Music news

Follow @MusicUKnws

• ‘I heard he won the Oscar but he had to give it back’: Will Smith gets jiggy with the Slap

  28-03-2025 15:43
  Three years after the infamous incident at the Academy Awards, Smith is continuing to rap about his attack on Chris Rock on a new albumWhen you have embarrassed yourself in front of the entire world, as Will Smith did during the 2022 Oscars, you find yourself confronted with two choices. Either you can slink off embarrassed and wait however long it takes for the furore to die down, or you can make an entire album about it.You probably don’t need to be told which option Smith took. Continue
  
  Read more

• Gigspanner Big Band: Turnstone review – an elegance unmatched in British folk

  12-04-2025 17:00
  
  (GS)
  The multi-talented six-piece soar on their most accomplished album yet, led by the exceptional fiddle-playing of Peter Knight With six members, the Gigspanner Big Band is not particularly big, though their collective elan has a forceful presence unmatched in British folk: a little classical, a little jazzy, highly inventive while their material remains almost entirely traditional. Founded by fiddle player Peter Knight, once of Steeleye Span, the ensemble contains two duos and a trio as well
  
  Read more

• Olly Alexander review – part night creature, part light entertainer

  12-04-2025 15:00
  
  Palladium, London
  The singer and actor hints at an outre new synth-heavy sound, drawn largely from latest album Polari. He stops short, though, of scaring his daytime TV fans“I’m all about playful subversion,” declares Olly Alexander with a grin on the final night of his UK tour. Clad in a series of outfits whose shiny buttons nod towards London’s pearly kings and queens and the dressing-up box – there’s one handily located on the left side of the stage &ndash
  
  Read more

• One to watch: Pozer

  12-04-2025 13:30
  
  Putting the angst in gangsta, the rising south London rapper brings a touch of vulnerability to his murky tales of drug deals in the ’hood on his debut EP“I’m from the ’hood but I don’t let it define me,” raps Pozer. That’s kind of a fib. The young south Londoner hasn’t become UK rap’s king-in-waiting by rhyming about pony club and private school. His bars are for those intimately familiar with the postcodes where ATMs dispense fivers –
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Pauline Black: ‘My most unappealing habit? Bluntness’

  12-04-2025 10:30
  
  The Selecter singer on being told she was adopted aged four, falling offstage, and a close brush with deathBorn in Essex, Pauline Black, 71, worked as a radiographer before becoming lead singer of the Selecter in 1979. The band’s hit singles include On My Radio, Three Minute Hero and Missing Words. Black was made an OBE in 2022 for services to entertainment. A documentary about her life, Pauline Black: A 2-Tone Story is on Sky Arts and Now TV from 16 April, and the Selecter are due to
  
  Read more

• Coachella 2025: desert festival balances the new and the nostalgia

  11-04-2025 15:34
  California music festival to see record highs and headlining sets from Lady Gaga, Post Malone and Green DayStars such as Lady Gaga, Charli xcx, Ed Sheeran and Missy Elliott will face blazing temperatures this weekend at an unusually hot Coachella festival.The California-based festival will soar to potentially record-breaking highs of 103F (over 39C) in its first of two consecutive weekends, about 10-20 degrees Fahrenheit higher than what’s typically expected at this time of year. Continue
  
  Read more

• TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe: ‘I remember thinking I never want to do this again’

  11-04-2025 15:00
  TV on the Radio’s frontman hit rock bottom at the height of the band’s powers and stopped performing music for good. But with his acting career taking off and a genre-jumping new solo album, one of rock’s great polymaths is backSitting in the belly of north London’s Islington Assembly Hall in the middle of four sold-out nights, TV on the Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe is recalling the precise moment he wanted to quit his band – and music – for ever. It was
  
  Read more

• ‘Have the courage to walk away’: Bon Iver on romance, retirement and his rapturous new record

  11-04-2025 06:00
  Riven with anxiety from years of touring, Justin Vernon found he couldn’t leave the house. Then a new relationship changed his concept of love. His radiant new album shares the revelationsJustin Vernon would rather not be doing any of this. Releasing a new Bon Iver album, promoting it. He absolutely isn’t going to tour it. “I don’t need to do this any more,” he says. “I want to be done with this whole thing. But I am dead serious about these songs. That&r
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• ‘I wrote it while bored on a health farm’: how Mike and the Mechanics made All I Need Is a Miracle

