Features archive

January 2026

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40 articles

January 31
- "I wrote this song while lying, listening to the telephone in my apartment... but she never called”: The story of the heart-breaking ballad that’s become – finally – Jeff Buckley’s first Billboard chart hit
- “I haven’t written anything on the new album. I started to write ‘very heavy metal’ things, but I ended up writing for bagpipes, folk things like Jethro Tull. Oh well – bang go my royalties!”: When Bruce Dickinson was Iron Maiden’s odd man out
January 30
- “The reaction was overwhelming. We didn’t think it was going to be a big hit, but people were loving it”: How a range of musicians revitalised their careers by shaking up their attitude to songwriting
- “It’s a perfect song. Bonnie really conveys the drama. That voice brought Jim’s song to life”: How the writer of Bat Out Of Hell and a husky-voiced singer from Wales combined to create one of the greatest power ballads of all time
January 29
- “We really have no business being in a band together. We’ve never all been on the same page, taste-wise”: Lindsey Buckingham on Fleetwood Mac’s weird dynamic
- “The Beatles might have made more music over a shorter period of time, but Kraftwerk has an ace up their sleeve”: Who has really been the most influential on the future of music, the Beatles or Kraftwerk?
January 28
- After years of covering the NAMM cycle I've never seen flagship gear hit the shelves so quickly - here are 6 of the hottest NAMM 26 releases you can pick up right now
January 27
- “Avril and I thought, ‘Let’s just make up the most stupid opening line for a song’”: How Avril Lavigne channeled her punk rock influences and her personal life into the monster hit she describes as “a super special song to me”
- “The sound of his guitar is everything rolled into one. It’s blues, it’s rock ’n’ roll, and it’s got that hard edge to it. It’s not clean – it’s nasty!”: Angus Young on the legendary guitarists that lit a fire in him
January 26
- “It’s a story about a bloke who’s not sure whether he’s died and been reborn, or whether he’s just been dreaming. Kind of like a bad hangover!”: The Iron Maiden anthem inspired by near-death experiences
January 25
- “On the first album I avoided doing a lot of cutting on the tape. The problem is, I always change my mind with an arrangement, so there’s always gonna have to be a razor blade handy”: The perfectionist rock legend who has made just six albums in 50 years
- “The first three times I performed it in public, I burst into tears – because it brought back the intensity of the experience”: How Joni Mitchell wrote Woodstock – an era-defining song that spoke to a generation
January 24
- “The studio bill came to £148.50. So with the £1.50 in change we all bought a celebratory bag of fish and chips”: Before superstardom and multi-million-selling albums, the young Def Leppard made their very first record on the cheap
January 21
- “Lou sang his vocal to a girl that just walked into the studio. Everybody thought she was with our group and she wasn’t – but Lou fixated on her and the vocal was done in one take”: How Foreigner and super-producer Mutt Lange created a classic rock ballad
January 19
- “It’s the exact same model Paul McCartney played on Yesterday during the Beatles’ ’65 Ed Sullivan TV appearance. I’ll always treasure that guitar more than anything”: The heavy metal star whose most prized guitar is an acoustic
January 17
- “I realised then that everything could tumble, and when you're in Colorado, and you're surrounded by these incredible mountains, you think 'avalanche'": How being alone in snowy Aspen inspired the sleeper hit that saved Fleetwood Mac
January 16
- “I took inspiration from Iron Maiden’s Run To The Hills. And for the lyric, the story of the last days on Earth, I went back to David Bowie’s Space Oddity”: A rock band’s global No.1 hit – before grunge turned their world upside down
January 15
- “I just was not expecting the look on people’s faces. It was really just vicious – the most shocking, awful things you could hear from people”: The powerful and controversial Tori Amos song that her record company hated – before the club remix hit No.1
January 14
