Roger Waters has recorded a new version of the Pink Floyd classic Comfortably Numb with the Palestinian singer Mona Miari and has been talking about it to Wired magazine.

Waters has been a prominent supporter of the Palestinian cause for decades now, and the new version is deliberately being released in the context of the alleged genocide in Gaza and the continued occupation of both that territory and the West Bank. It includes new verses written in English and Arabic and, significantly, Comfortably Numb Re-Imagined (as it’s styled) includes the line ‘I will never become comfortably numb’. Meaning numb to the ongoing conflict, presumably.

The video, below, doesn’t stint in showing Gaza as it is now. It’s deliberately uncomfortable viewing and doubles up as a fundraiser for the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.

The interviewer doesn’t swerve the accusations of anti-semitism that have lingered around Waters for some time now, allegations that have been a significant factor in the seemingly-terminal ill feeling that continues to exist between himself and former Pink Floyd bandmate David Gilmour. Asked what he’d say to people who continue to view his work through the lens of anti-semitism, Waters is blunt: “Fuck off is my answer to that.”

“I don’t have an anti-semitic bone in my body, I never did and I never will have,” he insists. “I couldn’t give a shit what your religion is, frankly. I’m not interested in it. I’m interested in human rights for my brothers and sisters, whoever they are. Colour of the skin, religion, nationality, politics – I couldn’t care less.”

So there you go. The new track is a whole nine minutes long – three minutes longer than the original – but the pair have edited a three minute version for playlists. Asked what people will think of the Re-Imagined version ten years from now, Waters answers: “I hope they’ll hear that it was prophetic – there is a right and a wrong. This is not complicated, and this song is on the right side of history… I hope they’ll go ‘Phew’. They were part of the resistance, and we are part of the resistance.”

Carly Simon has been out of the spotlight for some time – in fact, she hasn’t released a studio album for 17 years. But yesterday, she revealed one of the reasons for that long silence – she’s been battling Parkinson’s Disease.

The singer songwriter – who turned 83 last month – has opened up about her health issues and what they have meant for her at a practical level in a lengthy Instagram post: “So many people have written to me, kindly wondering about my relative silence, asking how I am and what I have been doing. The truth is, I’ve been learning how to live with Parkinson’s disease.

“It has taken me some time to understand the diagnosis, to adjust to it, and to decide how much I wanted to say about it publicly.”

She continued: “Parkinson’s is different for everyone, and it can be unpredictable. Some days I’m so tired I can’t get the day moving at all. On others, it gives me a little more room to move, think, work, and feel like myself.”

In her case, the disease started in her knees and hip joints. Eventually, she had to have three of those replaced. “I had trouble standing up from low chairs and deep couches without someone offering me an arm,” she wrote. “Overstuffed furniture became my enemy. Once seated, I could feel as though I had been swallowed by the chair and might remain there permanently, like a guest who had badly overstayed her welcome.”

It wasn’t until after all that that Parkinson’s was eventually diagnosed. There is no known cure for the condition – which affects the brain, nervous system and muscle control – but with the right drugs it can be effectively managed.

In Simon’s case, Parkinson’s has also come with anxiety, depression and apathy. “The apathy is particularly strange. You can find yourself lying there like a starfish drying in the sun, arms pointing in all directions, while nothing inside is telling you to get up, read, watch, write, sing, call someone, or do much of anything at all.

“That has been one of the hardest things to explain. It is not simply sadness or laziness. It is as though the part of the brain that sends out invitations to participate in life has temporarily misplaced the guest list.”

Despite all this, the singer songwriter – best known for a string of hits in the 1970s and '80s – has recorded a new album. Comes In Waves is released next month and is her first new music since 2009. “I am still writing, singing, imagining, laughing, worrying, remembering, and occasionally getting trapped in an overstuffed chair,” she added.

“I am deeply grateful to my children, my family, my friends, my caregivers, and the medical professionals who have helped me through this. Their love and patience have carried me through days when my own reserves were not enough.”

Dhani Harrison, musician and son of Beatles legend George Harrison, has teamed up with renowned Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich to form a new band called Dragonflies.

The duo will release their self-titled debut album on 18 September via Dark Horse Records, the independent imprint set up by George Harrison in 1974 and revived by his son in 2020.

"People naturally assume that the son of a rich, famous person spends his days hanging out and nights going to parties. I've always been a worker - like my dad," Harrison told MusicRadar back in 2009. He's toured extensively with his band Thenewno2, composed scores for films like Beautiful Creatures, and released numerous solo projects.

The first taste of the forthcoming Dragonflies' album — which was primarily recorded on tape at Godrich's Brixton studio — is new single Slower, a dreamy, trip-hop-esque track that speaks to core Dragonflies influences like Portishead's Beth Gibbons.

The track's release was accompanied by a striking video created by Bristol-based artistic director and animator RUFFMERCY.

Harrison and Godrich are longtime friends who first started making music together during the pandemic, when the Radiohead producer was asked for his thoughts on the project that would eventually become Harrison's 2023 record Innerstanding.

"He's a machine," Harrison said of the acclaimed producer, whose credits include pioneering Radiohead albums like OK Computer and In Rainbows, Travis' The Man Who, Beck's Sea Change and IDLES' Tangk. "He has strong opinions about what he wants to hear, and for me it's very humbling. That's why it's such a new experience."

On the meaning behind the band's name, he added: "Dragonflies are a symbol of spiritual enlightenment. When Nigel suggested the name I was like, 'yeah, sold, done'. Whenever I see a dragonfly, it's magical."

Singer-songwriter Jackson Browne’s fourth album, The Pretender, was a three million selling smash hit that reached No 5 on the US Billboard 200 in 1977. But this professional success came after a devastating tragedy in Browne’s personal life.

His career had been on a steady upward curve ever since the release of his debut album in 1972. Officially titled Jackson Browne, but also known as Saturate Before Using, that debut album yielded a hit single in Doctor My Eyes, an upbeat, piano-driven song later covered by The Jackson 5.

Also in 1972, Browne’s friends and Asylum Records label-mates the Eagles had scored their breakthrough hit with Take It Easy, a county rock song co-written by Browne with the band’s guitarist/singer Glenn Frey.

Browne subsequently recorded Take It Easy for his second album For Everyman, which also included Ready Or Not, a song he had written about Phyllis Major, a model and actress for whom he had ended a relationship with Joni Mitchell.

In 2015, in an interview with MOJO magazine, Browne spoke about his relationship with Major and recalled the events leading up to The Pretender.

He said of Major: “She had this almost old-world European thing about her. She had grown up in Greece and was kind of from another time.”

Major was pregnant with Browne’s child when he wrote Ready Or Not, and this was addressed in the song’s lyrics: ‘She’s gonna be a mother/Take a look in my eyes and tell brother/If I look like I’m ready… Next thing I remember, she was all moved in/And I was buying her a washing machine.’

When Major heard the song for the first time, she was furious.

“She hated that song,” Browne admitted. “She said, ‘I wasn’t having a baby to get you. And the bullshit about the washing machine is just insulting. So fuck you.’ And she was right. I should have said in that song, ‘Oh shit, I’m about to become a parent and I have no idea how to do this.’ But I was not emotionally mature enough.”

On 2 November 1973, one month after For Everyman was released, Phyllis Major gave birth to a son named Ethan. For Browne, who had been hailed as the boy wonder of rock by Rolling Stone, it was time to grow up.

On the cover of For Everyman, Browne was pictured in the courtyard garden of a house in Los Angeles designed and built by his grandfather. The old man named it Abbey San Encino. Browne’s family had lived there during his early childhood and he made it his home again in 1974 – with Phyllis and Ethan – while he completed the writing of his third album, Late For The Sky.

Browne described Late For The Sky as an album based upon two related themes. “It’s about relationships and what you expect from them and what you hope your life will become,” he said. “And it’s also about what you expect from the idealism that I am a product of, having grown up in the ’60s.”

The two melancholy songs that began the album, the title track and Fountain Of Sorrow, had Browne ruminating on the slow break-up of a relationship. These songs were autobiographical, only this time more subtly so, and – lesson learned – they were not specifically about Phyllis Major.

“A lot of what I wrote on that record was about past relationships,” he said. “Intimacy was the coin of the realm. The people I admired as writers – Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen – they were willing to impart the truth, and that was so compelling. You couldn’t be glib about what you wrote. It had to matter. It had to cost you something.”

The broader context in Late For The Sky was a commentary on American society.

“I grew up in the crucible of the civil rights era, the free speech movement and opposition to the war in Vietnam,” he said. “This gave rise to a certain amount of idealism and energy and promise among my generation. But there was a certain feeling that floated around in the ’70s – of loss and having let go of those ideals.”

Late For The Sky, released in September 1974, was a coming of age for Jackson Browne as an artist. It was also his first hit album, reaching the top 20 in the US.

At the end of the following year, he and Major married and set up a new home in Highland Park, not far from Abbey San Encino. But on 26 March 1976, Phyllis Major was found dead at their home. At the age of 30, she had overdosed on drugs. The verdict was suicide.

It was later reported that Major had attempted suicide on at least two previous occasions. “Her death was a total surprise,” Browne said. “Maybe it should not have been, but it was.”

Left to grieve for his wife and to care for their son, Browne stopped work on his next album. “I can’t actually tell you how long for,” he said. “We just stopped until I was ready to resume.”

It was six months later, in November 1976, that The Pretender was released. As Browne explained to MOJO in 2015, this album was not an elegy for Phyllis Major.

“Many people think that if a record comes out after an event, that the event is somehow represented in the songs. But those songs were written before she died – with the exception of Sleep’s Dark And Silent Gate. That was written after.”

In this song, Browne wrote: ‘I don’t know what love has got to do with happiness… Oh God this is some shape I’m in/When the only thing that makes me cry/Is the kindness in my baby’s eye…’

He told MOJO: “I guess that could be considered cathartic.”

Despite circumstances in which it was made, The Pretender was, in terms of tone, brighter and punchier than Late For The Sky. The album opened with a dynamic rock song, The Fuse. Linda Paloma was a sunny love song with a warm Latin feel. And in the title track, which dealt with selling out and surrendering to The Man, there was resigned humour.

It was this last song that really resonated in the American psyche.

“It’s grappling with the question of whether the life you’re living is the life you thought you were headed for,” Browne said. “The Pretender is an open question: do you find life’s best qualities by having children and a job, or in tearing those things down?”

The album also included Your Bright Baby Blues, a song about drugs. Even after Phyllis Major’s death, Browne remained a recreational drug user. He had been since his early teens, when he discovered pot and acid.

As a rock star in the ’70s, Browne had moved on to a higher class of narcotics – principally cocaine and whatever new pills came on to the market. He spent many nights getting loaded with Lowell George, the leader of Little Feat, and Warren Zevon, the singer-songwriter for whom Browne produced two albums either side of The Pretender.

Browne recalled Zevon telling him that he had found an especially exciting new pill. “It’s the most amazing thing,” Zevon had said. “Nothing hurts. Everything matters.”

Your Bright Baby Blues had Lowell George playing slide guitar.

Browne said: “There’s a line in that song: ‘Close your eyes and try a few of these.’ That’s exactly the way we turned each other on and gave each other drugs.”

But in the lines that followed there was a grim confession: ‘I thought I was flying like a bird/So far above my sorrow/But when I looked down/I was standing on my knees.’

For Jackson Browne, at that time, no amount of self-medication was enough to block out the pain.