  07-04-2025 16:00
  ‘The demo had my singing on it. When I played it to the band, the look on their faces said, “We’re in trouble, boys”’I was a pop producer working with the likes of Sheena Easton and Dollar. Mike Rutherford was a prog rock musician with Genesis. But the band’s publishing company thought the two of us – the yin and yang – would do well together. And they were right. We hit it off immediately. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Gang of Four bassist Dave Allen dies aged 69

  07-04-2025 13:14
  Bandmates pay tribute to friend and ‘Ace of Bass’ who helped forge the post-punk band’s soundDave Allen, the bassist for British post-punks Gang of Four, has died aged 69. His surviving bandmates, vocalist Jon King and drummer Hugo Burnham, said that Allen had been suffering from early-onset mixed dementia.Burnham said in a statement: “It is with broken yet full hearts that we share the news that Dave Allen, our old music partner, friend, and brilliant musician, died on S
  
  Read more

• ‘Goths don’t have sex – we just stare into the black sun’: Billy Corgan’s honest playlist

  07-04-2025 08:00
  The Smashing Pumpkins songwriter and guitarist on overdoing karaoke, joining Pink Floyd on stage and his secret love of Katy Perry’s RoarThe first single I boughtShe Loves You by the Beatles, for 25 cents at a garage sale in Glendale Heights, Illinois, even though I didn’t know who the Beatles were. I just liked how they looked on the cover, their faces half in shadow.The song that makes me cry
  I’ve been lucky enough to play Wish You Were Here both when Pink Floyd were ind
  
  Read more

• Amadou Bagayoko obituary

  06-04-2025 16:08
  Malian singer-songwrier and guitarist who had international success in a duo with his wife MariamOne of the most extraordinary success stories in the history of African music began in 1978 in the south of the Malian capital, Bamako, in the Institut des Jeunes Aveugles, a school for young blind people. It was there that Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia began to make music together. Over two decades later, by now married and known as Amadou & Mariam, “the blind duo of Mali”
  
  Read more

• Opera director Netia Jones: ‘AI is not going away. Either you batten down the hatches or you ride the wave’

  06-04-2025 10:30
  Royal Opera’s new associate director on her obsession with Peter Grimes, winning over tech-sceptics and the joy of school matinee showsBorn in London, where she still lives, to an artist mother and musician father, Netia Jones is the new associate director of the Royal Opera. Known for using immersive installations, film and VR, her operas include Alice in Wonderland, Least Like the Other with Brian Irvine, which won the Ivor Novello best opera award, and Peter Grimes, which finished its r
  
  Read more

• Various: Chet Baker Re:imagined review – new reworkings by R&B, pop, soul and jazz artists

  05-04-2025 17:00
  (Blue Note)
  There are hits and misses as 15 performers including Dodie, Mxmtoon and Ezra Collective’s Ife Ogunjobi give their personal take on Baker’s unique soundPossessing a whisper-soft voice and sweetly melodic trumpet tone, Chet Baker (1929-1988) had a sound that is often imitated yet almost impossible to master. For the latest edition of Blue Note’s Re:imagined series, in which the jazz label invites artists to produce cover versions of its back catalogue, 15 R&B, pop
  
  Read more

• Tom Ravenscroft: ‘I always wanted a shell suit, but my mum wouldn’t let me have one’

  05-04-2025 15:00
  The radio DJ talks about missing grungy old music festivals, doing all the cleaning at home, and being brought up without ambition by his dad, John PeelMusic was playing before I was even born. I was born into the sound. My dad [radio presenter John Peel] used to make these mixtapes. We had three TDK 90s and we would drive around France in our battered, crappy Peugeot 505 estate, travelling the world musically through these cassettes.As teenagers we used to get called crusties – we had lon
  
