6 h. ago Pure pop perfection in the pouring rain as Dua Lipa dazzles fans at Liverpool Anfield

The 29-year-old's mesmerising two-hour show brought rain-soaked euphoria to the football ground

Sport

6 h. ago ‘Pop music can be so scared to offend’: Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso, the Argentine duo subverting machismo

After going viral with their Tiny Desk concert, the impish pair are heading to Glastonbury. They explain their ‘no shame, no fear’ approach – and their ridiculous muscle suitsOver impeccable jazz-funk arrangements and Latin percussion, a man in a furry blue trapper hat raps like he’s inhaled a Benson & Hedges multipack, while his partner brings lip-curling, hair-twirling attitude to his own lyrical delivery. This is Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso’s Tiny Desk Concert, an online performance that turned the two Argentine vocalists into global sensations almost overnight after it came out last October. It has now racked up 36m views and Rolling Stone has called them “the future of music”.Some eyebrows were raised, though, by the English translations of their lyrics: crude, daft, often hilarious tales of parties, sex and girls – even, accidentally, goes one punchline, the same one. “We’re always having fun and trying to confuse people,” Amoroso explains on a video call from Madrid, during ...

Politics

5 d. ago Add to playlist: James K’s downtempo dream pop and the week’s best new tracks

Right on time for the return of the chill out era, the New York producer traces a hypnotic path on an album that bobs along on sleepy breakbeats and angelic atmosphericsFrom New YorkRecommended if you like Caroline Polachek, Voice Actor, Vegyn Up next New album Friend released via AD 93 on 5 SeptemberPull up your beanbag, light a lava lamp and crack open the Vicks VapoRub: downtempo is back. New compilation Telepathic Fish documents the 90s south London ambient night; Logic1000’s latest DJ-Kicks mix would barely register on an ECG; there’s none more languid than even the summer’s flagship pop album, Addison by Addison Rae. New York producer and musician James K has been dabbling in trip-hop – and various shades of experimental pop and club music – for more than a decade, but nonetheless, her new album, Friend, arrives right on time for summer’s wind down. (What is autumn if not the chill out room to escape the year’s most hectic season?) Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Let women be horny – but Sabrina Carpenter’s album cover isn’t helping | Arwa Mahdawi

The Man’s Best Friend image has reopened a debate: sex-positive feminism or soft porn for the male gaze?Please join me for a quick game of “is this sex-positive feminism or just a lazy repackaging of the patriarchy”? Today’s protagonist is Sabrina Carpenter, a pop star whose music videos have got a Brooklyn priest demoted and might have played a small role in getting the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, indicted.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Tattoo crowds set to ‘Boogie’ with celebration of Scottish pop music this summer

The Massed Military Bands of the British Army will present a pop medley of Scottish pop classics on the Edinburgh Castle Esplanade

Culture

1 week ago Whether wistful or euphoric, Brian Wilson made pop’s most overwhelmingly beautiful music

He was the Beach Boys’ resident genius, seeping melancholy into even peppy teenybopper hits. Beyond all the myths about his life, that brilliance is still intoxicatingBrian Wilson, visionary creative spirit for the Beach Boys, dies aged 82Brian Wilson: a life in picturesIt’s fair to say that no one who bought the Beach Boys debut single in 1961 would have realised they were in the presence of genius. Surfin’ sounded exactly like what it was: one of dozens of cheap, hastily-recorded singles released on a tiny independent label to cash in on the burgeoning craze for surf music, albeit a regionally-successful example of type. You might easily have expected to never hear of the band who made it again.But the 19-year-old Brian Wilson was determined – he was the taskmaster that had relentlessly drilled his unwilling younger brothers Carl and Dennis into learning to harmonise – and a quick learner. The leap in quality between Surfin’ and its 1962 follow-up Surfin’ Safari was striking. The ...

Politics

1 week ago Brian Wilson, visionary creative spirit for the Beach Boys, dies aged 82

Musician, who suffered from mental health problems, wrote and produced the 1966 album Pet Sounds – seen by many as the greatest album of all timeBrian Wilson, the Beach Boys musician, songwriter and producer who created some of history’s most purely beautiful pop music, has died aged 82.In a post shared on Instagram on Wednesday, Wilson’s family wrote: “We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away. We are at a loss for words right now. Please respect our privacy at this time as our family is grieving. We realize that we are sharing our grief with the world. Love & Mercy.” Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago Sly Stone was a trailblazer who changed the course of music – and an icon of both hope and pain

With the Family Stone, Sly was so audacious it was hard to believe his brilliance could ever be exhausted – making his unravelling all the more painful to watchSly Stone, pioneering funk and soul musician, dies aged 82Sly Stone’s greatest songs – ranked!Sly Stone – a life in picturesEven though he recorded three of funk’s most foundational albums – four if you include 1970’s Greatest Hits, as flawless a good time as pop ever delivered – Sly Stone’s subsequent fall from grace was perceived as a grave betrayal of his talent. That Stone’s unravelling was so conspicuous – his drug abuse apparent in every wasted chat show appearance, his infallible hit-machine waning after his Family Stone became estranged – only exacerbated the sting of this loss. But Stone’s imperial era lasted almost a decade and delivered a discography that remains the acme of funk. He changed the course of pop and reconfigured the structure and essence of dance music, multiple times. He was an icon of hope, of pain,...

