28 h. ago Dear gen Z, take a lesson from this zillennial: to be cringe is to be free | Eleanor Burnard

As the internet’s apex predator, zoomers are terrified of being seen as anything but a specific type of curated cool. It’s time they learned to live, laugh, loveMillennials are a generation infamous for their love of avocado toast, craft beer, Harry Potter, inventing the idea of a Disney adult and girlboss feminism. For that they’ve been subject to the brunt of our zeitgeist’s wrath in the years since.Resentful boomers began the anti-millennial crusade. That’s to be expected; older people griping about the kids is nothing new, but rather a rite of passage that signifies a healthy ecosystem within the age groups. Hell, even gen X occasionally joins in on the action. Continue reading...

Events

3 d. ago The Jury: Murder Trial to Essex Honey: the week in rave reviews

A TV recreation brings gobsmacking courtroom drama, and gorgeous melodies meet languorous funk on Blood Orange’s latest album. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews Continue reading...

Events

4 d. ago Wolf Alice top UK albums chart with latest offering The Clearing

Their fourth studio album also sits atop the official vinyl albums chart this week.

Politics

4 d. ago With Love, Meghan season 2 review – Like being gaslit by a multimillionaire

The Duchess of ‘thoughtful touches’ is back with another batch of celebrity guests, fiddly craft and dishes made from scratch. It’s a shame her brand of madly aspirational hostessing will leave many of us feeling inadequate

Society

5 d. ago Blood Orange: Essex Honey review | Alexis Petridis’s album of the week

(RCA)Gorgeous melodies ground Dev Hynes’s questing fifth album, via dancefloor rhythms, indie pop and languorous funk – and cameos from Lorde and Zadie SmithDev Hynes’s fifth studio album as Blood Orange opens with a series of unexpected musical juxtapositions. The first track, Look at You, starts out with softly sung vocals over a cushion of equally soft synthesiser chords, before stopping dead, then re-emerging as almost an entirely different song: harmonies over guitar chords strummed so lazily you can hear the plectrum hitting each individual string. The second, Thinking Clean, offers a piano over pattering hi-hats: there’s something anticipatory about it, like an intro that’s about to burst into life, but when it does – complete with dancefloor rhythm – the song swiftly falls apart. The piano becomes increasingly abstract, before everything gives way to scrabbling, apparently improvised cello.It’s a lot to cram into six minutes, but anyone familiar with Blood Orange’s back cata...

Events

6 d. ago MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Meghan's latest feat of failure is basic, humorless and so nauseatingly fake. But was this 'sick burn' the moment she finally admitted defeat?

We're not even in hate-watch territory anymore. In a true feat of failure, Meghan Markle has leveled us all into indifference. Even she seems somewhat resigned to her fate.

Events

7 d. ago Radiohead’s Let Down enters US Billboard charts 28 years after its release

Song from 1997 album OK Computer scores band their fourth spot in the chart after going viral on TikTokRadiohead have entered the US singles chart with a song from their album OK Computer that has gone viral on social media 28 years after its release.Let Down, the third single from the British band’s 1997 album, entered at No 91 on the Billboard Hot 100 this week after rising in popularity on TikTok. Continue reading...

Economics

7 d. ago Ninja Luxe Cafe Premier Espresso Machine review: It's not perfect but I still love this coffee maker for beginner baristas

It's been several months since Ninja's first coffee machine, the Luxe Cafe Premier , dropped in the UK but it's still a winner in my eyes.

Politics

7 d. ago With Love, Meghan season 2 review – Watching this is like being gaslit by a multimillionaire

The Duchess of ‘thoughtful touches’ is back with another batch of celebrity guests, fiddly craft and dishes made from scratch. It’s a shame her brand of madly aspirational hostessing will leave many of us feeling inadequate

Society

7 d. ago With Love, Meghan season 2 review – Watching this is like being gaslit by a multi

The Duchess of ‘thoughtful touches’ is back with another batch of celebrity guests, fiddly craft and dishes made from scratch. It’s a shame her brand of madly aspirational hostessing will leave many of us feeling inadequate

Politics

7 d. ago With Love, Meghan season two review – so painfully contrived that it’s genuinely fascinating

The Duchess of Sussex returns with more effortfully whimsical celebrity get-togethers and she’s still sprinkling flowers over everything“I like recipes that take, like, four hours. I don’t do fast recipes at all. I like to braise.”“Wow, that is so fascinating.” Continue reading...

Politics

8 d. ago Love’s Labour by Stephen Grosz review – the truth about relationships

In a series of revelatory case studies, a psychoanalyst lays bare the messy reality of romantic loveA maths lecturer, convinced his wife is cheating, will not check the CCTV footage that might confirm his fears but instead keeps a private tally of the number of pubic hairs she sheds in her underwear. One hair is “OK, acceptable”, more is evidence that she has been “having it off”, he says, unaware that he uses these delusions of her infidelity to protect himself from the dangers of intimacy. A high-flying Fulbright scholar becomes a sex worker to avenge the father she hates. An ex-nun discovers that her decades of religious seclusion were driven by an unconscious fear of pregnancy. A troubled young woman, seeking redress for her psychological losses, steals large sums of money that she will never spend.In Love’s Labour, the London-based, American-born psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz offers an antidote to the pat, sanitised love stories we absorb through rom...

