music
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Fascist bloggers and musicians have expressed their liking for an 80s-obsessed variant of instrumental electronica
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Thanks to industry changes this year saw exposure for Americana artists outside the constraints of country, but there were some mash-ups no one asked for
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Glasgow’s post-rock behemoths have been mesmerising listeners for 20 diverse and prolific years. Here’s our pick of their tracks
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TV host tweets dismissively that the singer’s revelation she was raped as a teenager is a marketing ploy – then he takes a swing at pop queen Madonna too
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Impresario says he spotted singer entertaining at Sandy Lane, Barbados, but decided not to ‘bring her back’ from holiday to join his stage stable
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The rapper’s latest freestyle caused upset with a line about ‘dirty Jewish execs’ which led to him tweeting that his album is cancelled
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Welsh indie-pop trio channelling psych, baggy, west coast pop and krautrock
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Kanye West and Donald Trump meet at Trump Tower on Tuesday. Trump says the rapper is a good man
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Donald Trump says he and Kanye West have been friends ‘a long time’, telling reporters at Trump Tower the pair spoke about ‘life’ during brief meeting
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Singer announces plans to stream his high-fidelity music service for audiophiles – despite the PonoMusic store being out of action since summer
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Kate Tempest felt the love as she rhymed and rapped her way through her new album, Let Them Eat Chaos
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The UK premiere of John Adams’s second string quartet finds the composer strangely self-conscious and limited rather than inspired by Beethoven
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The rapper and activist takes aim at mass incarceration, police brutality and toxic masculinity on his much anticipated follow up to Forest Hill Drives
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As Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach publishes a tell-all autobiography, we survey some other notable efforts from the metal memoir genre
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Dress-wearing, Ugg boot-rocking rapper Young Thug is an artist well known for defying gender expectations. His latest curveball? That he’s woefully predictable
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video
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Greg Lake, one of the key figures in the prog rock boom of the 1970s, has died at the age of 69 on Wednesday
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We go backstage at a Sleaford Mods gig in their hometown of Nottingham to hear what singer Jason Williamson thinks about politicians
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Madonna joins James Corden for a trip around New York in the latest episode of Carpool Karaoke from The Late Late Show aired on Wednesday.
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Lady Gaga visits a shelter for homeless LGBT teenagers in New York and tells them about her own struggle with PTSD
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Country singer Dolly Parton has created a ‘My People Fund’ to help victims of fires that have killed 10 people and laid waste to large parts of her home county in the Smoky Mountains
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The audience at the final night of Crowded House’s Opera House reunion harmonise the chorus of Four Seasons in One Day, gently coached by frontman Neil Finn
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Sombre prophet, mordant wisecracker, repentant cad: Leonard Cohen is back with a great new album, Old Ideas – and more wit and wisdom
interviews
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Meet the darlings of the folk world who found themselves criticised for wanting to do something different
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Nine years sober and back on tour, the Culture Club star talks about the power of positivity and why pop needs mystery
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Lars Ulrich: ‘There’s a fast song, a mid-tempo song, a ballad. It’s like food groups: you need your carbs, your protein’
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Abel Tesfaye’s tortured, genre-bending R&B has brought him millions of fans, a triple platinum album and collaborations with Daft Punk and Beyoncé. Will mainstream success make him happy?
quizzes
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It’s the 25th anniversary of the death of the Queen frontman on 24 November – test your knowledge of his life and times
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This quiz features randomised questions dynamically generated from Hottest 100 data between 1993 and 2014
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It’s our weekly test of your knowledge of pop arcania – come and have a go if you think you know enough
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A delinquent Door; a rapping Ramone; a generation of Whitesnakes; and a TV dispatch from our own correspondent
in pictures
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The Morrison Hotel Gallery is hosting Long May You Run, a retrospective of Neil Young, charts his rise from Buffalo Springfield to refusing to settle down in his 70s
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Since the 1980s, Melody Maker’s Tom Sheehan has captured the Cure’s ascent from the underbelly of British alternative rock to global stadium headliners. Now Sheehan – who was even enlisted as frontman Robert Smith’s official wedding photographer – has compiled a record of his journey with the band in a new book, In Between Days
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A pair of graphic designers and self-confessed Beatles geeks have mapped Fab Four trivia including the instruments they played, the outfits they wore and even some of their most famous press-conference quips
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Since the 1970s, Ross Halfin has photographed the biggest names in rock and pop, capturing seminal shows by the Who, AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. Shots from his career will be exhibited at The Indulgence Show in London
you may have missed
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Last week she was widely attacked for apologising to refugees on the UK’s behalf. But, just as her candour and directness mark her music, she has never been afraid to speak her mind
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His return to live performance will infuriate as many as it delights, but only a hardened bete noire can haul today’s pop out of cheery mediocrity. And maybe those derided solo hits weren’t so bad after all…
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Appearing on the most streamed track of all time, Lean On, made the Danish singer an instant global star. But is she ready to abandon her anarcho roots?
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Some songwriters can turn any subject into gold. Most aren’t so fortunate, so here are some subjects best steered clear of – and feel free to add more
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Bon Iver joins the pantheon of music number nerds fascinated by figures and their occult connections, from Mozart and the Beatles to Led Zep and Wu Tang
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Denmark’s Agnes Obel takes music where it has never gone before, layering 250 tracks on top of each other, and duetting with a male cyborg version of herself. Where does it all come from?
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First to go was her meekness in rehearsals – then she had to ‘learn how to be unapologetic and unemotional’ with the people who worked for her. Did it pay off creatively for her new album, The Altar?
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