Politics

2 w. ago Sly Stone was a trailblazer who changed the course of music – and an icon of both hope and pain | Stevie Chick

With the Family Stone, Sly was so audacious it was hard to believe his brilliance could ever be exhausted – making his unravelling all the more painful to watchSly Stone, pioneering funk and soul musician, dies aged 82Sly Stone’s greatest songs – ranked!Sly Stone – a life in picturesEven though he recorded three of funk’s most foundational albums – four if you include 1970’s Greatest Hits, as flawless a good time as pop ever delivered – Sly Stone’s subsequent fall from grace was perceived as a grave betrayal of his talent. That Stone’s unravelling was so conspicuous – his drug abuse apparent in every wasted chat show appearance, his infallible hit-machine waning after his Family Stone became estranged – only exacerbated the sting of this loss. But Stone’s imperial era lasted almost a decade and delivered a discography that remains the acme of funk. He changed the course of pop and reconfigured the structure and essence of dance music, multiple times. He was an icon of hope, of pain,...

Politics

2 w. ago Music Review: On Addison Rae’s 'Addison,' a new pop powerhouse is born

The pop album of the summer is here

Politics

2 w. ago CMAT, pop’s gobbiest, gaudiest star: ‘Everyone else in music needs a kick up the hole!’

Playing stadiums and causing dance crazes, the Irish singer-songwriter is going supernova – and whether opining on trans rights, body shaming or capitalism, she’s more forthright than everCiara Mary-Anne Thompson, or CMAT as she’s professionally known, says she can clearly remember writing the song that changed her life. She was 22 and having moved from Ireland to Manchester, was working in TK Maxx and, at the weekends, as what she’s fond of calling a “sexy shots girl”: “Cash in hand, £8 an hour, 11pm to 3am, teetering up and down the stairs of a nightclub in the building where Joy Division shot the video for Love Will Tear Us Apart with a tray of Jägermeister shots they’d put a bit of dry ice in – burned your skin if you got it on your hands – selling them for three pound each. Terrible job. And just getting absolutely stoned out of my bin all the time, doing whatever drugs anyone would give me for free. I had absolutely no friends.”An attempt to get her musical career off the grou...

Events

2 w. ago The Lottery Winners’ Thom Rylance: ‘Robbie Williams said my biggest talent is bravery’

The Manchester band have worked their way from obscurity to two No 1 albums. As they embark on a stadium tour supporting Robbie Williams, their charismatic frontman talks to Mark Beaumont about coming to terms with his neurodivergence, apologising to Kate Nash, and being the ‘new Morrissey’

Politics

3 w. ago ‘We want to stop in our prime’: Saint Etienne on their final album, turning down Cher’s Believe, and why pop is a dying art

The Britpop-defying indie trio are calling it a day after 35 years. From having their minds blown by techno to fireworks night with Aphex Twin, they recall the highs – and explain their eternal ‘psychic’ bondIn Saint Etienne, it is usually Bob Stanley who suggests the band’s tightly defined album concepts. What if you graft folk melodies to dance music? Make vaporwave about early New Labour? While finishing ambient pop album The Night, released in the dark of last winter, Stanley pitched an even starker one for its successor: the end of their band.“I didn’t think I was saying anything uncomfortable or shocking,” says Stanley, affable and understated, in a park near his Bradford home. “When you’ve known each other for so long you have a psychic thing anyway. It felt like we would all agree.” Continue reading...

Politics

4 w. ago A moment that changed me: I was shy and cared too much what people thought of me. Then a group of K

From the moment I discovered Korean pop music in my 20s, I was hooked. But it took going to meet other fans to help me find my self-confidence – and my tribe‘You need to listen to this,” said my friend Helen over her birthday lunch in 2018. “Have you ever heard of K-pop?” I hadn’t – I didn’t know it was short for Korean pop music, or about K-pop “idols” (stars). She played me songs by the South Korean boyband SHINee and I was instantly captivated. It reminded me of the pop music I loved in the 00s, when I was growing up: the bombastic music videos, the repetitive electro-pop hooks, the bands where each member has a distinct role, like a family. It was pure escapism.Gradually, I started listening to more and more K-pop, until I took the plunge and did something I’d previously dismissed as “cringe”. With my twin sister, Hannah, I went to a K-pop-themed “cafe event” at the Gaza cafe in Soho, London. The get-together marked the birthdays of three members of the boyband GOT7. Their music...

Politics

4 w. ago The bitter truth behind Taylor Swift's absence from the AMAs

Taylor's devoted fans were anxiously awaiting the pop star's appearance at the 2025 American Music Awards, only to be wildly disappointed when she never took the stage. 

Politics