Noah Kahan has joked that Congress should introduce laws to enforce diapers at concerts, amid a troubling increase in reports of concert-goers defecating in the crowd.

At a recent show in Washington DC, Kahan pretended to call up Congress with the request, saying "Oh, Congress? Yeah people have been pooping all over the floor at my shows. You heard Congress, fucking put some diapers on next time, y’all.”

The Vermont-born musician later took to X to write: "If you have to poop at a show please dear god just go to the bathroom lmao I’ve pooped my pants as much as the next 29 year old but you guys gotta understand there’s a venue worker out there with a 1000 yard stare after dealing with that (sic)."

This is a growing issue amongst performers. Last month, pop superstar Olivia Rodrigo revealed that she had noticed the intense – and somewhat concerning – commitment of fans to getting the best view possible. "People wear diapers so that they can be front row," she said. "That's been an experience as a performer that I have smelled."

Ultimately, this trend – also highlighted elsewhere by a fan of US country star Morgan Wallen, who was urinated on by another concertgoer – is the result of a growing obsession amongst pop fans for being in the front row for their favourite artist, at all costs.

In the view of The Guardian's Kate Solomon, the pandemic made fans intensely hungry for one-of-a-kind concert experiences, and spots at the barrier have become increasingly coveted. "The cost of VIP pit tickets has rocketed, stan culture has grown ever more feral, and the social media value of scoring clear gig footage is at a premium," she says.

How much clout a fan can get from a show in which they've noticeably soiled or wet themselves is another question entirely. But unfortunately, it seems as though this is a trend that's growing.

Belgian composer, organist and musicologist Sander De Keere has signed to Brighton-based indie label Phantom Limb and released a new song titled Pt 6.

Recorded on a faithful replica of a 1763 Contius baroque organ (constructed in 2022), the seven-minute composition is designed to pay homage to this heritage instrument and explore how it can be reinvented and reinvigorated in the modern age.

"You feel the music through your whole body", De Keere said of playing the organ. "It's incredibly physical. Each register holds a sonic character, and combining them becomes a kind of alchemy."

The song was recorded at the historic St Catharina Church in Wondelgem (Ghent, Belgium), and this spiritual setting seeps easily into the landscape of Pt 6, a track that smoothly blends minimalism and electronic experimentation.

This reflects De Keere's place in the world of music; born in Ghent and raised in Brussels, he focuses on bridging the gaps between historical music and contemporary sound, supplementing his releases with classical music lecturing and broadcasting.

On Pt. 6 De Keere's aim was to create "landscapes that challenge expectations of what a pipe organ can be", with nods to early sacred music, mid-century minimalism, the classical avant-garde and modern electronic experimentation.

And his ambitions run far beyond this release. Having signed to Phantom Limb, the rising Belgian composer is preparing to release his debut album later this year. Watch this space.

It was an off-the-cuff remark from guitarist Frank ‘Poncho’ Sampedro that gave Neil Young the title for one of his greatest songs.

When Young and his band The Restless were notified of the cancellation of a tour in the Soviet Union, Sampedro joked, “We’ll just have to keep on rockin’ in the free world.”

Young replied: “Well, Poncho, that’s a good line. I’m gonna use that if you don’t mind.”

Later, Young commented: “It was such a cliché. I knew I had to use it.”

Rockin’ In The Free World would be released in 1989, serving as the lead single for Young’s 17th studio album, Freedom. The song would also end up as one of Young’s most defining anthems.

In a 2018 interview with MOJO magazine, Sampedro said that Young had written a handful of tracks for this album when he realised he needed something harder-hitting, more up-tempo and direct.

The band were checking into a hotel room in Portland when Sampedro urged Young to look about the world around him for inspiration to help finish the track.

Sampedro remembered: “I said, ‘Look man, tonight, get in your room, think about all this stuff that’s going down – the Ayatollah, all the stuff in Afghanistan, all these wars breaking out, all the problems in America.’”

The following morning, as the members were preparing to leave on their bus, Young informed him that the song had now been completed, taking heavy influence from some of the political unrest across the globe at the tail-end of the ’80s.

Some of the ire was directed at the newly appointed George H. W. Bush administration, directly quoting lines about “a thousand points of light” and “a kinder, gentler nation” from his presidential campaign promises and inaugural address. Other political references in the song include the line “Don’t feel like Satan but I am to them” from the opening verse, which was born out of Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini’s proclamation that the United States was the “Great Satan”. There’s also a nod to Jesse Jackson’s 1988 campaign slogan “Keep hope alive” in the third and final verse.

Released in between the opening of the Iron Curtain and the fall of the Berlin Wall, Rockin’ In The Free World would become the anthem for the European liberation of its time.

In his 2013 memoir Waging Heavy Peace, Young reflected how this kind of social commentary was a “part of the process” for him.

He reasoned: “I just do what I do and keep my ears and eyes open. Things are happening all the time. You put it out there and shit happens.”

Interestingly, the main riff to the song has more in common with hard rock and early heavy metal than the folk scene Young had been part of. Palm-muting was used to deaden the strings and bring more of a staccato feel – a technique famously used by bands like Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Metallica. The palm-muting is abandoned during the verse and chorus sections, allowing the chords to vibrate and ring out naturally.

For his solo at 2:30, Sampedro uses the E minor pentatonic scale – though also chose to include a Bb blue note and a major second found on the 14th fret of his high E-string.

Rockin’ In The Free World has been performed regularly by Pearl Jam, who have also performed the track alongside Young – a man they’ve often described as their musical mentor. The members of Pearl Jam even served as Young’s backing band on his 1995 album Mirror Ball.

Given his strong political beliefs, Young has been notably particular about where his songs have been used. Rockin’ In The Free World was approved for the 2004 Michael Moore documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 – a harsh critique of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq the year prior – as well as 2015 film The Big Short, based on how reckless bankers, traders and advisors helped cause the 2008 recession.

When Donald Trump used the song in his announcement as the Republican candidate for the 2016 presidency, Young – who had sided with Democrat candidate Bernie Sanders – responded by saying its usage had not been authorised.

Trump’s staff then outlined how the campaign had obtained the legal right to use the recording through a licensing agreement with royalty collecting society ASCAP and agreed not to use Young’s music moving forwards. They also claimed: “Despite Neil’s differing political views, Mr. Trump likes him very much.”

However, Trump lashed out on Twitter later down the line, claiming Young had come “to my office looking for $$ on an audio deal” and “called me last week to go to his concert”. In his eyes, this made Young a “total hypocrite”.

Trump then went on to state that “Rockin' In The Free World was just one of 10 songs used as background music” and signed off with: “Didn’t love it anyway”.

Despite not performing particularly successfully as a single, the song would go on to become one of Young’s most iconic tracks, and covered by artists such as Suzi Quatro, Larkin Poe, Simple Minds and Bon Jovi, as well as Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen on their 2003 G3 tour.

Irish rockers U2 have teamed up with Dutch DJ and producer Martin Garrix to release Fireflies, a new single that was premiered during Garrix's headline set at Tomorrowland festival last weekend.

The show featured a surprise appearance from The Edge, who had previously collaborated with Garrix on U2 tracks such as 2019 hit We Are The People and Scars, which features on the band's latest EP, Easter Lily.

“We go back a long way with Martin, and there’s always a sense of adventure whenever we get together," The Edge said.

"Playing Fireflies for the first time at Tomorrowland, in front of one of the most passionate festival crowds anywhere, was such a rush... in fact I might have enjoyed it a bit too much. It reminded me of why I love playing outdoors. I like it better when there’s no ceiling."

The single comes as U2 gear up for the release of their first original new album in almost a decade. Timeline details are hazy, but rumours suggest a new record by the end of the year.

The band recently released a rousing music video for new track Street of Dreams, filmed in Mexico City with original drummer Larry Mullen Jr. back behind the kit having recovered from the major back and neck surgeries that caused him to leave the group temporarily.

It's unclear whether Fireflies will feature on U2's forthcoming record, but either way, it's clearly a meaningful release for everyone involved.

"Fireflies has a very unique mood. It's a special song we started working on six summers ago," Garrix said. "It felt electrifying and very surreal to finally debut it at Tomorrowland with The Edge."

He added: "I've worked with Bono and Edge before, but working with the whole band I got to get a glimpse of their chemistry and why U2 are who they are. It has been an absolute honour to work with them again."

It ended up topping the charts in the UK and remains their best-loved song, but British band Razorlight say that they originally planned to give 2006’s America to another artist.

The revelation came last night, when Razorlight’s Andy Burrows and Johnny Borrell played an intimate show in central London and told the stories behind some of their biggest hits.

Of America, lead singer Borrell said: “My plan, which Andy probably didn't like, was based on when Prince wrote Nothing Compares 2 U and no one knew it was a Prince song until it became this big hit [for Sinéad O’Connor],” he explained. “I was like: Wouldn't it be so cool if we wrote this song and found some amazing artist to do it?”

It’s perhaps worth saying that Nothing Compares 2 U wasn’t written for Sinéad O’Connor – the original version was recorded by the Prince-backed band The Family, and featured on their one and only album in 1985. After O’Connor made it famous, Prince would reclaim it, performing it extensively right up until the time of his death.

Unfortunately for Borrell – but fortunately, in hindsight, for Razorlight – his plan to do something similar didn’t work. The song was shopped around, but there were no takers.

“Six months later, we still had this song,” says Borrell. “Don't get me wrong, I loved the song. I was living in the rehearsal studio at the time, and I had written this riff years ago. I think it was the first riff I ever wrote - for a really bad song about northeastern England when I was away on a very long camping holiday when I was 13.”

For some reason, Borrell thought that said riff could work now: “I never used guitar pedals, but I looked at this pedal on the floor and thought, ‘You know, I could put that with the 'Lost in America' song and see what happens.’”

Success happened, but there were soon bumps in the road. Burrows and Borrell fell out and didn’t speak for a decade, though they reconciled and reformed in 2021.

The duo are now celebrating the 20th anniversary of Razorlight’s eponymous second album, on which America features, and to mark their occasion, they’re released the original Lost in America demo, which is missing that guitar riff and has a slightly different groove.

Not quite as different as the one that Borrell originally proposed, though – the one from Billy Joel’s Movin’ Out, Anthony’s Song. “I sat down and said, ’Why don't we just write a song with a drop beat like that, but minus the trumpet?’” he recalls. Turning to Burrows, he adds: “You looked at me like, "Well, we could, but you wouldn't like it.’"

It’s one of the great sibling enmities in rock, but the relationship between Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks appears to have thawed in recent years. Now, Dave has given an interview with The Times in which he talks about how art has drawn them closer.

“It’s miraculous, really, how we’ve become so bonded,” says the younger Davies brother. Things, it seems, changed after his 2004 stroke, which led to a return to painting for him. “Art saved my life, really,” he says. “It was very exploratory and I found I could do things I couldn’t do before. It was a real liberation.”

When Davies posted some of his abstract works on Instagram, Ray commented and, in the words of Dave’s partner, Rebecca Wilson, who is also interviewed: “It kind of brought them together.”

Now both brothers have collaborated with the artist Christian Furr on an exhibition, The Kinks: Brothers, which collects a number of paintings that Furr has made based on photos of Ray and Dave, which have then been painted on once more by Dave.

And it seems to have further eased the tensions in that fraternal relationship. “We enjoy each other’s company,” says Dave. “We were getting on great. We have fluctuated between getting on really well and not getting on at all over the years but there’s always been telepathy, since childhood.”

