Latest news with #albums
The Guardian
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I threw it in the bin with everything else he gave me': the mix tapes that defined our lives
At 18 my go-to albums were Dog Man Star, His 'n' Hers and a mix tape called Really, Basically, In a Sort of a Way, Volume 1. Named after the mutterings of a particularly long-winded lecturer, it was the first of many TDK D60s – always the same brand! – from my mate Pat. We had met at our university's registration day a few weeks earlier and would be friends for more than 20 years until his death in 2018. By then he'd not only been on staff at the NME – teenage Pat's dream job – but also written a book about its history. Side A of the tape (entitled 'Barry Manilow Live!') has bands we'd bonded over, such as Kenickie and These Animal Men, two of our first London gigs together. Blur's Popscene is included because we were sweaty regulars at the club night of that name at LA2 in Charing Cross Road. The other one ('David Hasselhoff B-sides') includes Gallon Drunk, the Byrds and Stereolab, all a bit more mature, all nudges into new directions. Everything on the inlay card is in caps and even Pat's handwriting was cool. I hero-worshipped him well beyond our university years and he shaped my taste in films and fashion as much as music. When we were young he could be brutally, hilariously scathing about bands he despised; later, that energy would be spent more on championing than dissing. It's years since I owned a cassette player but, looking at the tape now, I'd forgotten it ends with a 'secret bonus track!' I'm guessing it's a shared guilty pleasure (Carter USM?) and can't wait to find out. It'll be another joke from not just a cool and funny friend but an all-round unfaltering one. Chris Wiegand Nobody had ever made me a mix tape (or a CD playlist as it would have more likely been, since I grew up in the 00s) until my 19th birthday, and even then it wasn't a proper one. Having failed to track down a blank CD in Madrid, where we were both working as au pairs, a girl from Colorado I wasn't exactly dating but who was definitely more than just a friend wrote me a list of songs on a page pulled out of a notepad. I remember reading it for the first time, with its loopy handwriting, doodles, and songs chosen just for me, and thinking it was the most romantic thing in the world. Like most 19-year-olds, I was confused and anxious about so many things, but she brought so much kindness and fun into my life. We were the same age, and I can't imagine that she had everything figured out herself, but she seemed to know more than me about most things, music included, and it was exciting to take a step into her world. I must have lost the scrap of paper at some point over the last decade, and now I can't recall a single song that was on there. I wish I did, and I wish I had a way of contacting that girl from Colorado – I still owe her a 'mix tape' in return. Lucy Knight I find it easily in a bag in the attic – it has a sticker of a cat smoking a spliff, cut around the spools: a remnant of the 90s ska band Hepcat. The one mix tape I would never bin. Chris gave it to me in late 1999. He was 17 and playing gigs at venues like the Astoria. I was 16 and couldn't go to most of the gigs at venues like the Astoria because it was a school night. It's not what you'd call your classic heart-on-sleeve emo mix. It's full of hardcore and punk anthems by bands such as Operation Ivy, Madball, Good Riddance and, randomly, multiple tracks by New Bomb Turks (he must have just bought their album at Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus, where he, then later we, would go on pilgrimages to find all the newest albums). There are also, seemingly, no songs on side B. I re-listen to the tape now on my grandpa's old cassette deck, and have to endure almost 45 minutes of static to get back to the start – I simply cannot risk pressing fast forward in case the whole precious thing gets chewed up. Then, all of a sudden, the radio-recorded dolphin tones of Mariah Carey emerge from the static singing Heartbreaker, a track he knew I loved more than any punk, then cuts off before Jay-Z's verse. Worth the 43 minutes of white noise, truly. But the start of side A, the pièce de résistance – and surely the real reason he wanted me to have the tape – was so I could hear his own band. Two tunes, recorded live with laughably terrible sound levels but faultless drumming by Chris. Two tunes my teenage self listened to over and over. Twenty-five years on, this is the only version of those songs that remains. I absolutely love that they are unShazamable, that they exist solely on this crinkly tape that is one listen away from ruination. I still love those tunes – just as I love his new band. Our two children do, too. Kate Abbott We didn't call them mix tapes back in the day. Well, I didn't. Wasn't cool enough. They were just tapes with songs on. The first life-changing one was sent to me by a friend Steve and it was just the most brilliant mix of all the punk songs I didn't know – the Damned, the Buzzcocks, the Ramones, the Pistols, of course, and best of all the Vibrators with Baby Baby. It was – and is – amazing. Lush, romantic, as much full of yearning as feedback, and super loud. Imagine Phil Spector turned punk and you've got Baby Baby. It didn't make me a punk (still too uncool), but it did make me want to dye my hair black (pointless, as it already was), spike it up with sugar, and stick a red arrow through my ear. Which I did a bit later. The last mix tape I made, in December 2023, was very much a modern mix tape. Improvised on the night, and on YouTube. Mum was dying and I spent the night by her bedside with my laptop. I just played song after song that I loved for her, unsure whether she could hear. I introduced them, like a DJ. 'And this is Tom Waits's version of Somewhere for you Marje because it's exceptionally beautiful and I love you.' 'And here's a little number from Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville Don't Know Much,which makes me cry and think of you because I love you.' 'And here's Leonard Cohen at his most melodic singing Dance Me to the End of Love, and I've chosen this because, erm, I love you.' 