Finally this lightweight pop correspondent can stand proudly alongside the hardened war reporters of newspaper journalism, for I am in Magaluf. It’s after midnight in the land of “24 Sex Acts Girl”, where the bars are called things like Eastenders and the Prince William, red-faced kids move in hungry packs and shot-girls will sit on…
Even the weather is on message as I tramp damply through Soho for an audience with Dua Lipa: it really is hotter than hell. You’ve probably heard the 20-year-old’s song of that name. Hotter Than Hell has a moody verse delivered in her smoky, low voice, that ignites into a thumping club banger with a…
Beat the Sun sounds more like an undertaking for astronauts than athletes. They call it “nature’s toughest challenge”, though at 5.44 in the morning, the toughest challenge for the residents of the hotels that surround Chamonix town square is remaining asleep while commemorative cowbells clang, flares erupt and a DJ greets the alpine sunrise with…
If the widescreen rock of the third Mumford & Sons album, last year’s Wilder Mind, didn’t convince you that they aren’t the band you think they are, perhaps they can persuade you this summer. “If people sign up to be fans of this band, they need to understand that we’re going to be moving on…
Telling everybody you know that you’re planning to run a marathon in less than three hours is a bit like telling everyone you’re writing a novel: they’ll keep asking you about it every time they see you and it will be embarrassingly obvious that you haven’t done it. But a pointless running goal shared is…
My first glimpse of Halsey seems suitable for a new superstar. She’s just a hand, a cigarette and a plume of smoke, hanging languidly out of a blacked-out car window on a New York street corner. Entering a casual restaurant in the Meatpacking District, she’s made an attempt at anonymity that screams “I am famous!”…
It’s early days, but already everyone from Kanye West to Jools Holland has endorsed Stormzy’s sound. He’s been on Later, was named Best Grime Act at the MOBO Awards, landed bronze position on the BBC’s Sound of 2015 poll and appeared amid Kanye’s hooded army of grime royalty at the BRITs ceremony – all without…
With their first album zooming straight into the No 1 slot the minute it was released last week, sell-out shows all over the country and excitable young fans who shout “We want Sex!” in order to hear the band’s hit song of that name, The 1975 couldn’t be hotter right now. In their singer, Matt…
On the afternoon of December 4, 1956, someone was smart enough to press the record button when Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley all happened to be in the same room, jamming and jawing at Sun Studio in Memphis. It was a musical summit meeting historic enough to spawn a Tony…