  Read more

• Kae Tempest review – a brave, intimate set where the personal is political

  05-04-2025 15:00
  Village Underground, London
  The laser-focused spoken-word performer returns to the musical stage with new tracks focusing on their identity – but wider concerns are never far away“This has been a performance piece about how technology is going to be the death of us all,” jokes rapper, poet, author and playwright Kae Tempest as a keyboard player and a technician wrestle with malfunctioning equipment. We’re just two tracks in; Tempest assures us that if the electronics are
  
  Read more

• One to watch: Model/Actriz

  05-04-2025 13:30
  This visceral post-punk New York band deliver blood, sweat and music of manic brillianceExuding glamour, spectacle and pathos, Model/Actriz create a ferocious mix of industrial rock, dance-punk and pop that’s often sexy and disturbing in the same breath. After breaking out in 2023 with debut album Dogsbody, the New York four-piece spent 2024 touring relentlessly, likely leaving every stage they played slicked with a mixture of sweat and blood. Their forthcoming follow-up record, Pirouette,
  
  Read more

• Amadou Bagayoko of music duo Amadou & Mariam dies aged 70

  05-04-2025 10:02
  Malian singer and guitarist, who sold millions of albums with his wife, Mariam Doumbia, had been ill for a while, say familyThe guitarist and singer Amadou Bagayoko of the Malian music duo Amadou & Mariam has died aged 70 after an illness, his family said, paying tribute to the Grammy-nominated blind musician.Amadou and his wife, Mariam Doumbia, formed a group whose blend of traditional Malian music with rock guitars and western blues sold millions of albums across the world. Continue readin
  
  Read more

• Kamasi Washington review – hip-hop and P-funk inform an outrageously joyful set

  04-04-2025 12:51
  Great Hall, Cardiff University
  In a dazzling performance, the jazz saxophonist draws out tracks from his latest album into giddy extemporisations, ceding the floor to a series of awesome soloists‘I don’t need to be from here to tell you I love you,” Kamasi Washington says, teeing up the velvet soul of Lines in the Sand. From the back of the room comes a voice, propelled as much by the convivial brilliance that has lit up the stage for the past half an hour as it apparently is b
  
  Read more

• Elton John and Brandi Carlile: Who Believes in Angels? review – a true meeting of minds

  04-04-2025 12:30
  (Island EMI)
  The British star and the US country artist spur each other on in this tuneful, swinging set with poignant momentsIn the twilight years of his career, Elton John has been anointing the next generation with a keener ear than most, championing new stars from Chappell Roan to Wet Leg via his Rocket Hour radio show and collaborating with artists as genre-diverse as Britney Spears, Gorillaz and Young Thug. Who Believes in Angels?, however, feels like a genuine meeting of minds. Created al
  
  Read more

• 2hollis: Star review – sounds like the internet and bound for stardom

  04-04-2025 12:00
  (Interscope)
  An underground phenomenon since his teenage years, Hollis Frazier-Herndon feels like a male Charli xcx about to take off2hollis looks like an avatar dreamed up in a K-pop factory: elven, almost CGI-generated. His fourth album, his first for a major, sounds like the internet: a pummelling mashup of hyperpop, post-Playboi Carti trap and tweaky club music also indebted to underground Swedes Drain Gang. Which is to say, the 21-year-old LA-raised singer-producer feels something like a ma
  
  Read more

• Michael Hurley, hero of the US folk underground, dies aged 83

  04-04-2025 10:17
  Singer-songwriter made more than 30 albums away from the mainstream, inspiring numerous artists in American alternative musicMichael Hurley, the American singer-songwriter whose unique path through the US folk scene made him an inspiration to generations of alternative musicians, has died aged 83.A statement from the family announced his “recent sudden passing”, though no cause of death has been given. It added: “The ‘godfather of freak folk’ was for a prolific half
  
  Read more

• Joe Lovano: Homage review | John Fordham's jazz album of the month

  04-04-2025 10:00
  (ECM)
  Backed by pianist Marcin Wasilewski’s group, the US sax elder plays freely around a song-rooted approach, resulting in sparkling, spontaneous exchangesJoe Lovano, that giant American elder of jazz reeds-playing, nowadays seems – rather like the equally eminent saxophone master Charles Lloyd – to be simmering all his decades of timeless tunes and exquisite passing phrases down to essences. The 72-year-old Ohio-born sax star and occasional drummer’s partners here are
  
