pop music
Sunny Afternoon, Harold Pinter TheatreWednesday, 29 October 2014
The bittersweet career of The Kinks is portrayed to surprisingly potent effect in this fast, funny and sometimes poignant musical, now transferring to the West End from the Hampstead Theatre. No mere "jukebox musical" – though it's crammed with... Read more... |
CD: Taylor Swift - 1989Tuesday, 28 October 2014
There's a "foreword" which accompanies the new Taylor Swift album – because it's not enough for the one-time Nashville starlet gone full New York pop star merely to create physical objects for the digital age: she also has to give them forewords... Read more... |
Sandra Nkaké and Jî Drû, Pizza Express Jazz Club - "mesmerising, leonine"Saturday, 18 October 2014
A first live experience of the French-Cameroonian singer Sandra Nkaké leaves many questions unanswered. Once the immediate bewilderment has passed, the most pressing question for a British audience should be: why is this extraordinary performer not... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: OasisSunday, 05 October 2014
Oasis: (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?Adding anything to a story so familiar, so raked over and one played out in public is tricky. Most probably, there are few revelations left about the Oasis of 1995, the year they released their... Read more... |
CD: Jessie Ware - Tough LoveSaturday, 04 October 2014
How does an artist follow a debut album as well-received as Jessie Ware’s Mercury-nominated Devotion? With something just as insistent, just as beautiful and just as likely to stick in the brain. There’s something incredibly unassuming about the... Read more... |
DVD: Otway the Movie – Rock and Roll's Greatest FailureThursday, 18 September 2014
For someone who tags himself rock and roll's greatest failure, John Otway hasn’t done too badly. Anyone attempting to navigate their way through a career in rock ‘n’ roll wouldn’t do badly looking to Otway as an example to follow. He’s had chart... Read more... |
Cilla, ITVTuesday, 16 September 2014
With Cilla Black still fighting fit and eminently telly-worthy at 71, it feels a bit odd to find a three-part dramatisation of her life popping up on ITV. Black apparently gave the project her blessing and has hailed Sheridan Smith's performance in... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Game TheorySunday, 14 September 2014
Game Theory: Blaze of GloryThe news of the death on 15 April last year of Scott Miller was a shock. Although hardly a household name, he was one of pop’s great auteurs. The California-born songwriter may no longer be with us, but the music he... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Calypso CrazeSunday, 07 September 2014
Various Artists: Calypso CrazeIn 1956, calypso battled it out with rock ’n’ roll to become America’s hottest musical craze. As the year ended, newspaper reports quoted pundits predicting it would wipe Elvis and his like out. One such was Reverend... Read more... |
CD: The Pierces - CreationSunday, 31 August 2014
Five albums down, and it seems that The Pierces are yet to stop dressing up their music in different, albeit recognisable, clothes. If 2011’s You & I was the big pop album that with any justice would have made Allison and Catherine household... Read more... |
Blondie’s New York and the Making of Parallel Lines, BBC FourSaturday, 30 August 2014
“It looked like Dresden after the bombing.” Blondie’s Chris Stein may be a member of one of pop’s most-loved bands, but he also has a way with words. Describing 1970's New York City in this way is offensive to the memory of the 25,000 who died in... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Popcorn GirlsSunday, 24 August 2014
Various Artists: Popcorn GirlsAlthough the sole single by troubled American televison and film star Tuesday Weld seems an unlikely dance floor filler, 1962’s cute and gently shuffling “Are You the Boy” became a staple with one of continental... Read more... |