'Now for something a little different, Late for the Sky by Jackson Browne, which I've chosen for you because I love you, even if its meaning is a bit more complicated.' The songs kept coming through the night and I played them really loud. 'And of course the night would be incomplete without Stevie Wonder's As. This one's for you Mum because yes, you've guessed it, I love you.' Each one was a love song and in their own way about immortality. I didn't know it at the time. And I didn't know what was coming next. I was just somehow reaching for the right songs, in a state almost as altered as Mum's. I like to think she heard them. But even if she didn't, she knew how much I loved her. She died early the next morning. Simon Hattenstone Back in the late 90s, whenever melodic noise-rockers Idlewild would tour, my sister and I would go. We had spent hours engaged in classic sibling bonding: listening to guitar squall while I prevented the mosh pit from stamping on my little sister's head. Yes, her taste often tended more towards the likes of Steps, but for some reason we both loved this band's scuzzy pop, and one day, she made me a tape of one of their live gigs. I was extremely excited. I saved it for a long bus journey, popped it into my Walkman, fired it up and sunk into angular, dissonance-strewn indie. It was absolute joy. There were new songs! Ferociously taut renditions of the classics! And … the random intrusion of Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer. Confusion reigned as I suddenly found myself listening to a Christian rock troupe's schmaltzy ode to smooching – until it abruptly segued back to the gig. And then back to Kiss Me. And then back to the gig. Five minutes later, a blisteringly distorted riff mutated into an advert for a local car dealership. At which point I realised something: my sister had decided to check out a poppier radio station halfway through recording – and inadvertently created the world's worst Idlewild remix tape. My sister has since died. I'll never be able to drag her out of a mosh pit again, or hear her attempt at a silly impression of the vocal tics of Idlewild frontman Roddy Woomble. But I'll always have that tape. It might have been intended as a killer Idlewild live recording, but it's ended up something much more precious: a testament to her glorious daftness. Best mix tape ever. Alexi Duggins I was given this mix tape in early 2004, at the outset of a relationship that lasted for almost a decade. It lives on a shelf in my living room with a few other cassettes, displayed for aesthetic reasons, since I no longer have a tape deck to play them on. Looking at it now, it seems like a vivid portrait of my ex and his then passions, from the picture of James Dean rolling his eyes on the handmade cover to the scratchy and abrasive music on the tape itself, from Her Jazz by Huggy Bear to Gutless by Hole, deep cuts like Other Animals are #1 by Erase Errata alongside classics like Patti Smith's Redondo Beach. More than half the tracks are by female or female-fronted acts; my ex was brought up by his mum and most of his friends were women. He once told me that men had been responsible for all the negative experiences in his life (I suspect that our relationship has now been added to this list). Looking at the track listing I'm reminded of his great taste, noting the appearance of Maps by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, then pretty recent but now a romantic classic. We had our ups and downs, to put it mildly, but I'm glad I have this memento of our early tenderness and intimacy. Alex Needham I am very slightly too young for the golden era of mix tapes – open my first Walkman and you would have only found storybooks on tape – but I am exactly the right age to be part of the micro-generation of teens that burned CDs (or MiniDiscs) of stolen MP3s from LimeWire for our friends and crushes. There were two enormous problems with this method of sharing songs: one, the file compression made everything sound unlistenably terrible, and two, what you thought you were illegally downloading from LimeWire was very often not what you were actually downloading from LimeWire. I discovered this when my best friend made me a mix of what she thought were songs by my favourite German metal band, Rammstein. In fact it was a CD full of entirely random European songs that someone on LimeWire had egregiously mislabeled, including a Dutch version of Aqua's Barbie Girl, all with that spangly sound that was unique to low-quality MP3 mixes of the era. We laughed about this for years, but fun fact, that mix CD was how I discovered Finnish metal (and Megaherz, the most early-00s German metal band to exist). Keza MacDonald The Beatles' I Want to Hold Your Hand. Weezer's Holiday. The Cribs' The Lights Went Out. These are some of the songs that my first boyfriend chose to burn on to a CD for me. It was summer 2006. I had found my true tribe outside of school, most nights (and early mornings) were spent in fields, my last year of sixth form was nigh and I had finally fallen in love. I fell hard. I could not believe – or handle! – feeling that way about somebody. Music was starting to properly soundtrack my life for the first time: club nights and indie gigs, soaking up the albums my new mates played and making plans for Leeds Festival. My ex opened my world to some great music I wouldn't know without him. I thought that CD was so cool and romantic. ('He wants to hold my hand!') The short version of this tragic love story: the relationship soured and it ended by winter. It would take me at least a couple of years to get over it. At some point, I threw the CD in the bin along with everything else he had given me – too young, inexperienced and cried out to know I might quite want to see these items again one day. But every time I hear those songs play – and I do regularly seek them out – I'm comforted by a rose-tinted wave of nostalgia. They take me back to a time when life was just really starting – way more highs and heartbreak ahead. I'm glad I'll always have the music to take with me. Hollie Richardson Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The Guardian
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I threw it in the bin with everything else he gave me': the mix tapes that defined our lives