  Read more

• DJ Koze: Music Can Hear Us review – party-starting nostalgist is as playful as ever

  04-04-2025 09:30
  (Pampa)
  Appealingly rough around the edges, the Hamburg DJ’s fourth album voyages from a Damon Albarn amapiano track to harsh 90s drum’n’bassIt’s almost surprising that DJ Koze is only now, decades into his career, releasing an album titled Music Can Hear Us. The Hamburg-based producer has long advocated for the idea that music is a living, breathing organism: his dance tracks may be able to whip 70,000-strong crowds into a frenzy, but they’re also oozy, globular th
  
  Read more

• Ed Sheeran: Azizam review – a cross-cultural Persian experiment … which sounds incredibly English

  04-04-2025 08:19
  (Gingerbread Man/Atlantic)
  After a couple of earthy, rootsy albums, Sheeran emphatically returns to pop with another of his indelible hooks, surrounded by Middle Eastern instrumentationEd Sheeran’s new single arrives at an interesting point in his career. His last albums, 2023’s Subtract and Autumn Variations, felt not unlike a riff on Taylor Swift’s pandemic-era Folklore and Evermore: two albums released in the same year, produced by the National’s Aaron Dessner, a littl
  
  Read more

• ‘This weird dream just keeps going!’ Wet Leg on overnight success, sexual epiphanies and facing fears

  04-04-2025 06:00
  The UK indie-rockers won two Grammys for their debut album. Ahead of their second, they explain how they protected one another amid sudden fame – and how queer love and Davina McCall inspired themWet Leg’s Rhian Teasdale looks like a pop star from a different era. She walks into a bar in east London wearing a giant, floor-length pale-pink padded coat. She has bleached eyebrows, dip-dyed hair, drawn-on freckles and jewels stuck to her nails and teeth. For a moment, Top of the Pops cou
  
  Read more

• Black Country, New Road: Forever Howlong review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

  03-04-2025 13:00
  (Ninja Tune)
  After losing their frontman, the band’s third studio album shows how resilient and adaptable they are, with luscious melodies, fantastical lyrics and lots of recordersThe last time Black Country, New Road released a studio album, in 2022, it was accompanied by a strange feeling. Their debut the previous year had reached No 4 in the UK charts, and Ants from Up There was an even greater breakthrough, the sound of the UK septet pulling confidently away from the serried ranks of s
  
  Read more

• ‘I would never be able to sing a song that a robot wrote’: Lucy Dacus on her new album’s themes of artistry and intimacy

  30-03-2025 13:00
  
  As the indie singer-songwriter and Boygenius star releases her latest, highly personal solo record, she talks of her weariness of AI and digital art, the pressures of being in a public relationship, and her anger and fears in Trump’s USIn the shadow of a Hogarth painting, accompanied by guitar and violin, Lucy Dacus is singing about disappointment. The painting depicts Thomas Coram, founder of the Foundling Hospital in London’s Bloomsbury district. A shipbuilder by trade, he is portr
  
  Read more

• Usher review – glitzy Vegas-style spectacle is completely preposterous and preposterously entertaining

  30-03-2025 12:57
  The O2, London
  From rollerskating around the stage wearing a union jack suit to feeding cocktail cherries to women in the audience, Usher wears middle age incredibly wellEarly on during the first show of Usher’s London residency, the audience is treated to the sight of the teenaged singer fantasising about playing London and “thousands of people shouting my name”. It’s presumably been flammed together for the occasion via the miracle of AI, but the point it’s making
  
  Read more

• Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones: ‘I like to fart in front of people. You can tell if someone’s cool from their reaction’

  30-03-2025 00:00
  
  The punk guitarist on the ideal length of gigs, stealing from David Bowie’s trucks and dealing with an ornery Jerry Lee LewisIs it true you nicked some of your early equipment from David Bowie’s trucks outside the Hammersmith Odeon at the last Ziggy Stardust show, in 1973?There’s definitely some truth in that. It wasn’t outside in trucks though – it was on the stage! They played two nights, and after the first night they left all the gear up, because they were playi
  
  Read more

Follow @MusicUKnws on Twitter!