Music

"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)."

""I want to go again. It was just so so fun. It was such a nice atmosphere there.” The feeling of happy excitement of people heading out for their first night out post-lockdown definitely gave a boost of energy." Iona Neill discusses the recent trial rave at Bramley-Moore dock in Merseyside.

"She walks this peculiar line of being both stronger and more self-assured but within that, being more unapologetically delicate and sentimental." J Daniels explores Lana’s 7th album, in all its assuredness, delicacy and sentiment.

"Howard has somehow transformed the usually significant divide between the ominous and the amusing into a fine line." J Daniels takes a look into folk singer Ben Howard’s latest album.

"In his adolescence, the Church told Montero that being gay would send him straight to Hell – so the singer reckoned, why not get into his thigh-high stilettos and slide down there on his own terms?" Beth Ranasinghe dives deep into Lil Nas X's recent single "MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)".

"It is prefaced: “What if Beethoven’s Für Elise… Had been written by Ludovico Einaudi?”... ‘Reimagining’ Beethoven in the style of Einaudi would entail a translation of Beethoven’s ‘classical’ harmonies into the more accessible language of modern film/popular music, potentially downsizing the role of melody and musical form in favour of communicating a more homogeneous ‘background’ sound." Yundi Li discusses the role TikTok and other new media play in changing dialogues of genre fusion.

"Production is not the greatest sin ‘Holy’ commits. Indeed, I actually really like the gospel piano that kicks the song off, and Justin’s opening verse (“I know a lot about sinners/guess I won’t be a saint”) and pre-chorus (“the way you hold me… feels so holy”), while nothing special, definitely fit and set the mood. Yet, this is immediately ruined by the lyric “Oh God/Running to the altar like a track-star”, which, accompanied by the muddy-too-modern pop bass farting through the timeless instrumentation preceding, wrecks the song beyond all recovery." Raman Handa reviews 'Justice', the latest offering from Justin Bieber.

"One of my favourite parts of Chinua Achebe’s masterpiece, Things Fall Apart, is a ferociously intense public wrestling scene. It buzzes with an ever-moving pulse, choreographed by the beating of drums. They rise with the intensity of the fighting, and older men 'remembered the days when they wrestled to its intoxicating rhythm.'" Jimmy Brewer explores how Kerouac, Proust and Achebe capture the experience of live music in their works.

"Is the hit single really a triumph of Korean music and the result of successful diversification of the globalised music industry? Or is it an omen of homogenised world music, blanched and pureed under Anglophone influence?" Coral Kim discusses whether BTS disprove the model of "l'exception française".

"Start your day off with this dance track and you can’t go wrong." Flora Dyson picks out some selections to help keep you company during the final stretch of restrictions and drive you into the spring and summer months.

"Ultimately, the album is about the human experience: the joys and monotonies; the passions and anxieties; the connection and solitude". Karan Chandra reviews Weezer's latest record, OK Human.

"Dawson’s lyrics aren’t poems; the music is too important to the cadence and stress of the lines for the words to retain their power without it. Still, they do pass that age-old test which can be used upon a line of verse to distinguish the animating spirit of poetry: they’re often almost impossible to gloss in prose." Oscar Jelley tries to unravel the complexities of Geordie folk singer-songwriter, Richard Dawson.

CW: Mentions of alcoholism, substance abuse. "'Little Oblivions', then, is a battle diary published long after nadir itself, with retrospective editing. The full-band sound makes it extremely listenable, and Baker’s silvery voice is snugly at home amidst metallic textures." Irene Zhang looks at Julien Baker's latest release.

"Arctic Monkeys' sentiment of local identity is perfectly surmised in the closing track ‘A Certain Romance,’; though it bemoans the towns low fashion and ‘kids who scrap with pool cues in their hands,’ it resolves into a statement of "this is our town, our culture, and we’re owning it."" Greg Halliwell looks back at what the Sheffield quartet's debut album meant to Northern music culture, 15 years' on.

"It feels almost like an Alice in Wonderland journey of sound – despite the constant growing and shrinking, we still know that we’re down the rabbit hole." Lily Kershaw looks back at André 3000's side of Outkast's 2003 double album, "The Love Below".