At 18 my go-to albums were Dog Man Star, His 'n' Hers and a mix tape called Really, Basically, In a Sort of a Way, Volume 1. Named after the mutterings of a particularly long-winded lecturer, it was the first of many TDK D60s – always the same brand! – from my mate Pat. We had met at our university's registration day a few weeks earlier and would be friends for more than 20 years until his death in 2018. By then he'd not only been on staff at the NME – teenage Pat's dream job – but also written a book about its history. Side A of the tape (entitled 'Barry Manilow Live!') has bands we'd bonded over, such as Kenickie and These Animal Men, two of our first London gigs together. Blur's Popscene is included because we were sweaty regulars at the club night of that name at LA2 in Charing Cross Road. The other one ('David Hasselhoff B-sides') includes Gallon Drunk, the Byrds and Stereolab, all a bit more mature, all nudges into new directions. Everything on the inlay card is in caps and even Pat's handwriting was cool. I hero-worshipped him well beyond our university years and he shaped my taste in films and fashion as much as music. When we were young he could be brutally, hilariously scathing about bands he despised; later, that energy would be spent more on championing than dissing. It's years since I owned a cassette player but, looking at the tape now, I'd forgotten it ends with a 'secret bonus track!' I'm guessing it's a shared guilty pleasure (Carter USM?) and can't wait to find out. It'll be another joke from not just a cool and funny friend but an all-round unfaltering one. Chris Wiegand Nobody had ever made me a mix tape (or a CD playlist as it would have more likely been, since I grew up in the 00s) until my 19th birthday, and even then it wasn't a proper one. Having failed to track down a blank CD in Madrid, where we were both working as au pairs, a girl from Colorado I wasn't exactly dating but who was definitely more than just a friend wrote me a list of songs on a page pulled out of a notepad. I remember reading it for the first time, with its loopy handwriting, doodles, and songs chosen just for me, and thinking it was the most romantic thing in the world. Like most 19-year-olds, I was confused and anxious about so many things, but she brought so much kindness and fun into my life. We were the same age, and I can't imagine that she had everything figured out herself, but she seemed to know more than me about most things, music included, and it was exciting to take a step into her world. I must have lost the scrap of paper at some point over the last decade, and now I can't recall a single song that was on there. I wish I did, and I wish I had a way of contacting that girl from Colorado – I still owe her a 'mix tape' in return. Lucy Knight I find it easily in a bag in the attic – it has a sticker of a cat smoking a spliff, cut around the spools: a remnant of the 90s ska band Hepcat. The one mix tape I would never bin. Chris gave it to me in late 1999. He was 17 and playing gigs at venues like the Astoria. I was 16 and couldn't go to most of the gigs at venues like the Astoria because it was a school night. It's not what you'd call your classic heart-on-sleeve emo mix. It's full of hardcore and punk anthems by bands such as Operation Ivy, Madball, Good Riddance and, randomly, multiple tracks by New Bomb Turks (he must have just bought their album at Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus, where he, then later we, would go on pilgrimages to find all the newest albums). There are also, seemingly, no songs on side B. I re-listen to the tape now on my grandpa's old cassette deck, and have to endure almost 45 minutes of static to get back to the start – I simply cannot risk pressing fast forward in case the whole precious thing gets chewed up. Then, all of a sudden, the radio-recorded dolphin tones of Mariah Carey emerge from the static singing Heartbreaker, a track he knew I loved more than any punk, then cuts off before Jay-Z's verse. Worth the 43 minutes of white noise, truly. But the start of side A, the pièce de résistance – and surely the real reason he wanted me to have the tape – was so I could hear his own band. Two tunes, recorded live with laughably terrible sound levels but faultless drumming by Chris. Two tunes my teenage self listened to over and over. Twenty-five years on, this is the only version of those songs that remains. I absolutely love that they are unShazamable, that they exist solely on this crinkly tape that is one listen away from ruination. I still love those tunes – just as I love his new band. Our two children do, too. Kate Abbott We didn't call them mix tapes back in the day. Well, I didn't. Wasn't cool enough. They were just tapes with songs on. The first life-changing one was sent to me by a friend Steve and it was just the most brilliant mix of all the punk songs I didn't know – the Damned, the Buzzcocks, the Ramones, the Pistols, of course, and best of all the Vibrators with Baby Baby. It was – and is – amazing. Lush, romantic, as much full of yearning as feedback, and super loud. Imagine Phil Spector turned punk and you've got Baby Baby. It didn't make me a punk (still too uncool), but it did make me want to dye my hair black (pointless, as it already was), spike it up with sugar, and stick a red arrow through my ear. Which I did a bit later. The last mix tape I made, in December 2023, was very much a modern mix tape. Improvised on the night, and on YouTube. Mum was dying and I spent the night by her bedside with my laptop. I just played song after song that I loved for her, unsure whether she could hear. I introduced them, like a DJ. 'And this is Tom Waits's version of Somewhere for you Marje because it's exceptionally beautiful and I love you.' 'And here's a little number from Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville Don't Know Much,which makes me cry and think of you because I love you.' 'And here's Leonard Cohen at his most melodic singing Dance Me to the End of Love, and I've chosen this because, erm, I love you.' 'Now for something a little different, Late for the Sky by Jackson Browne, which I've chosen for you because I love you, even if its meaning is a bit more complicated.' The songs kept coming through the night and I played them really loud. 