Culture

Been a while since Dolly featured in this slot. So here she is with Backwoods Barbie. It’s like a compendium of country and Dolly cliches but, you know, so what? It still works.

We normally run these Spotify playlists on Sundays, but, as it’s Christmas tomorrow, we thought we’d make an exception for Adrian’s selection of festive music. Don’t forget Pete Hoskin’s selection of more recent Christmas songs, from a couple of weeks ago, too. Distilling your Christmas favourites into a succinct playlist is like trying to cram

Picking my favourite albums this year reminded me of three things about the current state of music. First, the obvious point of how everything is driven by single tracks rather than albums, making the task harder each year. Second, how so much of the most interesting and innovative art is being made by women right

There are, as they say, only thirteen more shopping days until Christmas. And that, unless you don’t much care for seasonality, means only thirteen more days of Christmas music. But what to listen to? There are the old standards, of course: the carols, the hymns, that Slade song. But I thought I’d delve into my

Inexplicably, this series failed to note that Gillian Welch and David Rawlings finally released a new album this year. Better late than never, here they are again this time performing Dark Turn of Mind…

This series is back after a dreadful, loved-up, hiatus. Here’s the official video of Glen Campbell’s last, splendid, album released for his final tour as the awfulness of dementia takes its toll. Thanks for the music Glen. This is Ghost on the Canvas:

The arrival of the composer Eric Whitacre and his family in London as permanent residents brings a ray of Californian sunshine to our cloud-bedraggled lives. American musicians who have chosen to move to Europe to work have always made an interesting group, headed by jazz players of the calibre of Josephine Baker and Sidney Bechet.

It occurs to me sometimes that this column is, essentially, one long and painful confessional. I admit to enjoying all this unfashionable and uncool music so others don’t have to. ‘Ah, the man who likes Supertramp,’ someone once said to me at a party, just before he was stabbed by an unknown assailant. No one

The Jam were once described as the ‘last great English singles band’. For a group that released such classic chart-toppers as ‘Going Underground’ and ‘Town Called Malice’ that might seem fair enough, but it grievously underestimates their musical canon. The quality of their output on LPs, B-sides and even on recordings that were never released

There was a time when ‘classical music’ meant something you could put your finger on. It denoted the musical period between roughly 1750 and 1800, when Haydn, Mozart and many others wrote symphonies, concertos and instrumental pieces with a sense of form and grace that were likened to the art and architecture of Classical Greece

How is it possible to have come this far without featurig this song? Madness, man, madness. Anyway, here are Ira and Charlie Louvin with I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby. Dang they’re good.

In all the heavier-duty excitement of Liszt’s anniversary I had failed to register that W.S. Gilbert expired 100 years ago; and, perhaps just as significant, the copyright of the D’Oyly Carte opera company expired 50 years ago. I am old enough to remember the fuss which that moment provoked — the highbrows hoping to kill

What with one thing and another, I had rather lost track of what Sting was up to. Still on the lute? Moved on to nose flutes? Thrash metal rereadings of back catalogue? It turns out that he has taken to the road with an orchestra, in a heroic stand against the bitter frugality of these

Well, after the sodding rugby* I think it is time for some George Jones and Things Have Gone to Pieces: *Well done England.

What was it Sir Thomas Beecham said about Stockhausen? ‘I’ve never conducted any of his music, but I once trod in some.’ So far as I know, Beecham never commented on the work of Pierre Boulez, but I’m sure his verdict would have been the same. Both composers adopted a modernist language that is politely