Features archive

June 2026

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37 articles

June 23
- "Some of the best things I've written were quite naive, where I didn't know what I was doing. That’s why I collect instruments I can't play": Ital Tek on creating ‘sonic worlds’ and new album Mind Abandon
- “Think of the processes like cars on a motorway. Our CPU has one lane for traffic to flow; the GPU has thousands of lanes”: Can GPU really unlock limitless music production potential?
- “Artie would be singing it, people would stomp and cheer, and I would think, ‘That’s my song, man. I wrote that’”: How Simon and Garfunkel created their transcendent masterpiece – with tension rising and emotions running high
- “Sylvian then felt justified in mixing our work alone – which by any other name would be known as hijacking”: The destructive breakdown of a band that reached artistic greatness only to fall apart due to internal tensions – twice!
- “Its success was something no one could have expected”: How Oeksound's Soothe became one of modern production's most ubiquitous plugins
- “The sample is quite timeless - I think the power of the beat itself is what people really like about it”: How to recreate the ’90s-channelling energy of a PinkPantheress banger
June 22
- “Jeff said, ‘That’s a really good riff but there’s one chord too many.’ So I cut it back a chord and then – just to amuse Jeff, honestly – I sang that first verse”: How Tom Petty created his most famous song – with a little help from Jeff Lynne
- “I have absolutely no regrets. But with Eric Carr’s illness, I wish I’d handled that differently. The idea that someone close to me had cancer and was going to die, I couldn’t take it in”: Paul Stanley recalls the darkest day in the history of Kiss
- “You do not need to know chemistry to enjoy fireworks”: Exploring the physics-driven thinking behind some of the most groundbreaking plugins
June 21
- “It was too odd, too complicated. I felt like I had been so in my head that I couldn’t judge”: From Bollywood to Bond – unpacking the intricate arrangement of Toxic
June 20
- Hot for teacher? It's MusicRadar's Quiz of the Week #10!
June 19
- “George was talking to Bonzo one evening and said, ‘The problem with you guys is that you never do ballads.’ I said, ‘I’ll give him a ballad’”: How a light-hearted comment from a former Beatle inspired one of Led Zeppelin’s greatest songs
- "There's no knife-in-the-back twist. When I read these lyrics back, I was like, 'Oh, that's weird.' All the other love songs I've written have a dark edge”: How Snow Patrol constructed one of the most enduring hits of the 21st century
- “I always felt like I was the weak link in the band. I felt that my guitar playing was was too raw and unpolished”: How guitar hero Vivian Campbell overcame self-doubt to create a heavy metal masterpiece with legendary singer Ronnie James Dio
June 18
- “I'm fed up with playing it. It's all right but you do get fed up with it after 50 years”: The surprising truth behind one of the biggest-selling instrumental hits of all time
June 13
- “This track is very much John Deacon world. I don’t think I was on it at all to start off with! He was much more into funk than we were. So it’s his rhythm guitar playing – not mine”: Brian May on the No 1 hit that made Queen the biggest band in the world
June 12
- “It used to be, like, 25 minutes long!”: How Axl Rose took inspiration from Elton John to create a classic Guns N’ Roses ballad that was years in the making
- “I didn't even want it to be on the record, honestly. How wrong could I have possibly been?”: How Linkin Park created their biggest song that has now racked up billions of streams
- “Playing with your fingers has something to do with immediacy and soul. You’re absolutely in touch with what’s going on”: How Mark Knopfler combined sublime fingerpicking and Shakespearean tragedy in a Dire Straits classic
- Misstra know it all? It's MusicRadar's Quiz of the Week #9
- UVI's Rumble reinvents bass sound design by sculpting subs, mids and highs as separate instruments
June 11
- “He had to have his privacy. He had to be completely alone. We did not have visitors in the studio”: After the brutal firing of his Purple Rain band, Prince worked in isolation to create a foreboding masterpiece
June 10
- “The violin bow was laying on the floor of the studio. Just to be class clown, I picked it up and tried to emulate Jimmy Page from The Song Remains The Same”: How The Cult created their classic signature song
- “We never wanted David to write the score. It would have been a cliché”: Why Ryuichi Sakamoto’s spellbinding theme from Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence remains so captivating
June 9
- “If 100 people think your song sucks, they will create 200 people who think your song is awesome”: Questionable music marketing didn't begin with the recent Geese scandal - it's been going on for decades
- “It’s supposed to be ridiculous. It’s a song about ridiculousness. So I called Jim Steinman”: How a goth legend hooked up with Meat Loaf’s songwriter to create an ’80s rock anthem
June 8
- “A kid called Chris Martin was reaching out for music and A-ha became part of his story”: The deep connection between modern rock giants Coldplay and ’80s pop legends A-ha
- “He didn’t write that many but if you think about it the ones he did were big, big hits”: How John Deacon’s genius for pop songwriting was kickstarted with the follow-up to Bohemian Rhapsody
- “She said ‘You sing it yourself!’ There was frustration, for the first time and only time in our creative process”: The troubled making of Amy Winehouse's Tears Dry on Their Own
June 6
- “I always tried to push him to be better, and he’s always been my incentive for trying to be better – better than him, sometimes”: Paul Stanley on the synergy and the rivalry that drove Kiss
June 5
- Bad Brains? It's MusicRadar's Quiz of the Week #9!
- “I can visualise sitting at the lovely black Steinway piano. I was playing on it one day, and this song came to me”: How Paul McCartney created his greatest post-Beatles song
June 4
- “I used to think that Reaper was a joke. If I saw someone using it, I would assume they're not serious”: How Reaper is taking over the production world one enthusiastic user at a time
June 2
- After seeing them in action, I’m convinced that Ableton’s Extensions are going to change how music-makers use Live forever
- “In actual fact, it’s pure maths”: Just what are Angine de Poitrine actually doing musically? We dissect their biggest track
- “Tom got really angry with me. He said, ‘You’re one of the best songwriters I know. You don’t need my help. You don’t need anybody’s help!’”: How Tom Petty inspired Stevie Nicks to make a comeback – and why she felt misunderstood by Prince
June 1
- “The chorus wrote itself, the chords took me about 10-15 minutes and then Paul came up with the verses while he was waiting for a lift to a gig the next day!”: How one of the greatest rock anthems of all time was created in the wake of a nightmare show