilling new form of molten metal

NewsEditor, ,

The Pittsburgh quintet marry technical mastery with genre-fusing risk in a record of poetry and spectacular potency Despite its reputation as the satanic scourge of curtain-twitching suburbia, metal can be prone to the kind of squabbling you might see at a parish council meeting, with endless taxonomic arguments about whether something is death or thrash or black metal. Such petty bloviating is silenced by Grammy-nominated Pittsburgh quintet Code Orange, whose fourth album throws thrash, hardcore punk, math rock, sludge, metalcore, industrial, screamo, grunge, nu-metal and classic rock into a centrifuge,…

Read More
Headlines 

Plcido Domingo says harassment apology gave ‘false impression’

NewsEditor, , , , , , , ,

Spanish opera singer says his words had been misunderstood after apology triggers backlash Plcido Domingo has rowed back on an apology he made over sexual harassment allegations just two days earlier, after his mea culpa triggered a backlash and cancellations in Spain. The Spanish opera singer, who faces multiple allegations of sexual harassment, forcibly kissing, grabbing or fondling them in incidents dating to the 80s. On Tuesday, the AGMA union said an internal inquiry found the singer had engaged in a pattern of inappropriate activity. Domingo said he was withdrawing…

Read More
Odds and Ends 

Doctors Tell Musician to Play Violin During Brain Surgery So She Wont Forget

NewsEditor, , , , ,

A musician at King’s College Hospital in London played the violin while surgeons operated on her brain to remove a tumour. The medical team asked Dagmar Turner, 53, to play the instrument to ensure parts of the brain which control delicate hand movements and coordination were not damaged during the millimetre-precise surgery. Turner was diagnosed in 2013 with a brain tumour after suffering a seizure during a symphony Read more: https://twistedsifter.com/videos/woman-plays-violin-during-brain-surgery/

Read More
Headlines 

Everything we wanted: the race to find the next Billie Eilish

NewsEditor, ,

The search for the new Billie is undoubtedly under way. But how will record labels attempt to replicate her success? Last week, No Time to Die a huge swoop of a song that wants to bottle a feeling of timelessness. It ratchets up what has already been quite the year already for her, as last month she became the youngest person to win best record, best song and album of the year (as well as best new artist) Sheeran and Ocean Eyes online in 2015 and signing to A&R hothouse…

Read More
Headlines 

Billie Eilish: No Time to Die review a Bond theme befitting the Craig era

NewsEditor, , , , ,

The pop sensation sidelines her trademarks for a tasteful track that matches the haunted solitude of its leading man the Beatles without earmuffs. The Beatles had the last laugh 007 presumably had to reach for hearing protection when Paul McCartney was commissioned to write the theme song for Live and Let Die but for years, the Bond themes pandered to their heros tastes, invariably coming from artists who were more likely to be found playing the Talk of the Town than the Marquee club. That changed dramatically in the 80s.…

Read More
Odds and Ends 

This 1965 Live Version of Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers is Everything

NewsEditor, , , , , , ,

Whenever this song comes on I get instant chills. “Unchained Melody” is a 1955 song with music by Alex North and lyrics by Hy Zaret. North wrote the music as a theme for the little-known prison film Unchained (1955). Todd Duncan sang the vocals for the film soundtrack. It has since become a standard and one of the most recorded songs of the 20th century, most notably by the Righteous Brothers. According to the song’s publishing administrator, over 1,500 recordings of “Unchained Melody” have been made by more than 670…

Read More
Headlines 

Katy Perry offers no respite for the embattled royals

NewsEditor, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Another blundersome week for the royal crew who, still reeling from Harrys exodus and revelations about Andrew, now find out that the singer has no Asian heritage Over the past few years, the royal helicopter took off comparatively infrequently from the field by Kensington Palace. Over the past month, however, it has been like an Oliver Stone movie out there. Its the Platoon of ribbon-cutting, the Nam of nursery visiting. Since Harry and Meghan decided to step back from their royal duties, the general stepping forward of other royals has…

Read More
Odds and Ends 

10 Moments of Drumming Mastery in Memory of Rock Legend Neil Peart

NewsEditor, , , , ,

After a private, 3.5 year battle with brain cancer, legendary musician Neil Peart passed away at the age of 67 on January 7th, 2020. The famous drummer of Canadian prog-rock innovators, Rush, Peart also wrote the bulk of the band’s lyrics from 1975’s LP, Fly By Night, until their final studio album, 2012’s Clockwork Angels. A virtuoso on the drums and a gifted songwriter, Peart also published 7 nonfiction books, several fiction collaborations and poured out thousands more words on his blog. Rush was inducted into the Rock & Roll…

Read More
Headlines 

The Clash’s 40 greatest songs ranked!

NewsEditor, , , , ,

Forty years on from the London Calling album, we rate the best tracks by the genre-hopping punks 40. 1977 (1977) A historical artefact, not for the proto-punk music, but because the lyrics epitomise the new waves perceived threat to the old guard. No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones / In 1977, sang Joe Strummer, hardly about to let his love of such pop greats get in the way of punks declaration of year zero. 39. White Riot (1977) Guitarist Mick Jones now dislikes the first Clash single, its lyrics…

Read More
Headlines 

Moral of the story: 2019’s boldest culture asked what it means to be good

NewsEditor, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

At a time when deceit is trumping decency, artists from Kanye West to Greta Gerwig and Phoebe Waller-Bridge have taken it upon themselves to pose questions about virtue and privilege In Little Women, a haughty publisher dismisses Jo Marchs stories as unfashionable. Morals dont sell nowadays, he tells the aspiring author. People want to be amused, not preached at. Hopefully the statute of limitations has expired on spoiling a 151-year-old story: March an avatar for her creator, Louisa May Alcott proves him wrong. As has Gerwig, reviving Little Women in…

Read More