'And of course the night would be incomplete without Stevie Wonder's As. This one's for you Mum because yes, you've guessed it, I love you.' Each one was a love song and in their own way about immortality. I didn't know it at the time. And I didn't know what was coming next. I was just somehow reaching for the right songs, in a state almost as altered as Mum's. I like to think she heard them. But even if she didn't, she knew how much I loved her. She died early the next morning. Simon Hattenstone Back in the late 90s, whenever melodic noise-rockers Idlewild would tour, my sister and I would go. We had spent hours engaged in classic sibling bonding: listening to guitar squall while I prevented the mosh pit from stamping on my little sister's head. Yes, her taste often tended more towards the likes of Steps, but for some reason we both loved this band's scuzzy pop, and one day, she made me a tape of one of their live gigs. I was extremely excited. I saved it for a long bus journey, popped it into my Walkman, fired it up and sunk into angular, dissonance-strewn indie. It was absolute joy. There were new songs! Ferociously taut renditions of the classics! And … the random intrusion of Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer. Confusion reigned as I suddenly found myself listening to a Christian rock troupe's schmaltzy ode to smooching – until it abruptly segued back to the gig. And then back to Kiss Me. And then back to the gig. Five minutes later, a blisteringly distorted riff mutated into an advert for a local car dealership. At which point I realised something: my sister had decided to check out a poppier radio station halfway through recording – and inadvertently created the world's worst Idlewild remix tape. My sister has since died. I'll never be able to drag her out of a mosh pit again, or hear her attempt at a silly impression of the vocal tics of Idlewild frontman Roddy Woomble. But I'll always have that tape. It might have been intended as a killer Idlewild live recording, but it's ended up something much more precious: a testament to her glorious daftness. Best mix tape ever. Alexi Duggins I was given this mix tape in early 2004, at the outset of a relationship that lasted for almost a decade. It lives on a shelf in my living room with a few other cassettes, displayed for aesthetic reasons, since I no longer have a tape deck to play them on. Looking at it now, it seems like a vivid portrait of my ex and his then passions, from the picture of James Dean rolling his eyes on the handmade cover to the scratchy and abrasive music on the tape itself, from Her Jazz by Huggy Bear to Gutless by Hole, deep cuts like Other Animals are #1 by Erase Errata alongside classics like Patti Smith's Redondo Beach. More than half the tracks are by female or female-fronted acts; my ex was brought up by his mum and most of his friends were women. He once told me that men had been responsible for all the negative experiences in his life (I suspect that our relationship has now been added to this list). Looking at the track listing I'm reminded of his great taste, noting the appearance of Maps by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, then pretty recent but now a romantic classic. We had our ups and downs, to put it mildly, but I'm glad I have this memento of our early tenderness and intimacy. Alex Needham I am very slightly too young for the golden era of mix tapes – open my first Walkman and you would have only found storybooks on tape – but I am exactly the right age to be part of the micro-generation of teens that burned CDs (or MiniDiscs) of stolen MP3s from LimeWire for our friends and crushes. There were two enormous problems with this method of sharing songs: one, the file compression made everything sound unlistenably terrible, and two, what you thought you were illegally downloading from LimeWire was very often not what you were actually downloading from LimeWire. I discovered this when my best friend made me a mix of what she thought were songs by my favourite German metal band, Rammstein. In fact it was a CD full of entirely random European songs that someone on LimeWire had egregiously mislabeled, including a Dutch version of Aqua's Barbie Girl, all with that spangly sound that was unique to low-quality MP3 mixes of the era. We laughed about this for years, but fun fact, that mix CD was how I discovered Finnish metal (and Megaherz, the most early-00s German metal band to exist). Keza MacDonald The Beatles' I Want to Hold Your Hand. Weezer's Holiday. The Cribs' The Lights Went Out. These are some of the songs that my first boyfriend chose to burn on to a CD for me. It was summer 2006. I had found my true tribe outside of school, most nights (and early mornings) were spent in fields, my last year of sixth form was nigh and I had finally fallen in love. I fell hard. I could not believe – or handle! – feeling that way about somebody. Music was starting to properly soundtrack my life for the first time: club nights and indie gigs, soaking up the albums my new mates played and making plans for Leeds Festival. My ex opened my world to some great music I wouldn't know without him. I thought that CD was so cool and romantic. ('He wants to hold my hand!') The short version of this tragic love story: the relationship soured and it ended by winter. It would take me at least a couple of years to get over it. At some point, I threw the CD in the bin along with everything else he had given me – too young, inexperienced and cried out to know I might quite want to see these items again one day. But every time I hear those songs play – and I do regularly seek them out – I'm comforted by a rose-tinted wave of nostalgia. They take me back to a time when life was just really starting – way more highs and heartbreak ahead. I'm glad I'll always have the music to take with me. Hollie Richardson Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Yahoo
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The best albums of 2025 so far
