Music

Don’t get me wrong. The album is upbeat, cheerful, maddeningly optimistic and, at least intermittently, catchy for most of us mortals. But something tells me it’s not quite the empyreal sound Pythagoras would have had in mind.

Maintaining a non-academic hobby alongside an Oxford degree is a challenge. Pressures from tutors, friends and oneself conspire to clog up time that could...

"Out from the November night an easy orange glow invited me into the Sheldonian. I trotted up creaking stairs to the top floor, into the jaws of death – the jaws of death being an archaically unintuitive seating set up. The seats on the upper stalls are just three big steps – if you arrive late, sidling along the upper rows in front of those already seated requires deft footwork and a lot of 'excuse me's."

Out of the Blue, an Oxford University a cappella group, has released its Christmas charity single for 2021. This year, the group is supporting...

Kid A and its sister album Amnesiac helped introduce electronic instruments to alternative rock, and were a risky sonic departure from Radiohead’s guitar-based and immensely successful OK Computer....

"We’ve got 19, 21, and 25 to hear Adele sing about growing up, breaking your heart, and the power of belonging. 30 is another project personal to a stage in her life, and regardless of whether it’s for everyone, it is a simply brilliant listen."

"Clocking in at just under thirty minutes, this cycle was so absorbing that I nearly forgot the other songs with which the concert began."

"In 2017, two of the most popular singles in America were bilingual: ‘Despacito’ and J Balvin’s club classic ‘Mi Gente’ which gained incendiary power thanks to a Beyoncé cameo. In both cases, the English-speaking singers made notable effort to acknowledge the dominance of Spanish-language pop by singing in Spanish. Indeed, despite the commercial benefits that these artists certainly received perhaps the most important outcome of their success is their cultural impact."

"The lyric ‘you took my weed and two years of my precious time’ makes me laugh each time I hear it in the song ‘leave my mind’ – ironically, the song can quite easily leave my mind as soon as I’ve finished listening to it."

"We met upstairs at the Jericho Tavern, Willie having taken some time out from watching the football at a pub down the road. Donning a tiny beanie, a different colour of which he’s worn at each tour date so far, and with a feather earring dangling from his left ear, he bears all the hallmarks of an indie songsmith - albeit, one who doesn’t take themselves too painfully seriously."

"These songs hugely contrasted with the dark, depressing songs produced by American grunge artists such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and were generally more upbeat, optimistic and catchy. Damon Albarn of Blur said in a 1993 interview that: “If punk was about getting rid of hippies, then I’m getting rid of grunge!”."

"Simz takes the face (or rather, the voice) of British royalty and uses it to represent her own inner voice. But more importantly, it brings the exploration of womanhood and female consciousness to the forefront of the album. This is, after all, an album about women breaking out of their role and being more than one thing."

"Listening to 'Chinatown' and '45', the first two singles from Bleachers’ latest album Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night takes me right back to eighth week of my first term at Oxford. I spent that week wrapped up in a big grey coat and scarf (channelling Dark Academia as best I could), taking Main Character walks around the city, reading in the cafes that had finally opened again, and, most importantly, dealing with a lot of messy emotions that had been building up all term."

"Monsters takes the listener on a whirlwind tour of raw human emotion. Whether you love or hate Odell’s marmite exposition of various moods, the album clearly provides something for everyone."

"There has been a surge in folk music’s popularity since artists like Phoebe Bridgers and Taylor Swift released albums devoted to the much-loved genre. They have proven that, while folk music is forever attached to its past, it is not incompatible with the now."

"Spotify promises to ‘soundtrack your life’. We must be wary of how it’s shaping it." Lucy Kelly questions whether Spotify could become the most addictive social media platform.

"This juxtaposition characterises the genre: bright, happy elements of club hits mixed with a subversive sly irony that comes with introducing darker lyrical and aesthetic elements." Connor Connolly tackles the explosion in popularity of Hyperpop, and its effects on the music industry.

"The energy is less mosh pit, headbanging, and more vulnerable. There’s talk of heartache and relationships crumbling" Poppy Atkinson Gibson finds a different side to the Australian trio, Chase Atlantic, in their latest release, "Beauty in Death".

""Great Spans of Muddy Time" finds Doyle in new realms of abstraction, with a record that can feel formless, sometimes almost messy." Frank Milligan ruminates on William Doyle's latest release.

"The potentially risky decision to produce a Spanish album to a predominantly English-speaking fanbase reflects Uchis’ consistent commitment to be authentic to herself." Ellie-Jai Williams explores Uchis’s brave Spanish new album, "Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios)."