Music

St. Louis has as strong a claim as anywhere to be the city where the sound was first heard Rock ‘n’ roll was born at 3137 Whittier Street, St. Louis. Chuck Berry’s debut single Maybellene had it all – teenage heartbreak, fast cars and a driving guitar break – and was written during Berry’s eight-year […]

The country's historical and recent anguish provides a strong undercurrent to its music.

Such is Liverpool’s immense musical heritage that the city is not overshadowed by its most famous sons Liverpool makes its own mythology. In February 1967, the Beatles released the double A-side Penny Lane/ Strawberry Fields Forever, not only creating a new paradigm for Britishness in pop on one side and all but single-handedly creating psychedelia on […]

Germany fared almost as badly as the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest. Perhaps it’s time to come to an arrangement… Ooops, they did it again. Zero points… To us. And no, three pity points from the Austrian and Romanian juries don’t make our shame any less complete. But still, Vielen Dank, Britain, for saving us from the bottom […]

New exhibition 2 Tone: Lives & Legacies features incredible photos of fans of the Coventry music phenomenon In early 1980, The Specials were still basking in the glory of putting Too Much Too Young, and the sound of their 2 Tone label, at No. 1. Along with other ska-revival bands The Beat, The Bodysnatchers, The […]

For the last century, Turkey’s culture war has been played out in its music. And it’s not over yet Standing at the crossroads of continents, and the former capital of an empire stretching from North Africa to Eastern Europe, it is no surprise that Istanbul’s musical culture is a rich one. Turkish music encompasses multiple […]

‘Really weird and properly frightening’. That was the tone of the horror film script Mark E Smith, iconoclast leader of The Fall, set out to write in 2007. Fourteen years later, The Otherwise is finally being published Friday February 16th 2007. I’m waiting in the reception at the BBC building on Oxford Road Manchester. I’m […]

The music of the Danish capital, like the city itself, is characterised by an extraordinary imagination and by flights of fantasy Despite being practically-minded enough to have made Denmark one of the countries with the highest quality of life in the world, the Danes also understand the power of imagination. Their most famous son and master of […]

On the eve of an American poet’s 80th birthday, the places and people over here broadened his horizons When he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2016 ‘for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition’, Bob Dylan – who will celebrate his 80th birthday on 24th May – was clear […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on what might have happened if the attempt on Pope John Paul II’s life had been successful The two bullets fired by his would-be assassin perforated Pope John Paul II’s colon and small intestine, and he lost nearly three-quarters of his blood as he was rushed to hospital. Yet, they narrowly missed his mesenteric artery and […]

Lawyers have revealed five ‘false claims’ made by ministers they say prove the government refused to strike a deal to rescue visa-free touring in the EU. Legal opinion obtained by The Incorporated Society of Musicians (ISM) found ministers misled performers about the reason behind not pursuing a Visa Waiver Agreement (WVA) with Brussels last year. In fact, […]

Bonnie Greer on the impact of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, one of the greatest albums of all time, 50 years after its release Growing up African American and a sheltered Catholic schoolgirl on the South Side of Chicago, Marvin Gaye was the “ooh baby, baby man”. He was the troubadour of our clandestine basement […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on the music of Johannesburg and its undisputed queen, Mama Africa Johannesburg was a city built on gold, springing up rapidly after precious metals were discovered there in the 1880s, but it became a byword for impoverishment. Soweto in particular, originally a mine workers’ encampment and later one of the places black Jo’burgians from […]

Thirty years after his death, a new biography of Steve Marriott, of the Small Faces, paints a bleak picture of rock excess. The 30th anniversary of Steve Marriott’s death at the age of 44 – he died in a house fire on April 21 1991 caused by his falling asleep with a lit cigarette – finds the […]

From beach bums to hippies, hair metal rockers to gangster rappers, LA’s musical story has more twists than most. LA is a city of extremes. It’s a place where you either make it big or hit rock bottom, with a huge gulf between the mansions of Bel Air and the tents and shacks of Skid Row, […]

The Seychelles are a place where musical cultures from every part of the world – African, Indian, Polynesian, Arabic, Far Eastern and European – truly harmonise “The real richness of these islands is our cultural heritage,” Seychellois musical legend Patrick Victor has said. That is a cultural heritage that ranges far beyond the island of Mahé, smaller […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on the music of the Mexico capital. Some places are so alive with their own internal mythology that their music speaks of little else. Chilangos, the contested term for the denizens of Mexico City, have played out a love affair with their city in popular song over the last half century, but music […]

Sunderland’s indomitable party spirit is to be found in its exuberant 1990s girl band, and its very own drug-addled rave subculture. The atmosphere at the Blue Monkey club was almost physically tangible. The dancefloor filled with drug-fuelled revellers, lights and lasers roiling while ultra-high energy hardcore pumped out of the speakers, this old bingo hall on Sunderland’s […]

The new film The United States vs Billie Holiday is part of a canonisation the singer would have disliked, says BONNIE GREER.