With the first half of 2025 behind us, it's time to… uhh, forget most of it. But there's still much to celebrate, especially when it comes to the stuff that's been emanating nonstop from our speakers and earbuds for months. In addition to the long-awaited return of Mother Monster (whoa! she's making pop songs again?!), we saw some brilliant pivots from music's greatest poets and visionaries. It all offered a much-needed escape from the headlines (excluding ours) and a soundtrack to those occasional highs that kept us pressing on. Here, Entertainment Weekly's top 10 albums so far this year (in very diplomatic alphabetical order).Bad Bunny may be a global superstar, but he's never forgotten where he came from. After years of being swept up in the limelight, the three-time Grammy winner returned to Puerto Rico and allowed his roots the space to bloom in vivid color for his genre-defying sixth album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos ("I should have taken more photos"). Recorded entirely on the island, the 17-track reggaeton and Latin pop master class not only serves as his love letter to his homeland, but also captures the 31-year-old singer deftly blending his modern stylings with music near and dear to its cultural identity, including plena ("Debí Tirar Más Fotos"), salsa ("Baile Inolvidable"), and jíbaro ("Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii"). A joyous opus binding an artist to his heritage, Debí Tirar Más Fotos will only feel more meaningful — for him and his listeners — as time goes on. Not unlike a photograph. —Emlyn Travis In the opening lines of last year's Sable, Bon Iver's Justin Vernon stares into the mirror and sees an anxious stranger trapped in a prison of his making. But that EP, which also serves as the prelude to his fifth full-length, was a red herring. Over the nine tracks that follow, Vernon — a lonesome troubadour who launched his career with an album he recorded in a secluded Wisconsin cabin in the dead of winter — sheds his pensive sadness. Backed by pedal steel, lapping beats, and gospel-style vocals, he turns his gaze outward with gratitude and childlike wonder ("Damn, if I'm not climbing up a tree right now," he declares in the exultant "Everything Is Peaceful Love"). He's hopeful, elated, even a little horny ("Get your fine ass on the road," he commands in the Danielle Haim collab "I'll Be There"). On Sable, Fable, the winter frost has melted. Vernon is ready to face the world and, more important, face himself. —Jason Lamphier Three decades into his career, Destroyer's Dan Bejar remains a reliable purveyor of dense, dazzling compositions. The band's 14th LP, produced by bassist John Collins, clocks in at just 36 minutes but feels sprawling. An onslaught of orchestration fuels the title track, while others ("Bologna," "Cataract Time") are languid and layered. Bejar's smoky alto is our anchor, sounding like an omniscient ghost serenading us in a liminal space. His honest, often sardonic observations ("women fill out and men crumble inwards") echo through a thick cloud of dizzying pianos, jazz horns, and glistening synths. Maximalist and mesmerizing, the record unfolds like live commentary for a bustling metropolis — ah, look at all the lonely people! It makes a compelling case for stopping to breathe in the urban smog. It may smell like shit, but at least you're living in the moment. —Allaire Nuss After years spent demolishing demogorgons with a nailed baseball bat, Stranger Things' Joe Keery (a.k.a. Djo) reintroduced himself to the world as the next indie-rock darling with his vulnerable, varied third full-length, The Crux. A nostalgia-drenched exploration of love and grief following the end of a relationship, the 12-track album offers sees Keery marrying his conflicting emotions with a medley of different genres, setting his sorrows to the tune of dreamy '80s pop on "Delete Ya," recreating late-night loneliness through Fleetwood Mac–esque fingerpicking guitar on "Potion," and expressing his devotion to his family, both lyrically and through a soaring orchestral arrangement, on "Golden Line." The shoulder-shimmying doo-woppers of the 1960s weren't lying when they sang that breaking up is hard to do, but Keery manages to make it through to the other side with his heart still intact — and his music sounding better than ever. —Emlyn Travis "I'm obsessed with alternative cultures and subcultures," FKA Twigs told guest host RuPaul on an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live last year, describing how she found herself in the thrall of Prague's underground techno scene while filming The Crow. The British singer, producer, dancer, and actress has always operated from the periphery, eschewing straight-up bangers for steely, elusive mood pieces; what her songs lack in top 40 appeal they more than make up for in vision. But her third studio album strikes the perfect balance between accessibility and experimentation, with Twigs slipping snugly into whatever genre she tries on before bending it to her will. That includes, yes, techno but also house, drum and bass, industrial, trip-hop, new age, Ray of Light–era electronica, and — with the 2024 single "Perfect Stranger" — sleek, low-frills pop. Eusexua's power lies in its interplay of the cerebral and the alluring, of dominance and submission, of tension and release. It's enough to push Twigs from the outer limits to the dead center. —Jason Lamphier Though it registers as a breakup record, the breezy fourth LP from Los Angeles' foremost sister act embraces the entire emotional spectrum of messy modern romance, channeling frustration ("Relationships"), desire ("All Over Me"), heartache ("Try to Feel My Pain"), and unabashed sentimentality ("Million Years") into near-impeccable pop-rock tunes. I Quit doubles down on the summery sounds that populate Haim's best work, drawing focus to their live drums, slick guitar riffs, bouncy basslines, and fuzzy synths. But the rich, sunny production, from former Vampire Weekend multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij and lead vocalist Danielle Haim, continually modulates over the course of a track, leaving many songs with strikingly different arrangements than they started with. Plus, it's lovely to hear the trio's other siblings take the wheel, with Alana shining on the album's bubbliest song ("Spinning") and Este driving home its most melancholy ("Cry"). —Wesley Stenzel After experimenting with stripped-back Americana on Joanne and cyberpunk dance music on Chromatica, Lady Gaga triumphantly emerged from the quickly forgotten shadow of Joker: Folie à Deux with Mayhem, her most eclectic album to date. Across 14 intensely energetic tracks, our preeminent gonzo pop princess delivers her take on Prince- and Bowie-inspired funk ("Killah"), industrial grunge ('Perfect Celebrity"), retro glam-rock ("Vanish Into You"), flirty Halloween party bops ("Zombieboy," "The