There are plenty of ways to be charitable that feel like more of a sacrifice than Ellie Goulding’s concert for Streets of London. To help the organisation that helps the homeless, the singer milked her starry contacts book to produce a fast moving show featuring more hit singles than a Now! compilation. This was her fifth year organising this… Read more →
As the Evening Standard still refuses to give my annual pop awards the kind of glitzy ceremony, star presenters and shiny trophies that the theatre and film bashes enjoy, I’m forced once again to ask you to use your imaginations to visualise this page being read aloud by Rihanna in the Dorchester ballroom. Look! There’s Marshmello, applauding gallantly. It’s been… Read more →
It’s Christmas, a time for giving, and if you’re a musician, that means a charity concert. Liam Gallagher performed for Shelter at the Union Chapel last night.George Ezra will be in the same venue for Mind on Tuesday, and Laura Marling will be singing for CALM at Omeara this weekend. But the biggest by far is Ellie Goulding’s annual show… Read more →
It’s all “mixtapes”, “playlists” and “projects” round here these days. Some musicians will do anything to avoid calling a collection of more than a dozen examples of their music an album. But rather than signalling the death of the form, as some have suggested, I reckon it means that they understand what a big deal it still is. The album… Read more →
Hozier’s breakthrough hit, Take Me to Church, was an angry howl against organised religion, with a grim black and white video that depicted homophobic abuse in Russia. His recent comeback single, Nina Cried Power, is a stirring tribute to the protest songs of the Civil Rights movement and the struggles of their singers. So I thought the Irish singer-songwriter may… Read more →
When’s the best time to write your autobiography? That’s a tougher question for musicians than all those diary-keeping politicians. Do you get it done early, when you’re still big news but there’s less life to record, as Stormzy, 25, and Lily Allen, 33, did this year? Or late, like The Who’s Roger Daltrey, 74, whose memory banks may be f-f-fading… Read more →
There’s a song on the next Bring Me the Horizon album called Heavy Metal. It features the beatboxer Rahzel and a heavy dose of electronica and is a considerable distance away from devil-horned, hair thrashing cliche. Not content with being one of the UK’s biggest hard rock bands, now the Sheffield quintet are setting out to become its most interesting.… Read more →
It’s inevitable that a musician who has made their pop breakthrough since their last London gig will come back through town for another show, but it isn’t usually much smaller. Texas-born singer-songwriter Maren Morris is a big noise in the country world, winning a Grammy for her song My Church, though we know her as the voice of Zedd’s dance-pop… Read more →
Slaves are one of modern music’s less likely successes. The Kent duo have sent three albums into the top 10, all full of brutal rock music that, if it was any more rudimentary, would be performed in the Alexandra Palace car park on dustbin lids rather than in the great hall itself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rBK2mCIZmY They overreached a little here, with… Read more →
In her Dalston bedroom, Hamzaa keeps a small white board on which she writes her goals for the year. It has a lot of ticks on it. “It says ‘500k streams across Apple Music and Spotify’. I passed that a while ago. Another one was ‘Headline show sell out’. I didn’t think I’d sell out my first ever headline… Read more →