The animosity between Ray and Dave has always had several layers to it. Aside from mere sibling rivalry, there was the fact that, while Ray was clearly the better songwriter, Dave was more adept musically. “Music was always really easy for me,” Dave says. “I could work out harmonies really easily. I managed to weave in and out of what Ray was doing.”

But it was Ray who was seen to the leader of the band and the songwriting genius. Dave says it was “terrible” trying to escape that shadow – “But then I realised that he had to find himself [as a musician]. I was his help and I didn’t realise it. The horrible things that happened - it’s all there for a purpose. You need that bonding of difference.”

The Kinks may not even have had a career had it not been for Dave’s moment of genius. Famously, he created that serrated guitar tone on You Really Got Me by slashing his amp cone with a razor blade, arguably creating the template for hard rock, metal and punk in the process. “It’s nice to be recognised,” he says modestly of that innovation. “When we created it, nobody liked it.”

And that eternal question of whether Dave (79) and Ray (82) will ever return as The Kinks or even share a stage again? “I don’t know, but never say never,” is all the guitarist says.

An unfinished George Michael song that was originally supposed to be a duet with Elton John could finally be released – if the late star’s cousin/ former manager gets his way, that is.

The track is called This Kind Of Love and its existence has been known for some time. It was originally recorded in the early 1990s as part of an album called Trojan Souls, which saw the singer duet with a number of artists, including Stevie Wonder, Bryan Ferry, Sade, Anita Baker and Elton. The project ran aground after Michael fell out with Sony and to this day remains in the vaults.

Now Michael’s ex-manager, a relation named Andros Georgiou, has made a film that takes its title from the album. With a somewhat aggrandising subtitle of ‘The Greatest Album That Was Never Made’, it can already be seen online. Georgiou, though, is looking for wider distribution, and in an interview with The Sun’s Bizarre column has been talking about his plans for the film – which includes the release of This Kind Of Love.

“I got this incredible interview with Elton that no one has seen and I’m saving that for when the film gets snapped up by a streamer like Apple,” Georgiou told the paper. “Elton said on the film, ‘I will literally do anything for George. I know at 21 he got the Ivor Novello award, and no one had ever done that before. When I got the call, before anything was said, I said yes.’

“We focused on finishing that song first because we knew Elton was going to come in. I’ve got George singing the track and Elton singing the track so the dream is to make another track. I would have to ask Elton’s ­permission to put the vocals together. I’m sure Elton would say yes because he was blown away by the song and was a huge ­supporter of George.”

Getting Elton’s permission would probably be the easiest part. More tricky would be getting the Michael estate to sign off on the project, along with all the respective record labels involved.

Elton was a friend, collaborator and cheerleader of the late singer, who died in December 2016. He once described him as “one of the most brilliant songwriters this country's ever produced, and certainly one of the best vocalists ever.” The two artists’ live duet of Elton’s Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me was a UK Number One in late 1991.

It’s a year to the day since Ozzy Osbourne left us and his widow Sharon has been talking to the BBC about her memories of him and how she wants people to remember the man.

She was being interviewed by BBC Radio WM as Birmingham holds its first Ozzy Day, to celebrate the legacy of one of its most famous sons. Sharon said she wanted people to remember him as “funny and charismatic and real… As Ozzy would say, 'when you want to remember me, just yank up the music really loud, as loud as you can get it, and just head bang.'"

"He was authentic," she remembered. "He never tried to be anything other than what he was, and he would tell you the truth about everything and that was him, you knew where you were with him.

“He was just so genuine and funny. I mean we could have the worst arguments in the world but we would end up laughing because he would say something so ridiculous that we would just crack up."

There are a whole load of events happening as part of Ozzy Day today, from guided walks to exhibitions to pop up performances of the man’s music. BBC News has all the information you need.

Talking about the celebrations in Birmingham, Sharon said: "This is the home of metal. It's Ozzy's home, it's where he was born, what he loved and [Ozzy Day] wouldn't work anywhere else. He loved this city, he loved its people. He was proud of being a Brummie and that's it."

As you probably remember, Ozzy’s death came just two weeks after the Back To The Beginning gig at Villa Park, which collected together probably the greatest ever line up of rock and metal acts to be seen in one place, as well as raising money for three charities: Cure Parkinson's, Acorns Children's Hospice and Birmingham Children's Hospital's charity.

In the BBC interview Sharon said that the charity support was "something that will go on... We will continue that until we find a cure for Parkinson's, because people don't realise it's more and more prevalent." Ozzy was, of course, diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2019.

Of Back To The Beginning, she said: "It was something my family, my grandchildren, my children will never forget. The outpouring of love and respect that was there for Ozzy, and it just meant everything."

Truly, it sounds like something from a dream. Beatles fans who were on the official Magical Mystery Tour bus around Liverpool on Monday got a whole lot more than they bargained for when, on one excursion, their bus pulled up at the traffic lights next to the one and only Paul McCartney.

Macca was in the back of a vehicle, chatting away on his phone to someone on FaceTime, and wouldn't you know it – it was Ringo Starr.

Don’t try working out the odds of that exact sequence of events happening – we'll just say that they're probably very high indeed.

Interviewed by the BBC, the driver of the Magical Mystery Tour bus, Neil Morton, described the moment as “surreal… I had pulled up at the traffic lights on Hope Street when who should I see - Sir Paul with Ringo on FaceTime.

"He waved to us and everybody took photos. The passengers could not believe it."

Needless to say, the encounter was as brief as the time the lights stayed on red. "Nobody really got chance to speak with him," said Morton, who has worked on the Magical Mystery Tour bus for two years. But those photos are proof enough for punters to explain to their family, friends and acquaintances that yes, this really did happen – they went to Liverpool and met the Beatles. (Kind of.)

That’s exactly what Breno Augusto, a Beatles fan from Portugal did. Posting on Twitter/ X afterwards, he wrote: “Imagine exploring Liverpool aboard the Magical Mystery Tour bus -(on Monday) – when, just when you least expect it, you glance at a car and see Paul McCartney inside, chatting with Ringo Starr!!!!”

McCartney was back in town to present an award to the actor Stephen Graham at the Liverpool Institute of the Performing Arts (LIPA), which he co-founded back in the 1990s.

The Magical Mystery Tour is, as you might expect from its name, a tour bus that takes tourists around all the main Beatles sites in the city – The Cavern, John and Paul’s childhood houses, Strawberry Fields, Penny Lane, the whole shebang. Any sighting of an actual Beatle is an added, completely unexpected extra...

He might be best known as a synth-pop artist, but Howard Jones was originally on a path to becoming a classical pianist.

At the insistence of his mother, Jones took lessons as a child, but in a new interview with Rock & Roll High School, he says that she also had a love of pop music. And, as he was looking for someone to inspire him, he found one artist in particular who was able to bring these two worlds together to create something truly spectacular.

“I saw the classical music as my way to get good at playing the pop and rock stuff, because Keith Emerson was my hero, and he was a brilliant concert-level classical pianist and also the best rocker you could get, for keyboards,” says Jones. “So he was an absolute hero.”

Jones’ first foray into rock music came at school when he formed a band, Warrior, writing what he describes as “complex, 20-minute, multi-sectioned pieces that were very, very difficult for the rest of the band to learn and play.”

They managed it, though, and it was the drummer from that band who gave Jones his first taste of owning a synth.

“He made me a monophonic synth from an electronics magazine kit,” he confirms. “Having seen Emerson at the Isle Of Wight Festival in 1970 playing the huge modular Moog, I'd heard how amazing synths could be in that context, and [I was looking for] any chance to get anywhere close to it. The synth he made me would go out of tune all the time, but it was a synth, and it was amazing.”

What of the ‘one-man electronic band’ concept that would eventually become a Jones trademark, though? Where did that idea come from?

“I was teaching piano, and one of my students lent me a drum machine,” he remembers. “And so I put the drum machine on top of the piano and was playing along to the terrible, like, bossa nova rhythms and stuff that you had in those days. It was very primitive, but it sparked this idea of the one-man electronic show – that I could have keyboards and the drum machine and, you know, link everything together with MIDI and triggers and little sequences, and that's what I set about doing.”

Jones would go on to have hits on both sides of the Atlantic, carving out a successful niche in the ‘80s synth-pop landscape. The influence of Emerson remained, though, notably on the synth blasts that feature in the intro to 1983 hit What Is Love?

“I think there's a lot of Keith in my work,” agrees Jones, “But yeah, you know: fanfares – that's what I think of it as. Absolutely, 100%.”

The history of music is riddled with happy accidents, idle noodlings and sonic misadventures that have helped inspire massive hits.

One that springs to mind is the drum groove that Jeff Beck started playing when Stevie Wonder left the room for a few moments at Electric Lady Studios in 1972, a groove that immediately inspired the returning Wonder to write Superstition.

Then there was The Doors’ Riders Of The Storm, which came into being when Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger were jamming on the Western tune Ghost Riders In The Sky, before slowing it down and adding some jazz elements.

Another song that was inspired by chance was Easy Lover, the 1984 hit for Philip Bailey and Phil Collins, which came into being when legendary bassist Nathan East was noodling around on the piano at Townhouse Studios in London and came up with the song’s defining riff.

A jam ensued between Bailey, Collins and East and their spontaneous collaboration produced the basis of Easy Lover.

It is a flawless slice of high energy pop-rock, featuring Bailey’s dynamic falsetto, Collins’ gritty, driving vocals and his massive gated reverb drum sound.

The song reached No 2 in the US and No 1 in the UK, Canada, Ireland and the Netherlands. Over 40 years since its release it stands as an abiding classic of the MTV era.

Easy Lover was the last song written and recorded for Chinese Wall, the debut solo album by Bailey, who along with Maurice White was one of the two lead singers with Earth, Wind & Fire, a defining soul/funk band of the ’70s and ’80s.

Bailey was noted for his dynamic four-octave range and distinctive falsetto register, which prompted Columbia Records to offer him a solo deal in 1982.

That same year, Bailey met Collins, who was by then a major solo star in his own right and was on tour in the US to promote his second solo album, Hello, I Must Be Going!

Bailey was impressed by Collins’ talents as a drummer and a singer/songwriter, and when their paths crossed the following summer in Los Angeles – when Collins was playing drums for Robert Plant on the Principle Of Moments tour – Bailey asked Collins to produce his Chinese Wall album.

Townhouse Studios in Shepherd’s Bush, London was the primary studio chosen by Collins to record Bailey’s album.

Recording began in spring 1984, after Collins had finished work on Eric Clapton’s album Behind The Sun. In an interview posted on the Cream of Clapton Band Facebook page, Nathan East recalled how the song came into being.

“That was another of those life-changing moments,” East said. “Philip Bailey called me and asked me to go to London to record his Chinese Wall album, which Phil Collins was producing. I went over there to record for two weeks. It was a great studio, right there in central London. We stayed out in the country [near] Guildford and Phil would drive us into the studio every day at about a hundred miles an hour.”

After two weeks of recording, Bailey and Collins were conscious that they had not actually co-written any songs.

“We’d gone through the whole record and we hadn’t done anything together,” recalled Collins in an interview with Drumeo.com. “So literally the last couple of days Philip said we should try to do something together. We’d done most of the hard work already so I said, ‘Sure’.”

It was East who reportedly then came up with the riff that kickstarted the jam between himself, Collins and Bailey.