Beast"), moonstruck soft-rock ("Die With a Smile"), and the best Taylor Swift song not written by Taylor Swift ("How Bad Do U Want Me"). Meanwhile, the album's opening trifecta — "Disease," "Abracadabra," and "Garden of Eden" — finds Gaga revisiting the Gothic theatricality and hyper-catchy, stuttering choruses of her earliest hits. The result is both a return to form and a breath of fresh air from one of the most reliable voices in the biz. —Wesley Stenzel Over the past 15 years, Mike Hadreas' discography has evolved from sparse, lo-fi piano ballads to baroque-pop mosaics and back, and on his seventh LP as Perfume Genius, he is once again a conduit for the sublime. Though stylistically elastic, Glory remains thematically consistent as Hadreas, a vocal contortionist, tightens his breathy bellows into a whimpering falsetto as he sings about being hopelessly tangled in his past traumas ("I still run and hide when a man's at the door"). His output has always felt uncannily intimate, like secrets shared in confidence, but this album is his most collaborative release to date. Along with longtime producer Blake Mills and his co-writer and romantic partner, Alan Wyffels, Hadreas brings New Zealand folk artist Aldous Harding into the fold for the standout single "No Front Teeth," which teeters between quaint Americana and rapturous rock. The entire record is a high-wire balancing act, but it never buckles under the weight of its beautiful contradictions. —Allaire Nuss Turnstile is your favorite band's favorite band. A well-kept Baltimore secret for far too long, the hardcore heavyweights made massive waves with 2021's Glow On, propelling them beyond the purview of die-hard insiders and introducing them to the rock-starved masses. Anticipation was sky-high for their next outing, and Never Enough delivers seismic goods. Like its predecessor, the album is a genre-bending odyssey, skating through house music ("Look Out for Me"), bubblegum for bruisers ("I Care"), ceremonial woodwinds ("Sunshower"), disco ("Seein' Stars"), and, of course, furious, breakneck guitar riffs. These are kinetic and kaleidoscopic songs seamlessly woven together like a tapestry that keeps changing color. Never Enough never feels bloated or overly ambitious; in this fable, Icarus flies away. —Allaire Nuss What a f---ed-up time to be alive. Kali Uchis' solution? Close the curtains, pour the Cab, draw the bath, and spend the next hour basking in impossibly sexy, sophisticated slow jams that conjure Motown, doo-wop, golden-age R&B, and the soundtrack to some private striptease. The Columbian American artist has said her fifth album is about "finding beauty in the pain and taking the good" — it is dedicated to her late mother and inspired by the birth of her son — and it is best appreciated as a whole. This is a record to get lost in. That's never more apparent than on the highlight "Lose My Cool," which switches tempos halfway through to luxuriate in lush, spine-tingling harmonies that call to mind Ultravox's '80s classic "Vienna." Surrender to Sincerely's charms and you'll swear you've brushed shoulders with the sublime. —Jason Lamphier Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
ABC News
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
From Lorde to Jimmy Barnes and beyond. We rank the #1 albums of the year so far
Charts aren't everything. Far from it. Plenty of incredible albums released this year won't even make the top 100 of Australia's ARIA album charts, let alone the top spot. But charts do matter. A number one album can give artists leverage when it comes to career progression, and simply being atop the pile for a week or two is a compelling reason for a lot of people to listen. There have been 14 new number-one albums on the ARIA charts so far this year. And this number should grow in coming years, once new rules excluding albums over two years old are adopted from September. Hopefully, this unscientific and completely subjective ranking (hashed out between Double J music brains Dan Condon and Al Newstead) will help you decide which of those chart-topping albums are worth your time. Dan Condon: Don't love the violence and racism, but I'm The Problem does explain why Morgan Wallen is one of the biggest artists of this decade. He has an everyman charm that comes through in the songwriting and his voice, and he generally comes across as edgy but non-threatening. Mostly, his songs are packed with hooks and stories that people see themselves in. Al Newstead: I can see the appeal, even if I can't personally separate art from artist. But gosh, after two hours and 49 songwriters' worth of material, this really doesn't do much to shift the needle on his pop-friendly, Tennessee twang. DC: That's my biggest musical gripe: the record is TOO LONG. There are financial reasons everyone is doing this and I hate it. AN: Yep, hard agree. The 'photo-dump' approach is all about gaming the algorithm and nothing about what works so well about the album format. This will be a recurring critique for other albums on this list. AN: This is my first full exposure to the tattooed Atlantan with the big voice and even bigger production. I think it's more effective when he's not competing against grandiose arrangements and allows the size and sensitivity of his voice to shine. For example, the understated sizzle of Bad Dreams or straight-up soul of Black & White. DC: Do I need to hear volume one for volume two to make sense? This bland soul pop leaves me feeling so empty. I wish he would just try therapy. AN: Lol. There's certainly a lot of predictable, by-the-numbers filler I'd never come back to. But in smaller doses, Teddy Swims is better than a lot of other stuff clogging up the charts. AN: Best known for his tux-tearing, acrobatic Grammys performance of 2024 hit, Beautiful Things, I've wondered what all the fuss about backflipping showman Benson Boone is. Frankly, his second album only confirmed my worst suspicions. When he's not embodying "we have Harry Styles at home", he's performing unbearably sappy ballads or oozing grating musical theatre kid energy. See Mystical Magical, which sounds like A.I. Freddie Mercury covering Olivia Newton John's Physical. American Heart isn't objectively terrible. It's worse – offensively average. In the tongue-in-cheek music video for Mr Electric Blue (reference point: Electric Light Orchestra), Boone sports a 'One Hit Wonder' shirt and meets a music exec at Industry Plant Records who declares: 'We need a new gimmick. Maybe, good songwriting?' 