With Last Christmas sailing up the singles charts again, now’s the time to reappraise Michael’s best tracks, from sublime pop to haunting elegiesTucked away on the B-side of The Edge of Heaven, Battlestations is a fascinating anomaly in the Wham! catal…
Paul Weller’s 30 greatest songs – ranked!
Drawn from the Jam, the Style Council and his solo work, all of it powered by romance, storytelling and political vim, here is the best of a British songwriter unbounded by genreOn the B-side of A Solid Bond in Your Heart lurks Weller’s mea culpa take …
Tom Morello: ‘We came within a baby’s breath of a fascist coup in the US’
Lockdown and ‘looking after the grandmas’ may have kept the Rage Against the Machine guitarist away from recent protests – but he refuses to be silencedTom Morello has made more than 20 albums, as a founding member of Rage Against the Machine – the pol…
Madonna: Madame X review – tour doc prostrates itself before queen of pop
This film lays out the impressive staging of a dramatic tour but is intent on capturing its subject from only the best anglesThis documentary opens with the old James Baldwin quotation about artists being here to disturb the peace, alongside a montage …
Nao: And Then Life Was Beautiful review – joy and hope amid the pandemic
(Little Tokyo Recordings/Sony Music)Plenty of new albums are considering life with Covid, but few of them are as sensual and gorgeous as thisNo sooner had lockdown begun than the musical responses came. Over the last 18 months, we’ve had everything fro…
‘I knew I was pushing buttons’: Kacey Musgraves on breaking country music taboos
She’s already broken out of Nashville to become an unconventional pop superstar. Now she’s stretching the limits of country again – with the help of psychedelics and a four-poster bed in her studioIt is mid-morning in Nashville and Kacey Musgraves is p…
Low: Hey What review | Alexis Petridis’s album of the week
(Sub Pop)The veteran group continue the scorched digital manipulations of 2018 masterpiece Double Negative, but their vocals are left pristine and beautifulLow seemed a singular band from the outset. They were a married, practising Mormon couple, devot…
Big Red Machine: How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? review | Alexis Petridis’s album of the week
(Jagjaguwar)Aaron Dessner and Justin ‘Bon Iver’ Vernon recruit Taylor Swift, Fleet Foxes and more for this album full of misty autumnal beauty – and a quiet punchAaron Dessner cuts a very low-profile figure, even by the standards of both bookish US alt…
Harmony, melancholy and the Everly Brothers’ indelible influence
From Neil Young to Keith Richards, a generation of musicians revered Phil and Don’s haunting music• US music star Don Everly dies aged 84Among the hundreds of hours of outtakes from the recording sessions that eventually became the Beatles’ Let It Be a…
Outkast’s 20 greatest songs – ranked!
As their classic second album ATLiens turns 25, we look back at the best from a duo who turned rap into a psychedelic, progressive playgroundThe title seems to refer to Outkast’s refusal to be constrained by musical boundaries and expectations as much …