As Shura releases her second album, she’s in a new place, in every sense. New sound, new home, new love – the 28-year-old singer-producer has lots to talk about on a brief visit to her old stomping ground in London before she returns to her current one, Brooklyn. The title of her comeback single, BKLYNLDN,…
You could accuse Nile Rodgers of being a name dropper, but given the circles in which he has moved for over four decades, I’m not sure he could hold a conversation any other way. From founding Chic, producing David Bowie and playing on Daft Punk’s biggest hit, the 66-year-old guitarist has got starry connections to…
We usually don’t expect too much from those who have gone viral. Enjoy your 15 megabytes of fame and disappear again. No one wanted an album from Cat Bin Lady. The experience of Claire Cottrill, a 20-year-old from Massachusetts who has been posting her music online since she was 16, was different. “It was such…
“I don’t mind hard work and no sleep. I’ll do whatever it takes,” Mabel McVey says. The 23-year-old pop singer, who trades mononymously as Mabel, proves it on the day we meet. In the 12 hours before she arrives for lunch in Soho, she has performed at a Jax Jones pool party at an Ibiza…
“Oh my goodness!” Janelle Monáe exclaims when asked for her memories of her first visit to Glastonbury, in 2011. “I remember our bus catching fire on the way there and us almost dying. It was a ‘Get on stage as soon as you arrive’ type of situation. I also remember the crowd being one of…
Lady Gaga’s Ally may have been the titular character of A Star is Born, but another star has been rising almost as fast since that movie became one of last year’s biggest hits. The fingerprints of Californian musician Lukas Nelson are all over the film. He and his band Promise of the Real appear as…
First things first: why is the new Kaiser Chiefs album called Duck? Is it a song title? A reference to a key lyric? Some sort of oblique nod towards environmental issues? Or just Ricky Wilson’s favourite part of a Chinese takeaway? “It just is,” says the singer, 41 – apparently the band’s last word on…
Mumford & Sons and Piers Morgan: it’s the perfect early evening light entertainment combo, according to the talent bookers at The One Show, where the heavyweight rock band and the professional contrarian find themselves a teatime double bill. In the Mumfords green room before showtime, where there are more packets of Minstrels than are strictly…
Backstage in Hamburg’s Gruenspan venue, Maren Morris only needs a change of clothes, a shot of tequila and a “really inappropriate chant” with her five-piece band before she’s ready to go out and sing. It’s a relatively low-key club show this evening, aside from a bubble shower at the end – she says on stage…
Lizzo sounds terrible. Not on her new album, Cuz I Love You, on which the one-time rapper takes up singing with all the lung-busting power of a classic soul star. On the phone, it’s all coughs and croaks and significantly less of the boundless energy that has made the Detroit 31-year-old a beacon of positivity…