'You know I can't do that,' Boone replies. Cute joke. Except if the punchline on the evidence of his second album is: Yeah, you really can't. DC: I'd prefer to hear a David Boon album than ever listen to this again. Actually, I'd really like to hear a David Boon album. AN: Who'd have guessed Bliss N Eso would still be topping the charts more than 20 years after they helped homegrown hip hop break into the mainstream? Certainly not me. Listening to the trio's eighth album, it seems consistency and adaptability have been key to their enduring popularity. The Moon (The Light Side) bridges past and present. There's tracks that pay homage to rap greats in a barrage of bars and athletic rhymes, but also flips of familiar hooks — like The Rubens' Hottest 100-topping 'Hoops', and Dirty Heads' viral hit, Vacation — in flashy, algorithm-friendly productions. DC: You can't deny their skill, not just on the mic, but in the conception and execution of ideas that remain faithful to their history, while staying fresh enough. DC: I love the idea of a cheesy glam-rock record being the number-one album in the country. Theatrical Swedish metal dudes Ghost do what they do pretty well on Skeletá: it's not especially inventive, but it's fun. Come for the titles (Satanized, Marks of the Evil One) and stay for the sweet guitarmonies. AN: I'm with you there – love the novelty of something that hits such a hyper-specific strain of theatrical, arena-ready hard rock ending up resonating so broadly. This record, Ghost's sixth, marks a conceptual departure for the group. Founder Tobais Forge now fronts the band, inaugurated as Papa V Perpetua (Ghost lore is definitely worth a Google), and shifting to more introspective material. You'll know from track one if this is to your taste, and if it is, you've got a heavy music feast ahead of you. AN: This enigmatic UK group might be 2025's wildest success story. A masked metal act fronted by a man known only as Vessel, they term their albums 'Offerings' and their gigs 'Rituals'. And yet, they scored a number-one album, not only in Australia but in the US, UK, and six other countries. Sleep Token's fantasy-gothic image and splicing of heavy music DNA with R&B, trap, pop and EDM has already sparked a dogpile from metal purists and scathing reviews for Even In Arcadia. As a fan of 2023 predecessor, Take Me Back To Eden, I'd say the follow-up is a weaker, much messier effort. But even then, the group's strange sonic pot-luck is absolutely an acquired taste. It's not for everyone, but I'd much rather have something ambitious and willingly different topping the charts than yet another Taylor Swift album. DC: Nah, I'd prefer more Taylor, thank you very much. This just leaves me completely unmoved and kinda confused at what they're all about. DC: The debut from 5 Seconds of Summer bassist Calum Hood sees the 29-year-old deliver pleasant moody indie pop that feels like the latest deliberate step away from the apparently wretched boy band origins they've tried to escape for a decade. It's a pleasant but safe record that shouldn't irk anyone. But it doesn't really stand out from the cavalcade of much smaller artists making similarly pleasant pop in bedrooms and studios the world over. AN: I think it does what it set out to do: showing off a range of musical shades and interests that outgrows his pop-punk origins. However, it's tempting to compare Hood to his bandmate Luke Hemmings, who had a similar sounding, respectable solo debut a couple years ago. DC: It's not the work of genius the 5SOS army may proclaim it to be, nor is it the affront that the anti-pop brigade might want you to believe. It's nice, it's easy to listen to, and it's just a relief to have another young Aussie artist on the top of the charts, even if he was out of the Top 50 just a week later. DC: It wouldn't have helped his bank balance, but had Playboi Carti brutally shed half of this 30-track, 76-minute album, he could've created another essential modern rap work. As it stands, it's a strong but patchy display of how rage rap can infiltrate the mainstream while retaining its menace. AN: Another great example of an album that's simply overstuffed. Sure, I can cherry-pick my favourites (shout out Cocaine Noise and the Kendrick Lamar joints), but this really would've benefited from some editing. Converts of the hugely popular Atlanta rapper will tell you it's a star-studded, meaty alternative rap classic. Me? I'm just hearing mild, uneven variations of the same dark, dystopian trap. DC: After 20 solo albums and nine with Cold Chisel, who needs another Jimmy Barnes album? Well, Jimmy Barnes did, for one. He was in a very bad way last year, and many of these songs came while he was incapacitated. We don't know exactly how much the music affected his recovery, and vice versa, but it's safe to say there's correlation. Thankfully, there's plenty in it for us too. Barnsey's voice might truly sound better than ever and these big rock songs pulse with an energy that belies their hospice origins. AN: He's still got it! "Remember you thought I wouldn't last six months? But 50 years on I haven't had enough," Barnesy belts on the title track, a fun rocker with genuine attitude. "You can't deny it," he declares of his voice and enduring presence. And he's absolutely right. DC: Buy me a beer and I'll tell you why Barnsey is not Australia's Springsteen, however The Boss's brand of big sky, heartland rock is the blueprint here. If that's your thing, Defiant is worth your time. You might not come back to it as much as you do East or Working Class Man, but it's a good advertisement for keeping the fires burning long after windbag critics reckon you should stop. DC: I'm a sucker for a big pop album, and Tate McRae's third LP has scratched that itch best for me this year. It's not a classic, but a solid display of Tate's breadth as she bounces from elegant dance pop to slinky R&B. The Jersey bounce in Revolving Door is maybe two years too late, but pop music will always borrow from the underground after it's been rinsed. And it still sounds good on her. AN: She's no agenda-setting Chappell, Charli or Sabrina in my book, but I don't think she's necessarily coming for