SOPHIA DEBOICK on a place where music has articulated the angst of a colonised community, as well as addressed its more modern taboos. Greenland is a place where colonial history is lived every day. The world’s largest island, lying mostly within the Arctic Circle, it was settled by Norsemen as early as the year 1,000 […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on the music of the Scottish city. A white teenager with a voice like a world-weary soul singer twice her age could only be a product of Glasgow. Lulu grew up in the city’s Dennistoun district amid poverty and violence, but she put Glasgow’s mark on the charts as the British pop era […]

Your weekly check on how Project Fear is becoming Project Reality, selected by Steve Anglesey.  It has been a gloomy week on the sunlit uplands of sovereign Britain as Michael Gove’s war on experts appeared to have been extended to exports. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in charge of ensuring smooth trade after […]

Elton John has called on the government to renegotiate a better settlement for musicians after they were largely ignored during Brexit negotiations. The British pop icon accused Boris Johnson of having “screwed up” by failing to reach an agreement with the EU for visa-free tours by British musicians. John said Britain’s Brexit negotiators either “didn’t care about […]

Manchester’s musical conveyer belt has been responsible for some outstanding acts over the years. SOPHIA DEBOICK tries to join the dots between them. “My childhood is streets upon streets upon streets upon streets.” So Morrissey – once the master of ironic kitchen sink portraits of Mancunian life – opened his memoirs, evoking the endless terraces […]

A Tory minister has admitted the UK rejected a proposal by the EU to extend the music visa scheme in favour of more stringent border policies. Culture minister Caroline Dinenage said No 10 declined the offer because it would have meant allowing “visa-free short-stays for all EU citizens”. Speaking in the House of Commons, Dinenage […]

Matt Withers talks to the Poet Laureate of Brexit Britain about Europe, lockdown and cultural appropriation in music This time last year Jason Williamson of Sleaford Mods, the Poet Laureate of Brexit Britain, was writing the first songs for the band’s sixth studio album. The themes would have been familiar for those who know the […]

A petition launched by touring musicians has amassed almost 230,000 signatures as they attempt to secure a free “cultural work permit” that would allow them free travel through the 27 member states to perform. The group of musicians and tour crew who have mostly been left unable to work due to the coronavirus pandemic say they […]

Emma Luck on the singer who shook up Italy. When the long-awaited call came for a meeting with Elvis’ manager Colonel Parker and the King himself in Memphis, Little Tony leapt at the chance. Known as ‘the Italian Elvis’, the performer had always acknowledged the influence of his American hero. It was not hard to […]

There is more to Bethelem than just carols, as SOPHIA DEBOICK explains. “For 2,000 years people have sung songs for my hometown,” says Leila Sansour in a trailer for her film Open Bethlehem (2014), a personal odyssey through Bethlehem’s past, present and future. Indeed, no other place has been a byword, so frequently invoked in […]

Remembering Conny Plank, the music producer who helped define an essentially European sound. There are music producers who become famous in their own right. Joe Meek, Rick Rubin, Jerry Wexler, Stephen Street, Quincy Jones: most of us could probably reel off a list of mixing desk maestros who have helped change or define the sound […]

Shane MacGowan is a challenging subject for a new documentary film. JASON SOLOMONS talks to its director about a hard to love character and staying the right side of romanticism With his rotten-looking mouth, pallid grey skin and slurred speech, Shane MacGowan is the alternative face of Christmas. The Pogues singer and drunken Anglo-Irish poet […]

The Ethiopian capital has always been an ebullient, ambitious, swinging city – apart from a brief interlude of civil war and despotism. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports “If you’re here it means that things are better than where you come from.” This is how Francis Falceto, the Frenchman behind the Ethiopiques series of reissues from the golden age of […]