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  • Native James, smiling widely with sunglasses, a grille, and ringed fingers touching his face

    Add to playlist
    The gloriously boisterous grime-metal of Native James and the week’s best new tracks

    Filtering alt influences and eskibeats through a distinctly Black British point of view, the Ipswich rapper’s scorched-earth rage sounds like a lot of fun
  • Jorja Smith smiles while holding a microphone on stage at the Roundhouse

    Live review
    Amy Winehouse: Back to Black 20 – trying an all-star Amy tribute show is a losing game

  • Nine members of Shovel Dance Collective lined up against a tall brick wall, dappled by shadow from a tree

    Alexis Petridis's album of the week
    Shovel Dance Collective: Everything in Readiness – ecstatic, dissonant folk music fighting for sonic and spiritual freedom

  • Cyndi Lauper.

    Cyndi Lauper on fun, fashion and freedom of expression: ‘We have braces on our brains’

  • Kiran Leonard sits with legs crossed on a grey sofa

    ‘I had no plan. Just total scorched earth’: how Kiran Leonard survived teen success to make songs of full-body joy

  • Ed Sanders, right, with his Fugs bandmate Tuli Kupferberg, pictured in 2003.

    ‘We tried to levitate the Pentagon’: the almost unbelievable life of Ed Sanders, trickster god of the US counterculture

  • Michael Kiwanuka in the studio recording Fudge.

    Soul
    Michael Kiwanuka: Fudge – rough and instinctive, but also lush and alive with melody

  • Four men from the band Weird Baile pose on a cobbled street, making peace signs and smiling

    Global album of the month
    Weird Baile: Collected Rips 2004-2024 – a hallucinatory trip to baile funk’s outer limits

  • Leo Fincham and Rowan Miles, AKA Worldpeace DMT, walk down a street with two fluffy white dogs

    Indie
    Worldpeace DMT: Stick Around for Tea – ‘laptop twee’ duo keep things goofy but strengthen songs

  • Angele Press publicity portrait

    Alexis Petridis's album of the week
    Angèle: Instinct – Belgium’s biggest star is determined to do pop differently

  • Stevie Wonder wearing a black beret sits at a keyboard in front of a microphone

    R&B
    Stevie Wonder – playing ​his greatest album in full, he knocks everyone sideways

  • Charles Hendy of the Mary Wallopers sings fiercely into a microphone

    Folk
    The Mary Wallopers – legs and pints go flying to the sound of rowdy folk ragers

  • Beth Orton sings into a microphone under purple stage lighting during a performance

    Pop
    Beth Orton – battered optimism from an artist making the best music of her career

  • Three woman perform on stage during concert while seated in front of blue curtains

    Country
    The Chicks – exquisite harmonies and hard-won vindication in anniversary show

Add to playlist

  • Rebecca Ferguson poses with flowing hair in a lace top and red skirt

    Honest playlist
    ‘I drunkenly sing Wonderwall off-key and awfully’: Rebecca Ferguson’s honest playlist

  • Superfan, AKA Kali Flanagan, sat in a kitchen with his hand over his face

    Add to playlist
    The buzzy bildungsromans of boy wonder Superfan and the week’s best new tracks

  • A portrait of alienation and egotism … (left to right) Tom Coll, Conor Deegan, Grian Chatten, Conor Curley and Carlos O’Connell of Fontaines DC.

    Ranked
    Fierce, frantic and loaded with menace: Fontaines DC’s 20 greatest songs – ranked!

From the archive

  • Audrey Hobert sits on a stage reading a magazine next to an antique table with a turned off computer screen. In the background is a propped up guitar

    Interview
    ‘The beast inside me wants to move!’ The smart, slapstick world of Audrey Hobert, the Steve Martin of pop

    She co-wrote Gracie Abrams’ hit album then struck out solo, winning a fervent cult for her funny, wordy songs. As she's climbing the UK charts, revisit our interview

Obituaries

  • A black and white photo of Venom frontman Cronos holding a snake by the throat as they both stick their tongues out at one another

    double quotation markNo one could terrify like Cronos, the black metal innovator who reignited rock’s hellraising attitude

    Matt Mills
  • Lant gives a grimacing smile as he plays the bass

    News
    Conrad ‘Cronos’ Lant, frontman of UK heavy metal band Venom, dies aged 63

  • taken at Mixing Lab during a session for Fruits Records, it shows Jackie Jackson with the guitarist Bopee Bowen. by Liza Mazur

    Obituary
    Toots and the Maytals bassist Jackie Jackson

  • the Mighty Sparow 1989The Mighty Sparrow, vocal, performs at the Melkweg on 12th December 1989 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. (Photo by Frans Schellekens/Redferns)

    Mighty Sparrow, legend of Trinidadian calypso

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    The little-known friendship between Nina Simone and Langston Hughes

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  • Two pop fans at a pro-Lula demonstration in Sao Paulo.

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