“After two weeks of recording, we had the album Chinese Wall, and there were some really great songs, some were a little bit esoteric, but very cool songs, and Phil one day in the studio said, ‘Man, we still don’t have that undeniable single that the record label would instantly pick, and that’s what we need’.

“So literally I just went over to the piano and started fooling around with the riff and surprisingly, in about 20 minutes, came up with this song that almost wrote itself. I was playing the main riff on the piano, and Philip Bailey started singing the verse that he sings, and we’re fooling around with some chords and Phil Collins starts chiming in with these melodies, and we said, ‘Man, let’s put this thing down’.”

“And in about 20 minutes, we kinda came up with this tune, and we started playing it. So we said, ‘Let's make a demo tonight and then come back tomorrow and record it.’”

They quickly improvised the track, with Collins providing the signature drumbeat and vocals. As Collins and East improvised on piano, Bailey was walking around singing.

“Phil and Nathan were playing around with a riff on the piano and I was walking around singing ‘Choosey Lover’ over the piano chords,” said Bailey in an interview with Musician magazine. “We worked on it all day and put a rough version of it down on tape.”

They recorded this demo of what they had done so they wouldn’t forget it. The plan was to return the following day to record it properly.

“We literally just picked a few things out of the blue and then I went home that night and wrote the words,” said Collins in an interview with Drumeo.com.

But when they arrived back at the studio the following morning, it was clear that the demo had something special about it.

“What we ended up using was that, because it had an energy and a sound,” said Collins.

“We came back the next day to listen to the demo, and everybody liked what they heard,” recalled East.

Bailey also highlighted how good the demo they had recorded was. “We tried doing it again, but we kept the original,” he said.

“It went down really quickly,” East told AllMusic. “One of the things was because we were at the end of the session [and] I had a plane to catch on Sunday… we got the track, and the next thing was the lyrics, which Phil wrote really quickly, and the next day they went in and put their parts down, and we were all just dancing around the studio and loving what we were hearing.”

Collins recalls the recording of the album as an upbeat experience.

“It was a good album that [I have] happy memories. We used to have curries most evenings and [pints] of lager. Philip Bailey was not used to that at all.”

Easy Lover is a powerful, upbeat slice of ’80s pop that blends soul, funk and rock and on which Bailey’s soaring, nimble falsetto blends seamlessly with Collins’ grittier, driving timbre.

It’s a thrilling vocal chemistry with nifty interplay and makes for an intoxicating sound. The song is brimming with hooks and it escalates as more elements are added to the mix.

There is an infectiously catchy synth riff and underpinning it all is Collins’ powerful, driving drums, a stunningly impactful groove which powers the whole thing along and gives it real momentum and excitement.

Lyrically, it’s fairly banal, charting the perils of falling for a femme fatale, a common theme amidst ’80s pop and rock music.

“She will play around and leave you/Leave you and deceive you/ Better forget it/Oh, you’ll regret it”

But in many ways the words barely matter. It’s the sound that grabs you and at its core this is an impeccably-crafted composition, with heaps of solid hooks and strong distinct sections that keep the momentum going.

Chinese Wall was released on 18 October 1984 and received some good reviews. In a three out of five star review in Rolling Stone magazine, James Henke concluded: “This is not as funky as Earth, Wind & Fire, but it’s a hundred times more appealing.”

But as the lead single, Easy Lover, released on 6 November 1984, received overwhelmingly strong responses from critics.

It’s a massive track, driven by the stellar rhythm section of Collins and East, punchy horns, the searing guitar of Daryl Stuermer and the stunning keyboard work of Lesette Wilson.

The song just flies along, with its massive, thumping 130 bpm tempo, crashing cymbals, pristine synths and infectious bridge.

There was little surprise when Easy Lover took home the 1985 MTV Video Music Award for Best Overall Performance.

The song elevated Philip Bailey’s profile but his success was arguably overshadowed by the fact that he had allied himself to Collins, who was by then a massive international star.

On Chinese Wall, Bailey’s vocal range shines across a mix of ballads and techno-dance tracks, but the success of Easy Lover arguably overshadowed his position as a solo artist.

As William Ruhlmann of All Music put it: “It's hard to shine yourself in such a glare, and although Bailey’s name was on the gold-selling hit single Easy Lover, a duet with Collins that helped the album take off, it’s Collins’ singing and drumming that one remembers.”

The review points out that while Collins’ heavy involvement gave the record commercial viability, it turned into a “gold-selling standoff” that tied Bailey’s solo success directly to his collaborator’s stardom rather than establishing Bailey independently.

For Nathan East, the song was an important chapter in an already stellar career. He would go on to join Collins’ touring band in the early ’90s, singing Bailey’s falsetto parts for Easy Lover on stage in front of huge audiences.

Over 40 years on from its release, Easy Lover remains a high energy composition, a seamless fusion of R&B, rock and dance that still sounds incredibly fresh. And it is a song whose infectious groove and top-notch songwriting quality still endear it to legions of listeners around the globe.

A very sad update on a story we brought you last week: L7 bassist Jennifer Finch, who had been suffering from an aggressive form of brain cancer, has died, aged just 59.

The LA grunge rockers announced the news on Saturday (July 18) via Instagram, saying: “With a very heavy heart we announce that our beloved bandmate, friend, and fellow troublemaker Jennifer Finch has passed away today."

“She had a long courageous fight with brain cancer and was loved by many wonderful friends, musical peers and fans worldwide. We love you Jennifer.”

The band later posted another statement, saying: “We are shattered by the loss of our beloved bandmate, sister and friend Jennifer Finch, whose fierce spirit, humour and boundless creativity helped shape L7 and changed all of our lives forever.

“Jennifer was a true original who lived entirely on her own terms, and the impact she made on music, art and everyone lucky enough to know her cannot be measured. We love her beyond words and will carry her with us always. Rest in power our dear friend.”

The extent of Finch’s condition was only revealed last week, when the band announced that they were launching a GoFundMe campaign for her ongoing care and medical expenses. In the week the campaign was live it raised nearly $400,000.

Finch wasn’t quite a founder member of L7 – she joined in 1986, after a stint in Sugar Babydoll, a short-lived band that also featured Courtney Love and future Babes In Toyland guitarist Kat Bjelland. She stayed all through their period of greatest success, including their Bricks Are Heavy and Hungry For Stink albums, from 1992 and 1994 respectively, before leaving in 1996, citing money and health issues.

The bassist then worked as a photographer, graphic designer and digital media professional though she continued to keep her hand in with music, playing in the bands OtherStarPeople and The Shocker.

But when L7 reformed in 2014, she returned to the fold. The group recorded one more album, Scatter The Rats, in 2019, and had continued to do what heritage bands of their vintage do: tour classic albums in full, reissue their back catalogue and enjoy a less-pressured second wind.

Earlier this year, L7 had announced The Last Hurrah 2026, which they were spinning as their final North American tour. Last week the band confirmed that that would go ahead with Finch’s blessing. It will now surely double-up as a celebration of both the bassist’s life and the fondly-regarded band she played in.

A capella hit singles are a rarity in pop. In fact, you can probably count them on the fingers of one hand: The Flying Pickets’ versions of Only You and When You’re Young And In Love and The Housemartins’ Caravan Of Love.

And Tom’s Diner, an oddity that somehow became Suzanne Vega’s biggest song, as well as playing a crucial role in the development of the MP3.

More of that later, but the song dates from the early 1980s when Vega was starting as a singer-songwriter. You surely know it: based around a simple ‘do-do do do da-do do do’ refrain, Vega recites an observational tale of sitting in the titular New York cafe reading a paper and watching life go by around her. Heard the first time, it’s a striking piece that seems to freeze time.

Vega first wrote the words sometime in late 1981. Tom’s Diner is, of course, a real place. Situated on the corner of 112^th Street and Broadway on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, it’s actually Tom’s Restaurant, though ‘diner ’, as Vega has pointed out before, scans much better.

“It was really written from the point of view of my friend Brian, who is a photographer,” she explained on a 1987 interview LP, Portrait Of An Artist. “He had made a comment to me one day that he felt that as a photographer, he saw his life through a pane of glass, and always felt like he was the witness to a lot of things, but was never really involved in them.”

“So I was sitting at Tom’s Restaurant one morning, and suddenly I guess I got this weird feeling. It came over me, and I thought ‘well, if I were Brian today, how would I be perceiving these different things?’ And in a way it was supposed to be slightly humorous and not entirely to be taken seriously. And also I thought of it from a male point of view.”

“The line about the actor ‘who had died while he was drinking’ was true: William Holden’s obituary had been in that morning’s paper,” Vega told the Guardian in 2016, dating the day inspiration struck her as Wednesday 18 November 1981. “The ‘bells of the cathedral’ were those of St John the Divine up the street, though I made up the bit about the woman ‘fixing her stockings'.”.

The melody came to Vega as she was walking down Broadway. “I wanted something jaunty,” she wrote in a New York Times essay in 2008. “I remember liking the near rhymes of ‘diner’ and ‘corner’, ‘sitting’ and ‘waiting’. I was imagining it as a kind of French film soundtrack, something vaudevillian on piano, like a background to a Truffaut film.

"But I didn’t play piano and didn’t know anybody who did. So I kept it a cappella, and began to sing it this way in my live show. This detail, singing the song alone with no accompaniment, affected everything to come.”

At her live shows, Vega noticed that if she started singing the song unaccompanied, people would immediately stop talking and pay attention. “So I used it as an opening song. I can’t think of a single time that this didn’t work. Even at the Prince’s Trust concert in 1986, in front of 10,000 people, I went onstage as the opening act and began the entire concert with that song - and it worked!”

By that point, Tom’s Diner had already been released once, in the January 1984 edition of Fast Folk Musical Magazine, a kind of audio mag that showcased the best of up-and-coming singer-songwriters of the folk/ acoustic persuasion. The exposure led to her being signed by A&M later that year.

Vega released her self-titled debut album in 1985. Both a critical and word-of-mouth success, it spawned a pair of UK hit singles – Marlene On The Wall and Left Of Center. Tom’s Diner eventually emerged on the following album, 1987’s Solitude Standing. Indeed, it appears twice, once as the opener and again in reprised form at the end. There was enough interest in the track for it to be chosen as the second single, though it was only a minor hit, reaching Number 58 in the UK charts in the summer of 1987.

And there the track might have remained, as a curio from a well-regarded album, were it not for Nick Batt and Neal Slateford. The Bath-based pair were at that point just another team of bedroom producers exploring the possibilities opened up by the then-new sampling technologies. Speaking to the Guardian in 2016, Batt remembers the genesis of their idea.

“Neal brought in Suzanne’s song and said: ‘I reckon we can stick a beat under this.’ I came up with a bassline, strings, a bit of piano. In those days, it was impossible to get a whole song into a sampler, so we spent evenings and weekends cutting Suzanne’s vocals into little bits.”

“We sent it to a mate who was a rep in London, and he took it around the shops. I went away for the weekend and came back to a phone full of messages. Everyone was talking about the track. Radio 1 even broke its policy of not playing bootlegs, which is all it was at that point.”

On the other side of the Atlantic, Vega was promoting her third album Days Of Open Hand. It wasn’t going well. Reviews had been mixed and audiences had visibly dwindled. Writing in the NYT, she remembers: “We were backstage at the Arsenio Hall show when my manager told me that some boys calling themselves DNA, in England - Bath, to be specific - had taken Tom’s Diner and put a dance track to it. They had ‘re-mixed’ it.

