Music

If you wandering the streets of Baku right now, anticipation welling up inside of you like day old dogs you really shouldn’t have eaten, you’ll know it’s less than 24 hours till the first semi-final takes place at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. But as the rehearsals have shown, the Continue Reading

  It’s a brave new digital world out there, and while traditional record companies are quaking in their boots, fearful and uncertain of what the future holds, quite a number of brave, independent artists are seizing the moment and crafting astonishingly successful careers without the vast apparatus of old behind Continue Reading

  Such sad news today. Donna Summer, who was the queen of disco at its height, died in Los Angeles Thursday US time of complications from lung cancer. At her height, Donna Summer reigned supreme, releasing hit after hit including “Hot Stuff”, “MacArthur Park”, “On the Radio” and the infamously Continue Reading

  Can you believe it’s been 7 weeks since I started reviewing all the funky chunky pop nuggets pouring forth from the bountiful goodness of Eurovision? Why yes… yes I can. Yes I know I am answering my own question and risk looking like a gibbering idiot who has inhaled Continue Reading

So it’s official then. In this short five second sound clip from Bjorn, who was interviewed on Swedish radio mere days ago on 11 May, he makes it very clear that the band will never, ever reform. You can’t get much more definitive than he does, either in the choice Continue Reading

I am awash in an overflow of wonderful exuberant beautiful music. It’s been a few weeks since the last update and pop music waits for no one, releasing song after stellar song till my iPod threatened to crack open with the virtual strain (it is so melodramatic at times). So Continue Reading

When Keane burst forth on to the music scene with Hopes and Fears in 2004, they met with almost instant success. Their brand of melodic piano-drive pop found a ready audience with people drawn to beautiful emotionally-rich pop. Tom Chaplin’s voice captured anguish and heartache so perfectly you imagined he Continue Reading

Welcome to another week of barely-controlled Eurovision madness! The clock is loudly ticking down to Eurovision (with an occasional unexpected key change and the odd pyrotechnic burst from the clock face… oh and is that a Ukrainian grandmother popping out of the time keeping piece on the hour every hour, Continue Reading

You could be forgiven for thinking that Eurovision is simply a “smorgasbord of kitsch”, as Keith Lawrence’s headline so eloquently put it in an article he wrote about Eurovision on his website, and nothing more. But as the other half of his article’s headline suggests, “…and politics”, it is not Continue Reading

It’s beginning to look a lot like Eurovision… Why? Well they have already announced the opening and interval acts for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest fiesta for one thing. Traditionally these two slots give the host country a chance to strut their cultural stuff  and the music is either resolutely Continue Reading