47 h. ago ‘I would never be able to sing a song that a robot wrote’: Lucy Dacus on her new album’s themes of artistry and intimacy

As the indie singer-songwriter and Boygenius star releases her latest, highly personal solo record, she talks of her weariness of AI and digital art, the pressures of being in a public relationship, and her anger and fears in Trump’s USIn the shadow of a Hogarth painting, accompanied by guitar and violin, Lucy Dacus is singing about disappointment. The painting depicts Thomas Coram, founder of the Foundling Hospital in London’s Bloomsbury district. A shipbuilder by trade, he is portrayed in full baroque garb, a style usually reserved for the aristocracy. But amid the classical architecture and rich fabrics, he is shown as he was: the thread veins on his face, his feet not quite touching the ground. The setting is apt for Dacus’s disquisitions on life and love, and the ways they can exceed, or fall short of, the expectations we place upon them: the moments that feel exalted, idealised, as well as the times when reality intrudes on the fantasy.The Foundling Museum, the setting of toni...

Culture

68 h. ago Bryn Terfel: ‘I’d stand on a table and sing Elvis at the drop of a hat’

The opera singer, 59, on his love of Wales, performing for the King, and where he goes to let his hair downI had an angelic childhood. I was brought up on a sheep farm in Pant Glas, north Wales, with my older brother Ian. My father was a farmer, my mum worked in a school for children with disabilities, and they and my grandparents were in different choirs. There was always singing in the household, pieces of music on the kitchen cupboards.I’d stand on a table and sing an Elvis song at the drop of a hat. I wasn’t a boy soprano, but I entered into competitions in the Welsh festival, Eisteddfod. That allowed me to think of singing as a career. Any given weekend, you can compete either singing, reciting or playing an instrument. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago Taylor Swift's mysterious 'Lucy' confirms identity after name

Boygenius singer and songwriter Lucy Dacus has come forward to confirm that she is the 'Lucy' who Taylor Swift mentions in her track The Tortured Poets Department

Politics

4 d. ago Lucy Dacus: Forever Is a Feeling review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

(Geffen/Polydor)The Virginia songwriter gets lost in understatement on a loved-up album about her relationship with bandmate Julien Baker, shrouding sharp lyrics in shy melodiesLast February, the American “indie rock supergroup” Boygenius – AKA Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus – announced an indefinite hiatus. The announcement came a couple of weeks before their solitary album, The Record, won three of the seven Grammys for which it had been nominated. This was a suitably triumphant ending to a project that had been garlanded with acclaim, both for their music – “at the vanguard of keeping rock alive,” as one US magazine editor put it – and their willingness to indulge in attention-grabbing gestures, frequently designed to prick at the male domination of rock history.Their debut EP came in a sleeve that referenced that of Crosby, Stills & Nash’s eponymous 1969 album. They dressed as the Beatles for an appearance on Saturday Night Live and as Nirvana on the cover of R...

Politics

3 w. ago Lady Gaga: Mayhem review – a fabulous return to her freaky first principles

(Interscope)After some noteworthy musical and cinematic misfires, Gaga gets back to her core themes of sex, sleaze and celebrity on an album that sounds not retro, but relevantLady Gaga’s single Abracadabra is enjoying its fifth consecutive week in the UK Top 10. You can imagine a collective sigh of relief chez Gaga: she has been experiencing what you might call a case of career sea sickness, in which unadulterated commercial triumphs have been followed by very public flops. In the credit column, there’s Die With a Smile, a power-ballad duet with Bruno Mars that went to No 1 in 28 countries and spent 10 weeks as the world’s biggest-selling single. (Released last August, it also appears on Mayhem.) In the debit, there was her starring role in the disastrous Joker: Folie à Deux, a film that was estimated to have lost Warner Brothers something in the region of $150m (£116m), and which seemed to take both the Gaga-heavy soundtrack and her own, jazz-based “companion album” Harlequin down...

Politics

4 w. ago ‘I can spit hot fire on Baby Got Back’: Sterling K Brown’s honest playlist

The star of new thriller Paradise loves musicals and feels mild shame at enjoying Vengaboys. But which star made him realise he could sing?The first song I fell in love with I was in elementary school and If I Had No Loot by Tony! Toni! Toné! was getting a lot of play on BET – Black Entertainment Television. I love the vibe. It has a good bounce. I like things that make me move and this is one song you can’t help but move to.The first single I bought I remember buying Don’t Be Cruel by Bobby Brown because everybody was jamming out to Prerogative. I bought it from Streetside Records in St Louis, Missouri, where you could listen to albums on headphones before you bought them. Continue reading...

Events

4 w. ago Oscars 2025: Fans slam the Academy for not inviting Adele to sing her own song

Angered fans have slammed the Academy for not inviting Adele to sing her own song Skyfall at the 2025 Oscars on Sunday night.

Politics