Politics

9 d. ago The tale of two Taylors! From Hollywood showmances to rebelling against studios

Last week, the Pennsylvania-born songstress revealed the second track on the album to the late actress, with whom she shares half her name.

Culture

1 week ago Earl Sweatshirt: Live Laugh Love review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

(Tan Cressida/Warner Records)With a sunlit disposition and paeans to his daughter, the mood turns lighter on the US MC’s sixth album – but the glitching, crashing beats are as esoteric as everThe launch party for Earl Sweatshirt’s sixth album was, by all accounts, a confounding affair. Some attenders came away convinced that Live Laugh Love contained guest appearances not merely by Vince Staples, but actor/rapper Donald Glover and comedian Dave Chappelle (it doesn’t, although all three contributed to a fanzine produced for the event). At one juncture, the DJ announced the arrival of “my brother, Earl Sweatshirt” before the appearance of someone who was visibly not Earl Sweatshirt – he was Asian, and apparently goes under the winning stage name Gary Underpants – performing a succession of Earl Sweatshirt songs. In the aftermath, at least one online music title didn’t seem sure whether it actually was a launch party for a new album or “an elaborate prank”: would a man whose grim world...

Politics

1 week ago Bleak Squad: Strange Love review – Australia’s newest supergroup sound like they’ve been together for years

Four music greats – Mick Harvey, Mick Turner, Adalita and Marty Brown – have created a genuine collaboration that leaves room for all their talentsGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailOccasionally the musical universe offers unexpected gifts that we might never have thought to ask for and had no right to expect. Strange Love, the debut album by new Melbourne supergroup Bleak Squad, is one such gift. The names who brought the band together speak for themselves: Adalita (Magic Dirt), Mick Harvey (the Bad Seeds, the Birthday Party), Mick Turner (Dirty Three) and Marty Brown (Art of Fighting, SodaStream, Claire Bowditch), who brought the band together.Brown’s intuition that such a combination would go well together has proven inspired. Such things can easily end up sounding better on paper than in practice. Instead, Bleak Squad sound pretty much exactly as you’d expect, given their name and collective histories: the hour is late, the lights are low, the writing is sharp, the arran...

Politics

2 w. ago Mistress Dispeller review – goodness and vulnerability shine through in candid love triangle doc

Elizabeth Lo gets participants to be extraordinarily open about their messy affairs as she follows a woman who helps spouses remove lovers from their partners’ lives An early-middle-aged woman with a bright smile and a nonthreateningly frumpy dress sense, Wang Zhenxi has an extremely specific set of skills. Part therapist, part spy, part master strategist, she helps spouses expunge pesky mistresses and lovers from their partners’ lives, hopefully restoring monogamous harmony in the process. She’s called a mistress dispeller, which sounds very awkward in English and yet that’s a perfectly apt description for the cleansing process that Ms Wang performs.Somehow, director Elizabeth Lo – who must have some killer persuasive skills of her own – managed to talk to Wang, her clients Mrs and Mr Li, and, amazingly, Mr Li’s mistress Fei Fei, into taking part in this film. Each corner of the love triangle gets to say their piece, and although the whole setup may seem a little strange what with ...

Politics

2 w. ago Wolf Alice announce intimate London gig to launch new album ‘The Clearing’ this week

Wolf Alice announce intimate London gig to launch new album ‘The Clearing’ this week  NME

Politics

2 w. ago How a steamy scene from Nicole Kidman's erotic thriller Babygirl inspired a track on Taylor Swift's new album The Life of a Showgirl

When Taylor Swift announced her new album The Life Of A Showgirl last week she said the 12 tracks were inspired by the 'joyful, wild, dramatic' times in her life.

Culture

2 w. ago ‘The idea was for a Black James Bond’: the making of 50 Cent: Bulletproof

The game’s launch 20 years ago coincided with the rapper’s meteoric success with his album The Massacre. Here, the team that made the shooter reflect on how it all happened The rapper 50 Cent (real name Curtis Jackson) was inescapable back in 2005. There wasn’t a British classroom without a teenager wearing Jackson’s G-Unit clothing, while his catchy hits Candy Shop and In Da Club dominated the radio. The backstory of this Queens-born New Yorker – how he survived being shot nine times only to become one of the world’s biggest rappers – also made for compelling lore.That year, 50 Cent sold more than a million copies in one week with his sophomore studio album, The Massacre. In a bid to cash in on this superstardom, his label Interscope Records planned a twin strategy: a Hollywood biopic (Get Rich or Die Tryin’) and a licensed video game, 50 Cent: Bulletproof – both to be released by November 2005. “I think the general public are going to be blown away by my game,” 50 Cent told the we...

Politics

2 w. ago Love Is Blind: UK Season 2 on Netflix review: let the emotional manipulation begin

Can we find love, ‘sight unseen’? Um, no. But we already knew that

Politics