My manager, Ron Fierstein, told me that A&M and Polygram were considering taking legal action against them for copyright violation.”

But Vega listened to the bootleg, which at that stage still had the title of ‘Oh Susanne’ and found, to her surprise, she rather liked it. “It made me laugh. It wasn’t a parody, which is what I was afraid of. The song is the same, my voice is still my voice, the story still the story, even though they left out the very end (they told me later they thought it sounded weird, musically, to keep the ending).”

“It was so obvious that these boys were not slick hi-fi wizards, as the sound was boomy and the arrangement repetitive, but the raw energy of the idea jumped out right away. These were not boys with means and money, and I liked it that I had kindled their imagination.”

Vega and her management arranged a meeting with DNA, where she discovered – again, to her surprise - that they were white middle-class boys rather than the cool urban dudes she was expecting. A deal was worked out whereby Vega retained the rights in return for DNA being paid a flat fee. The track was released as ‘Tom’s Diner by DNA featuring Suzanne Vega’.

Both parties assumed that the track would be an underground hit at best. But bolstered by daytime Radio 1 play, the new version of Tom’s Diner reached Number Two in the UK, was a Top Ten hit all over Europe and even reached Number Five on Billboard, a rare feat for the British dance record in 1990.

But the success of the DNA remix didn’t seem to assuage appetite for the track. The number of covers, versions and interpolations of Tom’s Diner began multiplying exponentially from then on. Vega even compiled them onto an album called, inevitably, Tom’s Album, in 1991. “It was a logistical nightmare to administrate,” she admitted in 2008. “I had to go back to all the people who had taken the song without permission, and ask their permission... to use their version of my song!”

Since then it’s been covered by Giorgio Moroder and Britney Spears and REM and been sampled or interpolated by acts as varied as Public Enemy, Fallout Boy, Tupac Shakur and Lil’ Kim. According to Spotify, as of 2023, there have been over 50 different versions of the song. It’s probably an underestimate.

But this song’s shaggy dog tale doesn’t even end there. Tom’s Diner played a not-insignificant role in the development of the MP3. In the early 1990s, the German electrical engineer Karlheinz Brandenburg was working on the design of the file, especially the tricky problem of compressing an unaccompanied human voice. “I was ready to fine-tune my compression algorithm," Brandenburg told Business 2.0 Magazine in 2000. “Somewhere down the corridor a radio was playing Tom's Diner. I was electrified. I knew it would be nearly impossible to compress this warm a capella voice.”

Indeed, when compressed, Vega’s voice sounded hopelessly distorted. Brandenburg decided that going forward he’d use the track as a measure of how much progress he was making to perfect the compression process.

He calculated that he’d listened to Tom’s Diner “thousands” of times before he was satisfied that he’d cracked the problem. Among audio engineers, and later by sheer repetition, Vega has ended up being dubbed ‘the mother of the MP3’.

It’s a title she clearly looks on with wry amusement. In 2007 Vega met Brandenburg and his team at the Fraunhofer Institute in Erlangen, Germany, a meeting that was flagged up by the press as ‘the mother of the MP3 comes to the home of the MP3’.

Writing in 2008, she recalled: “We had a press conference at which they played me the original version of Tom’s Diner, then the various distortions of the MP3 as it had been, which sounded monstrous and weird. Then, finally, the ‘clean’ version of Tom’s Diner.”

“The panel beamed at me. ‘See?’ one man said. ‘Now the MP3 recreates it perfectly. Exactly the same!’”

When she suggested that the original has more warmth and bottom end, “The man looked shocked. ‘No, Miss Vega, it is exactly the same.’”

She held her ground. “’Everybody knows that an MP3 compresses the sound and therefore loses some of the warmth,’ I persisted. ‘That’s why some people collect vinyl…’ I suddenly caught myself, realising who I was speaking to in front of a roomful of German media.”

The man insisted. “’No, Miss Vega. Consider the Black Box theory!’”

Vega stared back blankly.

“’What goes into the Black Box remains unchanged! Whatever goes in comes out the same way! Nothing is left behind and nothing is added!’”

At which point, the woman who started it all, who on a cold autumn Manhattan day all those years ago wrote down those words that have led to so many different versions and interpretations and indeed shaped how we listen to music today, politely backed down.

Clearly, on this occasion, discretion was the better part of valour.

He might be pretty long in the studio recording tooth, but Mick Jagger admits that, during the making of new Rolling Stones album, Foreign Tongues, he didn’t see the point in going old-school and recording to tape rather than digitally.

The issue was raised when producer Andrew Watt suggested going analogue for one song in particular – a cover of an old Chuck Berry record. “We haven’t used tape for ages, but Andy wanted to use tape for Beautiful Delilah,” Jagger tells Billboard. “I said, ‘What does it matter? If someone listens to it on their phone, they don’t know it was cut on tape — it doesn’t make any difference.’”

Watt got his way, though: “We cut it on tape and we did it live,” says Jagger. “That was old style.”

Jagger’s fellow Stone Ronnie Wood also had a few words to say about Watt, all of which were complimentary. “He’s a great guitarist. He can play my parts better than I can,” he quipped.

Elsewhere, Jagger raised the possibility of the Stones releasing more music that features Charlie Watts, their late drummer. “We had a good track with Charlie [Hit Me in the Head, which is featured on Foreign Tongues] and we’ve got other tracks with Charlie. I keep reading this is Charlie’s final appearance – well, we’ve got other tracks with Charlie.”

Jagger also offered his thoughts on Gen-Z superstar Olivia Rodrigo, an artist who’s already received great notices from many of his peers. He was asked specifically about Rodrigo’s ability to make rock music, a genre that she’s explored extensively across her three-album discography.

“She’s really good at it,” he says. “Everyone thought she was a different kind of singer, but there’s quite a few female singers that have made that transition. It’s not a permanent transition necessarily, but the ability to change styles from what you think their original girly pop stuff is – it’s kind of interesting.”

To be fair to Rodrigo, she hasn’t so much ‘transitioned’ to a rock sound as specialised in it. Yes, her breakthrough hit (Drivers License) was a ballad, but right from the outset, she’s married heavy guitars to her pop sensibilities, and shared the stage with the likes of Weezer, No Doubt, David Byrne, Sheryl Crow and Billy Joel.

She’s also performed and recorded with The Cure’s Robert Smith, and has spoken of being a huge White Stripes fan when she was growing up (and yes: Jack White is a friend of hers, too).

Lorde has taken Spotify to task over its new ‘About the Song’ feature, which scrapes third-party sources to provide information on the music that’s currently playing.

The feature was announced last year, and is now available in beta, but Lorde has issues with both its accuracy and the concept in general.

Posting on her Instagram story, she users the example of the About the Song info for Current Affairs, a track from her 2025 album, Ultrasound. The overview says: “On her Ultrasound world tour, Lorde turns Current Affairs into a full-on performance piece, stripping down to underwear while a dancer pours water over her stomach so the song plays out like the shower scene she talks about on stage.”

The information is attributed to a review of a show from the Ultrasound tour that took place in Brisbane, but is apparently incorrect. It was published on Australian website The Music.

“Hey Spotify, I’m going to go out on a limb and say we don’t want this,” writes Lorde. “Not only is this inaccurate (not the song I did that in), but reducing a song to an AI-generated meaning right at the source feels like it limits free interpretation imo. At least make it possible for artists to opt out please.”

Spotify has since confirmed to the Hollywood Reporter that the offending text has now been removed, but About the Song information from other sources remains.

Responding to Lorde’s concerns about the feature, a Spotify spokesperson said: “About the Song is a beta feature that presents cited information from third-party sources. We’re continuing to improve it based on feedback from artists and fans.”

About the Song was announced at the same time that Spotify confirmed it was expanding its song credits to include all the listed contributors to a track. It's also been rolling out SongDNA, new interactive view that enables you to join the dots between different songs, showing collaborators, samples, and covers all in one place.

Few singer-songwriters have been quite so respected and revered by their peers as Joni Mitchell.

David Crosby called Mitchell “unquestionably the best of us” and recalled that during their brief relationship during the ’60s, he would sometimes play her one of his new songs only for Mitchell to come back with three of her own she had written the night before that were infinitely superior to his.

“She is arguably the best singer-songwriter of our time,” he told Howard Stern in an interview in 2021.

Like all the greatest artists, Mitchell has always been a restless creative spirit, perpetually moving forward creatively and searching for something new, challenging and innovative.

Such was the case in early 1976, when she embarked on her eighth studio album Hejira, a graceful and supple masterpiece and her most jazz-orientated album up to that point, which also encompassed elements of folk, rock and ambient music.

It’s an intoxicating mix, as exemplified on Coyote, the opening track and the sole single from album, which features the seductive rhythms and stunning interplay between Mitchell’s percussive acoustic guitar and the mesmerising fretless bass lines and ringing harmonics of Jaco Pastorius.

Above it all, Mitchell’s voice soars, with brilliantly skewed phrasing, complex rhythmic syncopation and rapid-fire half-spoken delivery that all meld into one glorious unique whole.

Inspired by Mitchell’s whirlwind relationship with playwright and actor Sam Shepard, Coyote is exhilarating, cathartic, seductive and intense.

50 years on from its release, the song stands as one of the high points of Mitchell’s rich back catalogue.

She wrote Coyote soon after joining Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour in late 1975, a hedonistic and often chaotic two-leg 57-date concert tour featuring numerous musicians, artists and collaborators. Mitchell played 19 performances in total across 16 cities in the US and Canada.

“Everybody took all of their vices to the nth degree and came out of it born again or into AA,” she said in Timothy White’s 1990 book Rock Lives.

Dylan had hired playwright and actor Sam Shepard as screenwriter for a proposed film of the tour, which was released as Renaldo And Clara in 1978.

Shepard was a relatively obscure cult figure at the time, but was closely associated with several figures within Dylan’s circle.

In biographer David Yaffe’s 2017 book Reckless Daughter, Mitchell notes that she “had a flirtation” with Shepard.

“It was like we were twins,” said Mitchell, who said she was drawn to Shepard’s multi-talented abilities and used elements of his creative approach to help create the song Coyote. “I was forming sentences like he would’ve,” Mitchell explained. “Everything was creating an aversion. But for me, on coke, I found him very attractive.”

The relationship was made more tempestuous by the fact that Shepard was already married and was also in a relationship with his tour manager Chris O’Dell. “Now he’s got a woman at home,” sings Mitchell, “He’s got another woman down the hall/He seems to want me anyway.”

In her 2009 fly-on-the-wall memoir Miss O’Dell, co-authored with Katherine Ketcham, O’Dell referenced the song Coyote and Mitchell’s lyrics about Shepard.

“I loved the lines Joni wrote about how we licked our wounds and took temporary lovers, using ‘pills and powders’ to get us through the drama,” wrote O’Dell.
Mitchell found the intense, freewheeling environment of the Rolling Thunder Revue tour exhilarating and hit a real creative peak.

In the 2019 documentary Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese, there is a clip of Mitchell performing Coyote in the living room of Gordon Lightfoot’s house in Toronto on 1 December 1975, while Roger McGuinn and Bob Dylan accompany her on acoustics.

“Joni wrote this song about this tour and on this tour and for this tour,” says McGuinn excitedly as he leans over in front of Mitchell to speak into the recording mic.

Mitchell looks urbane and sophisticated, wearing a black beret, droopy silver earrings, black jacket and a blue silk shirt. Dylan sits strumming, looking at the deft chords Mitchell is playing. He is wearing a big fur hat. His face is impassive.