- “I kept a lid on my feelings at school but, when I was 18, dropped out of everything and couldn't even be bothered to get out of bed. I poured all this into the song”: The intricate music theory and lyrical depth of a Tears for Fears classic
- “I’d rather go in and just be Jaco. I improvise all the time. I never play the same thing twice”: The genius of Jaco Pastorius in one of the greatest jazz songs of all time – performed with fusion legends Weather Report
January 13
- “They said, ‘Go to LA, you're going to the NAMM show.' I said, 'What's a NAMM Show?'”: Ahead of NAMM 2026, we get to know the man in the hot seat of the industry’s biggest trade show
- “The people who like that song aren’t actually fans of The Cure. They’re not the ones who buy my records”: How Robert Smith took a rare trip to “happy land” to create one of The Cure’s greatest hits
January 12
- “It’s a song that I love, because I didn’t compromise when I wrote it at all. I wrote exactly what I felt, and put a melody to it that was perfect for the words”: The making of Lana Del Rey’s classic sleeper hit
January 11
- “I said, ‘That will get us pigeonholed as a Christian band, and that’s not what we want to do.’ I remember thinking, ‘This is the kiss of death!’”: The singer who had a bad feeling about a song – before it ended up going all the way to No.1
January 10
- “I opened the door... he had the guitar in his hands. It was him playing the jazz. I had no idea that he was that good”: Mark Tremonti on Alter Bridge’s “secret weapon” and his soloing strategies for avoiding the same old pentatonic patterns
- "Steve Lukather said: ‘Here’s a record that some DJ turned into a No 1. I can’t stand it.’ He got 90% of the publishing rights, so he can’t have been that mad!": How Roger Sanchez turned an '80s Toto ballad into a 2001 dance anthem
January 9
- “This song sounds like a group of friends going their separate ways forever”: The story behind the 2015 dream pop gem that TikTok can’t get enough of
- “The first time I played it, I had such a connection with it. I thought, ‘This is it. This is the one’”: On his 26th birthday in 1970, Jimmy Page played his beloved Les Paul Custom ‘Black Beauty’ at the climax of a legendary Led Zeppelin show
January 8
- “Music gives me a sense of purpose, a reason to wake up in the morning”: How making music can help in addiction recovery
- “We met up with Gene in his suite at Caesars Palace in Vegas, which was an experience in itself!”: The hair metal band that had Gene Simmons as their producer – before their guitarist joined Kiss
January 7
- “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 tested 11 of the best stem separation tools – and you might already have the winner in your DAW
January 6
- “It was a terrible record to make. The arrangement’s so weird. It’s not very musical”: The American anthem that hit No.1 and made a star of John ‘Cougar’ Mellencamp – with help from a Bowie sidekick and inspiration from a Phil Collins classic
- “Clapton chose pure blues, and he hated it when the volume went up. He actually said to Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, ‘You’re too loud!’ Because he’s a purist”: ’60s icon Donovan salutes a golden generation of guitar heroes
- “His death was no different from his life - a work of art”: A decade on, we remember how David Bowie rose above his impending end to create his most poignant work
January 5
- “The whole process left me feeling flat and empty”: With AI now threatening to make the DAW obsolete, is it finally time to stand up to the tech taking the very soul out of music-making?
- “It’s so intense – but man, I love that song! Often, the songs I love the most are the most difficult to pull off”: Myles Kennedy on why karaoke “terrifies” him, the secret to a perfect take – and the hardest Guns N’ Roses song to sing live with Slash
January 2
- “I lay on my floor one night and wrote the whole thing": 40 years on – the making of West End Girls
- “It was just a challenge to myself: ‘I’m not gonna have a chorus in this song. See if I can get away with it’”: How Jack White created the guitar riff of the century – and what is a Seven Nation Army, anyway?
January 1
- “I was shaking. I had sweat pouring down my back. Miles saw me suffering and said, ‘Play it like you don’t know how to play guitar!’”: How legendary guitarist John McLaughlin survived a baptism of fire with Miles Davis