Features

The fateful circumstances that led to Coldplay’s biggest ever song

By Andy Price published 4 April 26

Coldplay’s first stab at a euphoric crowd-pleaser was a clear indication that a stadium-filling future awaited

“Look at AC/DC. Whatever was popular, it didn’t matter. It’s like McDonald’s. ‘We make the Big Mac and we make fries and we don’t care about doing sushi’”: Zakk Wylde on musical identity, jailhouse rocking with Ozzy and the return of Black Label Society

By Jonathan Horsley published 4 April 26

The maestro of the pinched harmonic and pentatonic blitzkrieg sits in to talk Engines Of Demolition, Randy Rhoads' greatness, and the origin of his style

"The record company went berserk”: How Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo had to fight to release Love Is A Battlefield

By Beth Simpson published 4 April 26

Love Is a Battlefield introduced the Linn Drum into mainstream rock

“All I hear is ‘Auto-Tune sucks’ and 'drum machines have no soul'”: Flying Lotus on the backlash against AI music

By Matt Mullen published 3 April 26

FlyLo weighs in on Suno and talks us through the making of BIG MAMA, a chaotic speedrun of an EP that zooms through chiptune, breakcore and jazz fusion without looping a single bar

The song John Lennon called “the best I've ever written” – and Yoko Ono’s uncredited contribution

By Neil Crossley published 3 April 26

“A lot of it – the lyric and the concept – came from Yoko”

“John Lennon said that it’s the one song he wished he would have written”: The disco classic that influenced songs by Lennon and ABBA

By Paul Elliott published 31 March 26

How the leader of KC And The Sunshine Band created a perfect floor-filler

“David didn’t seem happy about it”: Tony Visconti reveals Bowie's reaction to Holy Holy

By Jamie Sefton published 31 March 26

Visconti joins us to talk Holy Holy's farewell tour, working with Paul McCartney and why AI is "clogging the arteries" of the music business

“It’s essentially a ballad, but we put a pounding beat to it”: The classic ’80s No 1 by A-ha that inspired a U2 anthem

By Paul Elliott published 30 March 26

“The melody line must have been lying in Bono’s subconsciousness”

“They describe themselves as a Mantra-Rock Dada Pythago-Cubist Orchestra, and the band name translates to ‘angina of the chest’”: The microtonal music theory behind viral math-rockers Angine de Poitrine

By Ethan Hein published 30 March 26

Our resident music professor breaks down the experimental tunings and time signatures behind the costumed Québécois duo breaking the internet

Geddy Lee on the making of Rush’s 1984 classic Grace Under Pressure

By Jonathan Horsley published 30 March 26

How the trio battled cabin fever in the depths of winter in search of a sound that had more of Alex Lifeson's guitar, more cutting-edge synths, "more of everything!"