Mitchell, by contrast, is clearly enthused and excited. As she settles into the pacy percussive guitar rhythm of the intro to Coyote, she looks at Dylan and mouths the chords, just before she lurches into the first verse.

“No regrets coyote/We just come from such different sets of circumstance/I'm up all night in the studios/And you're up early on your ranch…”

There’s a compelling intensity and urgency to Mitchell’s tearaway rhythms, complex rapid-fire lyrical phrasings and the stream-of-consciousness lyrics. It’s as if the words and ideas are flowing out so profoundly that she can barely capture them in time.

The scenario in Lightfoot’s living room is an intriguing one. Mitchell tears through the brilliant new composition while Dylan sits there, essentially reduced to playing rhythm guitar.

“The look in Dylan’s eyes confirms what we all knew,” wrote Jenn Pelly in a review of Hejira in Pitchfork in 2022, “that at this moment Mitchell is the towering genius.”

Shepard of course is the titular coyote in the song, portrayed as a womanising cowboy, pursuing Mitchell, “a prisoner of the white lines on the freeway”.

The speed of the narrative echoes the brevity and intensity of the relationship between Mitchell and Shepard. Mitchell described it as a flirtation, but the lyrics are salacious. In her 2019 book Joni Mitchell: New Critical Readings, author Ruth Charnock describes the song as “either the most flirtatious song about fucking or the most graphic song about flirting ever written”.

In her piece on Hejira in Pitchfork, Jenn Pelly describes Mitchell as an avant-gardist among rock’n’roll people. It’s an astute observation. “Mitchell,” wrote Pelly, “inhabited that slippery space unique to those ahead of the times.”

Mitchell recorded Coyote in 1976 during the sessions for Hejira at A&M Studios in Hollywood. But the song would soon undergo a profound change.

Ever since Mitchell recorded her album The Hissing Of Summer Lawns (1975) she had grown increasingly frustrated by the limitations of rock-based session players.

“There were grace notes and subtleties and things that I thought were getting kind of buried,” she said in Sheila Weller’s 2008 book Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon – And The Journey Of A Generation.

She was reportedly dissatisfied with what she called the “dead, distant bass sound” of the ‘60s and early ’70s and found it frustrating that bass players she worked with always had to play the root note on ‘the one’, emphasising the first beat of every bar.

Session musicians advised her to seek out jazz players instead, and in late 1975 guitarist Robben Ford played her an advance copy of the debut album by bass virtuoso Jaco Pastorius, a prodigious 24-yr-old bass player from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who had recently joined seminal jazz fusion band Weather Report.

Pastorius was everything Mitchell was looking for in a bass player and much more. Fluid, fearless, mercurial, tempestuous and – crucially – he rarely played on the ‘one’.

Like Mitchell, Pastorius considered himself a painter first and a musician second. But that didn’t stop him introducing himself as “the best bass player in the world”.

Impressed, Mitchell asked Pastorius to overdub the bass parts on four tracks on Hejira, including Coyote.

The impact was immediate and transformative. Pastorius completely redefined the role of the bass in Coyote, adding what is essentially a second melodic voice. Long glissandos, subtle vibrato and vocal-like phrasing imbued the song with a whole new depth and texture.

His fluid fretless bass lines and harmonics elevated the song, creating a unique interplay with Mitchell’s driving, percussive acoustic guitar.

While Pastorius introduced counter melodies he also instinctively recognised the need to simplify when Mitchell’s playing became rhythmically complex and dense.

Along with percussionist Bobbye Hall, Pastorius’s playing introduced a mesmerising groove that became a signature of the Hejira album. Mitchell called Pastorius the bassist of her dreams and his playing helped liberate her music.

In 1987 Mitchell recalled to Musician magazine: “There was a time when Jaco and I first worked together when there was nobody I’d rather hang with than him. There was an appreciation, a joie de vivre, a spontaneity.”

Coyote was released as the lead single off Hejira in February 1977 on Asylum Records. When she returned to touring it would become a staple of her live set.

On 25 November 1976, Mitchell performed the song with The Band at their Last Waltz farewell concert at the Winter Ballroom in San Francisco, an event immortalised in Martin Scorsese’s landmark film of the event, which was released along with the triple album soundtrack in April 1978.

The Band had very little time to rehearse for the show and Mitchell famously uses complex non-standard guitar tunings. The Band’s musical director for the concert, John Simon, recalled that they had to stare intently at her left hand shapes during the rehearsals to try and work out exactly what chords she was playing.

The Band were still largely winging it when Mitchell strode onto the stage, kissed a rather startled Robbie Robertson on the cheek, tuned her Martin D-28 guitar and launched into the propulsive acoustic intro for Coyote.

Bassist Rick Danko’s style was light years away from Pastorius’s but the instinctive playing of Danko, Robertson, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson ensured that the rendition of Coyote had a feel and intensity all its own.

In his 2016 memoir, Testimony, Robbie Robertson recalled being deeply impressed by Mitchell’s stage presence and her performance of Coyote that Thanksgiving Day evening, back in 1976.

“Joni’s songs might have been the most challenging of the night, with their syncopation and chord structures that kept you on your toes,” remembered Robertson. “but we sailed through that one like a cool breeze”.

Before making the leap from classical piano to hip-hop production, Grammy-nominated songwriter Rogét Chahayed found his way into Dr Dre's orbit, where long days in the studio taught him to think less like a virtuoso and more like a hit-maker.

Chahayed's apprenticeship with Dre would eventually lead to credits on some of the biggest songs of the past decade, from Travis Scott's Sicko Mode to Drake's recent chart-topper Janice STFU.

Long before those successes, however, Chahayed experienced the harsh reality of the music business while working on sessions intended for Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly LP.

Having unwittingly signed away his publishing rights, he ultimately saw his contributions released without receiving an official credit. More than a decade later, Chahayed reminisces on how the experience shaped both his career and his view of an industry that, despite its continual evolutions, still operates like the "Wild West”.

The story began during a break from working with Dre, when Chahayed found himself bouncing between studios across Los Angeles in search of his next project. “The Kendrick Lamar album was something I worked on, but didn't know I was working on because I wasn’t credited.

“Around the time I was working with Dre, there was a break period where I was going to studios trying to find different opportunities and ended up working with a producer in LA who was really connected to music and fashion. Anyone who knew anyone was saying, ‘Oh, you got to go work with this guy; he's always doing cool stuff.’

“So we’re in there making beats, which were supposed to be for Kendrick, and had a crazy time discovering all these insane samples and playing them over very strange acid jazz-type things, but we didn’t understand publishing and signed away our rights to get some cash. We thought, just give us a few thousand bucks each and if we do this every week we'll be rich. Then about a year and a half later, To Pimp a Butterfly came out and sure enough two of our songs were on there.”

Looking back, Chahayed describes his involvement with Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly as an early lesson in how unforgiving the music business can be. “I love speaking about this situation, because it's a great lesson for people who want to get into the music business. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who still operate with the old mindset and rules whereby if a guy plays keys, just pay him 50 bucks and get him out of there.

“I did a podcast recently and a lot of people were bashing me because I said I’d got robbed even though it was my choice to sign the paperwork. It's not just about the money - I don't care about that or the publishing, I just wanted my name on there because it was my work and my contribution. I never pursued any kind of legal action - I just kept my head down and a lot of blessings came out of that, honestly.”

On apportioning blame, Chahayed continues: “I definitely don't blame Kendrick because, for the most part, artists are unaware of most of the things that are going on. I blame the system and whoever was in charge of executive producing the album, because somebody else took credit for my keyboards on those two songs and my friend's guitar work.”

They say Los Angeles is a small town disguised as a big city, and Chahayed would eventually come face-to-face with the person he says took credit for his work during a chance encounter at Guitar Center.

“I approached him very cool, told him which studio I’d worked at and who with, and just said: ‘You know I worked on those songs.’ It was kind of awkward, but at the end of the day no one cares about the full story. In those situations, there’s not much you can do except keep working and find your way back.”

More than a decade on from the experience, Chahayed believes the industry has changed in many ways - but when it comes to getting recognised for your work, the same issues remain.

“As far as the music business goes, unfortunately, you have to do a lot to get the respect of others and people won't even look at you until you’ve had a big song. You’ve got to keep proving yourself, putting numbers in the charts and maintain that success. It’s like a battle!

“Even today, certain people won't respond or get back to me about business, and if I don't remind anybody I won't get paid. It’s still very much like the Wild West, so the most important aspect of my career was to find friends and people I know I can trust to call into a project.”

Despite the disappointment, Chahayed insists the experience ultimately opened more doors than it closed. “The situation helped me a lot, because I ended up meeting my manager after posting about my work on the album.

“Greg Katz loved the work I was doing and introduced me to people like Imad Royal, who’s an incredible producer that brought me into Shangri-La Studios to work with DRAM. A few weeks later we made the track Broccoli and I let life do its thing.”

When, earlier this year, Questlove was asked by Rolling Stone to rank his 100 top Prince songs, his number one was a track that a lot of people have probably never even heard.

We’re talking about the Special Dance Mix of Little Red Corvette, a song that originally appeared on Prince’s 1999 album, from 1992, but was released as a single the following year. It gave Prince his first Billboard US Top 10 hit, but for Questlove, it was the extended, eight and a half minute version that really hit the spot.

The Roots’ drummer has now expanded on just why he loves the song so much in the Song Exploder podcast, revealing that, when he first heard the 1999 album – a record that he had to keep hidden from his mother because she disapproved of Prince and his music (Questlove says that he ended up buying it “about six times” over multiple years because it kept being discovered and confiscated) – Little Red Corvette didn’t really make much of an impression on him.

“1999 is a triple record, and the highlights of 1999 to me happen on like side three and side four, in which all the experimental filler stuff was,” says Questlove. “Because, like Stevie Wonder, like Earth Wind and Fire, a sign of a true artist is where your filler is. I never listened or looked for the hits. That's for mere mortals and laymen. Even at 11, I knew that. So I wasn't focused on like the Captain Obvious single, you know?”

All that changed when, in April 1983, Questlove was in his basement practising drums.

“Little Red Corvette comes on. It was on the radio, and of course, I know the song, I'm gonna turn it off. But I was like, ‘Wait a minute, I don't remember the kick drum being that loud,’ and so something's instantly different. I'm like, ‘I think the album version there's less kick drum or it's lower, but here it's like louder and more, like.. oh, I'm bopping my head a little bit.’ So I'm playing along with it, and then somewhere at, like the two minute mark, there's a part of the song I don't know, there's a breakdown.”

As the young Questlove (or Ahmir Khalib Thompson, as he was known then) had noticed, there is indeed “a breakdown in the song in which [Prince is] individually playing each part that you would otherwise miss in the regular version of the song.” But, in terms of impact, that was nothing compared to what happens later on.

“At the five minute 18 second part of the song, Prince transforms this song, and at the time, I didn't realise what he was doing,” says Questlove. “I dropped my drumsticks and was like, ‘What the hell is happening? This is not the Little Red Corvette that I know. He's singing Little Red Corvette, but the music is different,’ and I couldn't quite fathom it.”

Now, of course, he can: “At that five minute and 18 second part of Little Red Corvette when he yells, ‘The ride is so smooth, you must be a limousine,’ he changes the bassline, and he goes to the relative minor, which is B flat, and then it becomes the funkiest thing ever. I never knew that, for every song that exists, you can facelift it and give it a new key, like plastic surgery.”

