Features archive

June 2026

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59 articles

June 30
- “To call Led Zeppelin heavy metal is at the very least absurd and at worst a sin. To me, Zeppelin was the equivalent of great classical music”: Kiss stars Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons on why Zep and The Beatles’ debut albums are the greatest of all time
- “I was chatting to our guitarist yesterday and he said, ‘Do you remember when we were playing around and discovered F?’”: We speak to Haircut 100's Nick Heyward
June 29
- “We discovered pretty early on that we were not going to succeed by trying to emulate the likes of Bob Dylan. There are some very strange things on ZZ Top records”: Billy Gibbons on ZZ’s blues roots, ’80s mega-hits and their unique “sense of weird”
- School's out for summer: It's MusicRadar's Quiz of the Week #11!
June 28
- “For about six months, we were the coolest band on the planet”: We talk to Embrace about the extraordinary song that put them on the indie map
- “What we learned from Steve was don’t overthink it. It’s a performance, a vibe, a take, and sometimes the accidents and mistakes add to it”: How Neurosis nailed their epic sound with Steve Albini
June 27
- “When I heard Wes, it killed me. The guy played with his thumb, and it’s all downstrokes, which means it’s twice the effort, but he was still so fast it just smoked me!”: The jazz classic that Nile Rodgers named as his favourite guitar track of all time
- “I think he altered his perspective after working with us. He did some wonderful stuff after that. He got out of just heavy metal, and that's a good, good thing": John Lydon and Bill Laswell remember the making of Rise - with a little help from Steve Vai
June 26
- How to re-create Drake’s smooth Burning Bridges sound using plugins
- “This is actually rock music written on electronic equipment”: How to replicate the sample-based sonics of a gnarly Prodigy classic
- “Charli has one consistent theme when it comes to drum beats - simplicity”: How to replicate Charli XCX’s sonic characteristics
June 25
- I’ve been a professional producer for decades, and these are the plugins I always call-up when working on a project
- “They were far superior guitar players to me. I could never play lead to save my life. But one thing I’m quite good at is playing with a certain feel”: Def Leppard bassist Rick Savage reveals “80%” of Hysteria’s jangle guitars were him all along
- Want crispy, retro digital drum machine sounds? Here’s our top picks of the plugin options that emulate the pioneering classics
- “I got tons and tons of messages from people begging me to bring it back somehow”: Brian Clevinger talks us through the legacy of Absynth, and how it was reborn for a new generation
- “Grown men were coming up to him with tears in their eyes, saying how he would never fully understand what the song had done for them over the years”: Producer Stephen Hague tells us how he made “the best English football record” with New Order
- How to tune a guitar… even if you haven’t got a tuner
- “The best feeling is when you play back the thing you’ve made that day and you actually feel good about it. That’s the drug I’m chasing every day”: Unlocking the production tricks that Fred Again swears by
June 24
- The best plugins for re-creating the grit and punch of classic analogue drum machines
- “Just because some of your university friends defaulted to it at karaoke doesn’t act as a strike against it”: A music professor breaks down the theory behind Oasis’s Wonderwall
- “If you can’t make payments, you’re forbidden from using the software”: Thinking of making your next music tech purchase on a rent-to-own plan? Read this first
- “I kind of sabotaged my earlier success. I couldn’t quite manage the whole pop thing - I wasn’t good with it”: Three decades since her debut, Beth Orton speaks to us about the road to her self-produced new album
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