#britpop-rivalry

#britpop-rivalry

"At 2 a.m., sitting up and contemplating our loss during my child's wake, I found myself reflecting on all the major news events that had left their mark on me through the years and the helplessness I sometimes felt to change anything. Writing the last verse was the most difficult and personal thing I've done."

Y2K fashion has been steadily making a comeback over the past few years and the use of vintage technology, like disposable cameras, is on the rise. There are a few reasons why, including nostalgia and yearning for an idealized version of the past, doing a 'digital detox' and increasing privacy concerns.

Sometimes an audience wants to be told, what is this? And I'm refusing to do that. You can find great things in music when you open up to real listening. No one needs to be told 'what something is,' otherwise why would we be making something so straightforward? Be ready to be surprised, to find something new in music, and let the music resonate with you.

Wolf Alice brought their songs 'White Horses' and 'Leaning Against the Wall' to the small screen during their performance on Saturday Night Live UK.

A new campaign is aiming to collect 50 objects that sum up Englishness in an effort to move the conversation away from reductive arguments over whether to hang a St George's flag or not. Supported by the Green party politician Caroline Lucas, the musician and campaigner Billy Bragg, and Kojo Koram, a law professor, the A Very English Chat campaign hopes to tackle England's growing social divisions and political polarisation.

It is as if his past two decades of inflammatory political activism hasn't hurt his reputation. What's more, things will soon pick up, he assures us, because his morphine has just kicked in. A smatter of laughter. Probably joking? Opiate allusions aside, the between-songs narrative is a classic tour-de-Moz. He stumbles from self-hype to castigating jealous bitches and his customary bete noire, the cancel culture that has so thoroughly deplatformed him.

I've done more books now, I think, than Shakespeare, sort of. I had a right laugh writing my first book, and people liked it, so when the chance to write another came up, I thought why not? I've got even more mad tales to tell.

Brucie probably got more attention than the Gallagher brothers that night!, he tells FourFourTwo. At first it was just myself and his son Alex going, but Michael Carrick joined us and Steve was at a loose end, so he got a ticket too. Heading to the venue, he got absolutely mobbed. Everyone wanted a picture with him and being the man that he is, Steve agreed to every request.

At this point, it's Israel/Palestine. Rangers/Celtic. No one remembers how it got started. All they know is, I like this team and I don't like that team.' The whole country's gone fucking mad. It's what happens in a civil war—everyone starts thinking with the blood.

The Baltimore band's rendition of 'I Wanna Be Adored' is a clean combination of their dreamiest impulses and their rock-forward energy. Taking the tempo up just a tad from the original, Turnstile bring a touch of restlessness to the cover; frontman Brendan Yates powers through his vocal performance with passion, nailing a few arching belts as the band plays behind him with poise.

Things begin promisingly enough with the darkly powerful Going Up and All That Jazz from 1980's Crocodiles, the first of the terrific four-album run which blended psychedelia, post-punk and classic songwriting to turn the Liverpudlians into one of most hallowed bands of the decade.

"I'll Follow the Sun" is "a 'Leaving of Liverpool' song," McCartney explained in his 2021 book The Lyrics. "I'm leaving this rainy northern town for someplace where more is happening." Once they did leave, the band's rise to fame was stratospheric.

We did feel at Coachella, when we came over with Blur, that maybe it was a slight mismatch, us being at that festival,

The arrival of Robbie Williams's 13th album has been a complicated business. It was announced in May 2025 and was supposed to come out in October, when its title would have chimed with the 90s nostalgia sparked by the Oasis reunion. Williams spent the summer engaging in promotion, unveiling fake Britpop-themed blue plaques around London and staging a press conference at the Groucho Club.

Indie-pop quintet Heavenly will pair their already-announced 2026 tour with a new album, their first since 1996's Operation Heavenly. The band-original members Amelia Fletcher, Cathy Rogers, Peter Momtchiloff, and Rob Pursey, plus new drummer Ian Button- recorded Highway to Heavenly with producer Toby Burroughs. It will be released on February 27 via Fletcher and Pursey's label, Skep Wax.

The UK summer may not always play ball, as anyone who's woken up inside a damp tent in a muddy Glastonbury field can attest to, but our festival programme always delivers.

After seven solo albums, Tempest had begun thinking about working with others, and so the night before the recording session, he and Chatten repaired to Albarn's studio and wrote their verses together, responding to each other. It seemed to work really well, he says: A true collaboration. Nevertheless, he concedes, the actual recording of Flags proved to be quite the baptism of fire.

"When I read the fine print, it was 'an experience with REO Speedwagon's music.' It's none of the original members," Fletcher recalls. "I don't want to promote the show unless it's the real thing. I don't know why you would want to see that. It's just a cover band. To me, that's a little bit strange." He adds, with a sigh, "If there are no original members, who cares?"

The best song to play at a party It depends what stage of the party you are at. Early doors it would probably be I Heard It Through the Grapevine by Marvin Gaye. As the night wears on, I'd work through Prince, the Stones and Bowie, and when it really kicks off, Phat Planet by Leftfield, Born Slippy .NUXX by Underworld, and Ascension [Nic Fanciulli remix] by Gorillaz featuring Vince Staples, which is an absolute banger.

There isn't one songwriter, and so the flavour of the band is always going to change, says Dave Vanian, reflecting on 50 years of the group of which he has been the sole constant member, the Damned. Captain Sensible is a great fan of syrupy pop music and prog and glam rock. So his writing is very poppy, melodic and quite wonderful.

"It always happens at some point," Rob Pursey says in reference to "twee," a descriptor that has dogged he and partner Amelia Fletcher's bands for 40 years. It was a word often used as derogatory by music journalists, but like a lot of genres - shoegaze, trip-hop - it's become accepted and embraced by many who have listened to their band Heavenly in the nearly two decades between breaking up and reforming in 2023.

My grandparents used to take me to the Sandford Arms across the road from their house in Leeds on a Saturday afternoon to play the jukebox and since I remember records like Boney M's Rivers of Babylon this must mean I was about four. My other grandparents, meanwhile, actually ran a pub in the city centre. Their days usually started with my grandad, who did not have the bonhomie of a natural landlord, groaning to my grandmother: You open up, Kath, I can't face it!

On a bill almost comically overstuffed with heavy metal superstars paying tribute Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Anthrax, Slayer his rendition of Black Sabbath's 1972 ballad Changes unexpectedly stole the show, appearing to win him an entirely new audience in the process: the crowd at the gig skewed considerably older than the gen Z fans Harrison traditionally attracts. The ensuing performance is worth watching on YouTube.