Questlove argues that this was Prince telling his black audience that, even though he’d scored his first big crossover hit – with a song in a major key – he hadn’t sold out.

“He already had his pop success with white people, but not to be outdone, he wants to remind black people, ‘I'm still black, and here's the proof.’”

What’s more, Questlove says that, on top of blowing his mind, it also opened it: “When I heard that, my mind exploded because I thought I knew how music worked. And wow – now I'm listening to every song to see ‘What's the counterbalance to that song? Like, what's the the relative major or the relative minor of that song?’ Now it's just endless possibilities.”

It’s a trick that Prince would use on other 12-inch remixes – check out the Raspberry Beret extended version – and is one that’s informed Questlove’s own songwriting and musical choices, including when The Roots were working on their debut album with producer Scott Storch.

“When we would have jam sessions, I would always yell to Scott, ‘Scott, play the relative minor of that,’ and he had to figure it out and move this chord, and then he'd do it, and then be like, "Whoa, oh my God! That's the song!”

Another David Bowie archive release is on its way – this time from the very early days of his career.

The material in question dates from 1965, when he was still known as Davie Jones (he’d adopt the stage name Bowie the following year when the Monkees – with their own Davy Jones – first emerged). It comprises tracks he recorded with Shel Talmy, the producer best known for his work with The Kinks and The Who.

The recordings also feature a young Jimmy Page, who was at that time an up-and-coming 21-year-old session guitarist. Page wasn't exactly impressed by the material Bowie had at the time.

Interviewed by the Daily Telegraph in 2010, Bob Solly, the keyboard player in Bowie's then backing band The Manish Boys, remembered: "We had a two-hour slot at the recording studio and did two cuts each of Pity the Fool and one of David's own songs, Take My Tip. It was the first time David committed a self-composed song to wax. At the end of the session Jimmy said, referring to Pity the Fool, 'Well, it's definitely not going to be a hit.' And he was right."

The producer was one of the few who had confidence in Bowie back then. Interviewed in 2017, Talmy (who died in 2024) said of Bowie: “I thought he absolutely was going to make it. The only unfortunate thing is that he and I were about six years ahead of the market.”

Talmy and Bowie first met in late 1964. After his success with The Kinks, Talmy was looking to develop new talent and signed Bowie and his then-backing band The Manish Boys. Aside from Page, Talmy also brought in Nicky Hopkins on keyboards, whilst the engineer on the sessions would also go on to greater things: an eager young 23-year-old named Glyn Johns.

Bowie would return to this era of music not once but twice during his long career. The 1973 covers album Pin Ups features a number of songs that Talmy had originally produced, including versions of The Who’s I Can’t Explain and Anyway Anyhow Anywhere and Where Have All The Good Times Gone by The Kinks. Around the time of the millennium, Bowie would re-record some of his 1964-1965 songs for the Toy album, which was eventually released posthumously in 2021.

The album, The Shel Talmy Recordings, comes out on September 18 in the usual variety of formats. It includes sleevenotes by the music historian Alec Palao, who says of the tracks: “This collection, a primary chapter if not the very earliest instalment in David’s musical journey, deserves legitimate consideration.”

“The sounds here should not be judged by the standards of his later career, but by the standards of what was happening in Britain at that precise point in time. In which case, they speak as loudly of the excitement of London and its music scene in that pivotal year of 1965 as they do for the launch of its brightest future star.”

As a songwriter, producer and musician, Ian Kirkpatrick has worked with some of the biggest names in pop – Dua Lipa, Sabrina Carpenter and Selena Gomez, for example – and, in a new interview with Antares, creator of AutoTune, he’s been offering us some insight into how important the famous pitch-correcting software is to his process.

In fact, says Kirkpatrick, “If I didn’t have AutoTune, I probably wouldn’t have a career to be honest, because I'm very impatient. I certainly would have less hits.”

Quite an admission to make, but he says that the software’s biggest benefit for him is that it enables him to work at speed and use vocal takes that would otherwise need to be re-recorded.

“The reason I use AutoTune is for efficiency – for help in sessions when I'm writing songs, to make things go quicker, and to take some of the pressure off of the vocalist,” says Kirkpatrick. He adds that this is particularly important when he’s working with a major-league pop star such as Dua Lipa, whose time with him can be limited.

“Sometimes the artist might not have all day and we need to get takes,” says Kirkpatrick. “You know, even at the level of Dua Lipa, she's only available the day we write the song. There's a song called Pretty Please [from Lipa’s 2020 album, Future Nostalgia] where the vocal on it is the vocal we recorded on the day of [writing the song] on an SM7 [Shure microphone], realtime AutoTune, on the couch, and it just ended up – literally, I didn't take it past [AutoTune] EFX. I just left it on the track and that was it.”

Of course, purists might argue that re-recording would be the preferable option, but Kirkpatrick suggests that, in doing that, you might lose something else. AutoTune, he says, “lets me use takes that might sound a little more honest in delivery even though the pitch wasn't a priority. The pitch might be a few cents off, but like, enough to distract a listener from the message and a waste of a take if I couldn't fix that, you know, and AutoTune just helps me do that.”

Billy Joel had his breakthrough hit in 1977 with a ballad that was hailed as a classic by one of his heroes, Paul McCartney. But as Joel reveals, he never believed in this song until another famous singer told him he would be crazy if he didn’t record it.

That song is Just The Way You Are, and Joel tells its story in a new interview with Rick Beato.

Joel struggled for hits in the early stages of his career. After his 1973 single Piano Man reached No 25 on the Billboard Hot 100, his record sales slowed to the point where – alarmingly – his fourth album, Turnstiles, peaked at No 132 on the Billboard 200 in 1976.

But his fifth album, The Stranger, was a runaway success, and Just The Way You Are was the song that made it happen.

As Joel tells Beato: “The first really big hit I had was a song called Just The Way You Are, which was a ballad. It’s a nice soft ballad, a love song.”

But he admits: “I didn’t even want to put it on the album because I thought it was too mushy. And then we were in the studio. Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow were in the studio, and we played the song for them.

“I said, ‘I don’t like this song that much.’ Linda Ronstadt goes, ‘Are you out of your mind? That’s a hit record. You got to put that on the album. That’s a great song.’ ‘Really?’ She talked me into it. So I have to thank Linda Ronstadt for that song.”

Just The Way You Are reached No 3 in the US, No 19 in the UK and was a top 10 hit in Australia, Ireland, Canada and New Zealand.

The parent album, The Stranger, was Joel’s first with producer Phil Ramone.

The saxophone solo in Just The Way You Are was played by jazz musician Phil Woods, but Joel says that it was Phil Ramone’s editing skills that really made that solo what it is.

Joel tells Beato: “Phil Ramone concocted that solo. It was six takes by by Phil Woods, and Phil [Ramone] figured out how to splice, cut it up, and splice them together.

“I was there when he was doing the cutting and the splicing, and I was scared to death. I said, ‘What are you doing? You’re going to cut that?’ He goes, ‘Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.’ He had a razor blade and he cut the tape.”

Just The Way You Are was covered in 1978 by soul music legend Barry White.

In addition, Paul McCartney has stated that Just The Way You Are is one of the few songs he wished he had written.

Joel says of McCartney’s comment: “That blew me away. I mean, he’s like the melodic king. He he can do no wrong with melody, Paul. His melodic sense is incredible.”

Joel also tells Beato of the song in which he was directly and consciously influenced by John Lennon. The song is Laura, from his 1982 album the Nylon Curtain, and it was written shortly after Lennon’s death in 1980.

“I even wrote a song trying to sound like John Lennon called Laura,” Joel says. “The vocal delivery was very much like John.

“He had been shot just recently when I was writing that song. I started singing it, and I and it sounded to me like John Lennon, but I was channeling him. And my producer Phil Ramone says, ‘You know, you sound an awful lot like John Lennon.’ I said, ‘You know what? It feels right to me.’ I was trying to channel John.”

Mike D’s debut solo album arrives in August and ahead of it, the ex-Beastie Boy has sat down for an extended interview with Louis Theroux on the famed documentarian’s podcast.

Theroux – a long-time fan of the band – digs deep into the Beasties’ history and asks D about the fallout between the group of Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons. The two parties parted company after the success of the trio's debut album Licensed To Ill, amid allegations of withheld royalties and financial mismanagement (which, it should be pointed out, Simmons still disputes).

The fallout with Simmons didn’t just revolve around money, according to D. “He wanted us to immediately make another record [after Licensed To Ill] and he would've wanted us to make Licensed to Ill part II, right?”

“He didn't see any, sort of, long-term future either in us or us as a group. For him it was about immediate return on investment, and he was very honest about it. He didn't think rap music was ever going to turn into catalogue music. Which it has. But at that time, when it was being made, for him, that wasn't a possibility at all.”

It’s hard to remember now, but the ironic humour of the band circa Licensed To Ill went way over the heads of many at the time. “I would watch things about The Beatles, and they would talk about their relationship with Peter Sellers,” remembers D. “The Goon Show and that was very formative for them. And for us, we grew up on these very ‘fratty’ comedies, like these comedies that were being made in Hollywood sort of post Saturday Night Live. With Chevy Chase and Bill Murray.

“It starts to feel different once you put that out in the world and people think, ‘Oh, you actually are this.’ And then you realise, hold on, this was not the intention, it does not feel good in your own skin and thankfully we had each other and we could sort of all realise that together.”

At this point, Theroux brings up the hydraulic penis was that a part of the Licensed To Ill stage show (yes there was one – look it up on Google). “I remember the three of us thinking that it was an absolute stroke of genius that we'd just come up with the most idiotic idea ever,” says D. “It's one of those things where something is so absurd, it just feels great. Then there's the moment when that sort of thing becomes part of your reality. Then it's like, ‘Oh my God, what did we create?’"

Anyway, it’s an interesting chat. And that solo album? Thank You is out on August 28.

You certainly can’t accuse Mick Jagger of not promoting the Stones’ new album, Foreign Tongues. In addition to doing interviews with the New York Times and many major music and news outlets, the 82-year-old frontman has also done an hour-long sitdown with Conan O’Brien on his Needs A Friend podcast.

So what did we find out? Well, Jagger never met Elvis. How come? Because John Lennon convinced him not to bother.

This tale dates back to August 1965 when the Beatles stopped by to meet Elvis during their second American tour. It was, by all accounts, an awkward encounter, and one that Lennon found unsatisfactory. “Elvis – what a total anti-climax HE was,” he later told the NME. “Either he was on pills or dope... whatever it was, he was totally uninterested and uncommunicative.”

Lennon related his disappointment to his friend, Jagger: “I remember John telling me [gives passable Lennon impersonation] ‘yeah, you should never meet your heroes. I would never meet Elvis, Mick, if I were you.’

“So I didn't. I took John's advice. It was really stupid of me, really. I'd have loved to have met Elvis! Why’d I take John's advice? It put me off. I wanted to keep my Elvis to myself, my version of Elvis. I didn't want my version of Elvis shattered like John's was, but maybe my Elvis version would have been different.”

Later on, Jagger remembers another of his friendship/ rivalries, with David Bowie. “Yeah, we were competitive,” the singer recalled. “David was SO competitive, much more competitive. I was made competitive by David. I mean, had to be.”