their throne. This is more indebted to the 2000s era of hyper-sexualised mass market pop, and I think the bops here are tailored toward being performed — all stylised choreography and bold visuals. DC: Yeah, I'm picturing its visuals and choreo when I hear this record. I just figured that was due to too much screen time on my part. AN: At 16 tracks, I expected more variety, sonically and lyrically. But the promise is there, and maybe when she's put out more albums, we'll get more range. DC: I have no interest in seeing the accompanying film, and the various marketing stunts surrounding its release bore me to hell. But The Weeknd still makes music that excites me. Tell me about the album's concepts and I'll fall asleep. But play me São Paulo and I'll stampede you on my way to turn up the volume. AN: I'm partial to Abel Tesfaye's f**kboi-pop aphorisms, but here his self-awareness has curdled into self-absorption. It has its moments (he always does), but after the neatly structured radio concept of Dawn FM, this is a disappointing slog where too many boring stretches just drift by. Hurry Up Tomorrow? Hurry up and get to the chorus! DC: Exactly. Abel can be a genius when he wants to — he either needs to get out of his own way or listen to anyone brave enough to tell him that less is more. AN: Maybe he's a victim of his own ego and success. But this is a merely competent album rather than the truly great climax to a conceptual trilogy that he wanted it to be. I hope this isn't the swan song, because otherwise the music of The Weeknd risks being thought of in the same terms as his acting career: a surreal vanity project. AN: On the basis of lead single, Abracadabra, the Little Monsters fanbase were expecting a return to Gaga's 2010s output. I'm pleased that, instead, Mayhem offers more dimension and dynamics. Killah echoes 1980s Prince. Perfect Celebrity channels the industrial grit of Nine Inch Nails. There are neat evolutions of the lockdown-disco from 2020's Chromatica (Zombie Boy); Garden of Eden reminds me of Muse's Supermassive Blackhole — a plus in my book. But no doubt a minus in yours, DC? DC: Oh, surely the last thing we need is a Muse revival. While Gaga has never been for me, Mayhem got me in a way I wasn't expecting. If you don't love her big, theatrical choruses then this will still grate, but its hard-edged production gives the record serious teeth. While I'm not identifying as a Little Monster yet, and I'm still reaching for Dua Lipa or Ariana Grande on a tipsy Saturday night, I can't deny that Gaga's latest chapter is another masterclass in pop excellence. AN: I think getting the showtunes out of her system for Joker: Folie à Deux and her 2021 duets album with Tony Bennett helped clear the creative decks for Gaga to deliver a far more focused effort. Her upcoming tour is going to be a blast. AN: As a fan of the much-maligned Solar Power, I'm a little sad that its sunny, mellow sound has been completely abandoned. I didn't immediately love this return to synth-driven melodrama – some of her and producer Jim-E Stack's choices fall flat. That said, after a few spins I've come to appreciate the sound — full of sharp, chrome edges to snag your ear on — and the bold artistic growth. And I'm curious how all this will sound live. Lorde asks challenging questions about her identity and often walks away with few definitive answers. But hearing her untangle those knots — on stand-outs like Hammer, Favourite Daughter, Current Affair and Broken Glass — is what makes Virgin so compelling. AN: I've said it before and I'll say it again: Ball Park Music are incapable of releasing a dud album. That's quite a feat when you consider the Brisbane five-piece have released eight albums in 14 years. Their latest, Like Love, tends towards the softer, slower side of their sound. They can still knock out a kooky, memorable indie rock song in their sleep (take a bow, Please Don't Move To Melbourne) but those are the exception here rather than the rule. Instead, Sam Cromack's reliably offbeat lyricism and well-honed songwriting nestles into tender, folksy material, like the acoustic title track and charming As Far As I Can Tell. Bells In Bloom has a Bends-era Radiohead lilt to it, while Pain & Love possesses late-Beatles DNA. It's songwriting that's easy to admire, but with enough unique twists alongside the memorable melodies to ensure staying power. DC: In a list packed with big and bold albums, Ball Park Music's latest is comparatively unassuming. Maybe that's partly while it's also so appealing? AN: If nothing else, I much prefer having Aussies sitting atop the Australian charts. And with ARIA changing the rules with how they are calculated, here's hoping that Ball Park and other local favourites aren't so lonely at the top in future.
Irish Times
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The Music Quiz: Which rocker's DNA is to be sold in limited edition ‘Liquid Death' cans after his demise?
From which track on U2's 1993 album Zooropa has Haim borrowed for their song, Now It's Time? Lemon Numb Stay (Faraway, So Close!) Some Days Are Better Than Others Julius Dubose is known professionally as...? The Audible Doctor A Boogie wit da Hoodie Earl Sweatshirt The Alchemist What is Leonard Cohen's middle name? Joshua Adam Norman Nathaniel Whose DNA is to be sold in limited edition 'Liquid Death' cans after his death? Van Morrison Alice Cooper Bob Dylan Ozzy Osbourne Who authored a 2020 poetry and photography collection called Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass? Lana Del Ray Taylor Swift Post Malone Charlie Puth Complete the album title: Julian Plenti Is…[Blank]. Building Structure Edifice Skyscraper Which movie star once covered The Vapors' 1980 pop/punk song Turning Japanese for a Tate Modern video installation? Anne Hathaway Kirsten Dunst Cameron Diaz Alicia Silverstone Which part of the Wicklow landscape is included in the song [Blank] Blue on the debut album by Kilkenny duo 49th & Main? Glendalough Glenmalure Greystones Glenealy Who are known as the 'Terror Twins'? Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones Aerosmith's Steve Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe Steve Clark and Phil Collen of Def Leppard What is the missing number in the upcoming book A History of Manic Street Preachers: [Blank] Songs of Hatred and Failure? 66 99 168 186