“When he was doing like Jean Genie, he was very Stones-y, you know? That was a very Stones-y period. So he would come over and play me, Jean Genie, you know,” Jagger told O'Brien before slipping into character as Bowie: “‘I've got it, you want to listen?’ Yeah, of course. I said, 'God, you’ve nicked all my things.' ‘Yeah, I know, man. I know. It's like a homage to you.’”

O’Brien also asks Jagger about the recent story where he was spotted in an Oxford pub performing a turn at a folk evening. “Yes, I had dinner at an Oxford College. Very interesting people, very pleasant. And then one of the students that I was talking with said, ‘I play mandolin. I'm going down the road to play with an Irish band. So do you want to come?’ So I said, ‘sure.’”

Starting to chuckle, he continued: “So I took a couple of people that I was with and the provost of the college. It was a very small pub, very friendly people. And the band was doing fiddle pieces and the guy joined in with his mandolin. But no one was singing.

“So I thought, oh well, here's an opening. So I did a song that I'd actually recorded. And then I had to rehearse it just mentally because I hadn't sung it in years. And I remembered at least three verses. But it was fun.”

With both Phil Collins and Oasis set to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame later this year, the former Genesis frontman has been reflecting on his somewhat rocky relationship with the Gallagher brothers, and the potential for an awkward meeting with them at the ceremony.

It was Noel Gallagher who, back in the ‘90s, referred to Collins as “the antichrist of music,” and said that he hoped to have his “severed head in my fridge by the end of the decade”. In response, Collins described Oasis as “rude, horrible… and not as talented as they think.”

This all happened a long time ago but, speaking to Mojo, it’s clear that Collins still remembers the incident and has thought about what could happen if he crosses paths with Noel and Liam during the Hall of Fame festivities.

“The inductees have all been invited to a lunch before the ceremony,” he says. “Which will be interesting, as I’m sure to bump into Oasis.”

Collins also reveals that Lily, his youngest daughter, went in to bat for him when she ran into Liam Gallagher backstage at the Live Earth charity concert in 2007. “She went up to him and said, ‘Why do you hate my dad?’” he remembers. “And apparently Liam said, ‘I don’t hate anybody, love.’”

To be fair to the younger Gallagher, he wasn’t the one that made the antichrist comment in the first place, but Collins has gone so far as to come up with a theory as to why Noel – who would later say in an interview that he had gone to an ‘80s Genesis gig “completely out of it” and come out feeling terrified – used that term.

“Now I’ve thought this through,” says Collins, “and although Noel didn’t specify what song it was, I reckon it was Mama, where I go ‘Ha-ha-ha… Oww,’ with the light under my face. So I think Mama is why Noel called me the antichrist. But I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt here, and assuming he doesn’t really think I’m the antichrist.”

Let’s hope so, but we’re guessing that Gallagher’s real problem with Collins was that, by the mid-’90s, his name had become a byword for safe, middle of the road pop-rock music. “To many people, I’m just the ballad guy,” Collins admits, though his musical range stretches far wider than that.

That said, having recently been looking back on footage of himself from the ‘80s during the process of making a documentary, Collins admits that he comes off “as a little smug.” He insists that this was never his intention, though: “I think my enthusiasm came across as ambition – and it really wasn’t. It was honestly just schoolboy enthusiasm.”

The last few years have been far less kind to Collins: he’s suffered injuries and ill-health and says he’s been battling alcoholism. He hasn’t ruled out releasing more music in the future, though, revealing that he has a “strong idea” for something and a finished ballad.

Fleetwood Mac fans hoping for a rapprochement between Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks have had much to keep them interested over the past year or so.

First came the 2025 reissue of their one and only duo album, 1973’s Buckingham Nicks. While promoting this, it emerged that the pair were back on speaking terms, following a 2018 fallout that led to Buckingham leaving Fleetwood Mac.

Then, earlier this year, Buckingham posted on social media about “a resurgence of connection between Stevie and myself,” adding that “what that translates to specifically, I wouldn’t want to speculate yet. But I believe with all my heart, it will translate to something good, and something wonderful, and something needed and something extremely appropriate.”

Positive vibes, for sure, and now Buckingham has thrown something else into the mix in one of his ‘Lindsey Reacts’ videos on YouTube, in which he listens along to a song with one or two of his children (Leelee and/or Will) and shares his thoughts on it.

In the new clip, both kids are present, and the song under discussion is John Mayer’s Stop This Train. The three Buckinghams are shown watching a 2008 live performance of the song, and Lindsey seems impressed.

“I have a lot of admiration for John Mayer,” he confirms. “I think he uses his guitar playing in a way which works into the fabric of the record making process and doesn't sort of dominate too much, even though he's got chops.”

It’s at the end of the song, though, that Buckingham says something potentially revealing. Conversation turns to Mayer’s role in Dead & Company, in which he performs with three former members of The Grateful Dead, and their past residency at the Las Vegas Sphere in particular.

After Will explains the concept of The Sphere, and the importance of visuals to performances there, a thoughtful Lindsey says that it sounds “interesting”. And after Will notes that “if you're there, you're going to try to make the graphic look as cool as it can be,” his father offers a cryptic “we’ll see”.

Of course, this might not mean anything but, for what it’s worth, Lindsey also spoke coyly about the Glastonbury Festival in a previous video, noting that “We’ve played some big shows in England, but I don’t know about that one”.

A Fleetwood Mac Sphere residency and Glastonbury appearance in 2027, then? Here’s hoping.

Este Haim has been telling the story of how she came to be a bass player, a tale that involves sibling rivalry, parental encouragement, Talking Heads’ Tina Weymouth, and the frequently-kidnapped Nintendo character Princess Peach.

Este, of course, plays bass guitar in Haim, the band she ended up forming with sisters Danielle and Alana. However, as she recently revealed while taking Track Star’s Perfect Song Challenge, this wasn’t her first choice of instrument.

“I grew up hearing my mom sing and play guitar,” she explains. “So when I was eight and Danielle was five, my mom started teaching us how to play guitar.”

For Este, though, this turned out to be dispiriting. “Danielle, like, flew past me when it came to technical skill, musicality,” she remembers. “Like I, as an eight-year-old, was like, ‘My fucking five-year-old sister is better than me at guitar. Like, she's five. How is this even possible?’ She was like a savant.”

Enter Este’s father, who spotted that something was up with his eldest daughter.

“My dad saw this and was like, "My daughter is ‘Depr-Este’. That’s her new name.’ I was like walking around, moping around, like ‘I don't have any talent. What is my place in the world?’ At eight years old! Existential crisis. So my dad was like, ‘I got an idea. I think Este should try to play bass, another stringed instrument.’”

After assuring Este that it was easier to play, a second-hand bass guitar was purchased, but its recipient wasn’t keen. Recalling her reaction to her dad’s idea, Este says: “I was like, ‘I don't even know what that is. I don't want to do that. That sounds lame.’”

Mr Haim, though, came up with a plan: “My dad was like, ‘OK, I know what's gonna change your mind. Este loves Nintendo. Loves. Mario loves Princess Peach – I'm gonna show her [1984 Talking Heads concert movie] Stop Making Sense, and she's gonna see this magical, beautiful lady playing bass with her blonde hair, and she's literally like… the most ferocious, she's having the most fun.’”

And guess what? The plan worked.

“So my dad takes me to Blockbuster, gets the movie, puts it on, and I was literally, like, transfixed. I was like, ‘I get it now. I get it. This is for me. This is what I want to do. I want to be Tina Weymouth.’ And that's the start of my love affair with bass.”

Smart thinking from dad, then, who realised that what Este needed was a bass playing role model who she could relate to.

“He was like, you need to kind of see it to be it,” she says. “That was the correct way to go. And then, you know, from Stop Making Sense, then I started researching all the other music that she was involved in. Tom Tom Club being one of them [Este and Track Star host were sharing their appreciation for that band’s Genius Of Love]. And yeah, she's so cool and such a good bass player, and so tasteful. And again, I love the way she performs. She's having the best time.”

With any luck, Este herself will now have inspired the next generation of girls to start playing the bass, but she insists her father was wrong about one thing: that bass guitar is easier than guitar.

“Dad – that was incorrect,” she says. “Not true.”

Talking Heads frontman David Byrne has discussed his experiences working with Brian Eno, praising the legendary producer's knack for "using the studio as an instrument".

Fielding questions from Guardian readers in a new interview, he detailed how the process of collaborating with the legendary record producer and ex-Roxy Music synth player "changed over the years".

"I felt he was somebody who had a feeling and an understanding for what we were trying to do," Byrne said.

"At first, his goal was to capture what the band was doing. Once that was achieved, he brought ideas such as adding funny sounds, not having the songs all written – so we could improvise – and as he calls it, “using the studio as an instrument”."

He added: "It was fun and we got to things that we’d never have got to if we’d stuck to one way of working. As a producer, he’s very much a cheerleader. Rather than scratching his chin and saying, “I don’t know if this works yet”, he’ll go: “This could be the beginning of something incredible, let’s keep pushing in that direction.”

Eno worked on three landmark Talking Heads albums (More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music and Remain in Light) and famously helped devise the vocal melody for their classic song Once in a Lifetime.

In the interview, Byrne also commented on his interactions with other inspirational musicians like Ramones and Lou Reed. Of the latter, he said: "Lou had seen us in [New York City music club] CBGB a couple of times and said: “Come back to mine afterwards and we’ll talk about your songs.” We were really excited but nervous and in awe because we were big fans of his solo stuff and the Velvet Underground."

Byrne continued: "He proceeded to eat two quarts of the ice-cream he had in his fridge, but was creative as well. He started playing our song Tentative Decisions on guitar and suggested it could be slowed down, and slowed down to the speed of a Velvet Underground song. Which was pretty cool, but we didn’t slow it down as far as he suggested."

It's also this knack for creative insight that he valued most in Eno, who's widely renowned for the psychological impact he makes in studio environments, rather than pure technical ingenuity.

"Besides being a fifth band member on this record, Brian is a wonderful enthusiast," Byrne once said. "He sells the excitement and potential of working in a new way—the upside of stepping into the unknown, experimenting and seeing what might happen."

Legendary British actor Anthony Hopkins is set to release an album of original compositions titled Life Is A Dream, after signing a record deal with Decca Classics.

The two-time Academy Award winner for Best Actor has been playing piano since the age of four and regularly composed music for local drama productions as a teenager. Now aged 88, the Welsh film legend is finally ramping his musical ambitions up a notch.

Life Is A Dream consists of tracks from across six decades of original composing, with the recordings conducted by Gustavo Dudamel and performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Songs include Bracken Road, which was part of the composition 1947: Suite for Solo Piano and Orchestra, and My Fatherland, a nod to the traditional Welsh melodies that Hopkins grew up with in his hometown of Margam, Port Talbot.

While the legendary film star has never developed a musical project of this scope before, it's not the first time he has released his own compositions.

Back in 1986, his single Distant Star reached No. 75 in the UK singles chart, while in 2012, he released an album of classical music called Composer, performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

“Music was my first desire, my first wish,” Hopkins said in a statement. “I’ve been composing music all my life. Some of these pieces have lived with me for decades and I still find myself returning to them.”

He added: "It has been a true privilege to collaborate with the distinguished Philharmonia Orchestra and the virtuoso soloists, cellist Gregorio Nieto and classical pianist Sergio Tiempo.

"My deepest gratitude and respect go to Maestro Gustavo Dudamel, whose artistry is an integral part of this musical journey. With the graceful precision of his baton, he transformed each note with profound and indelible meaning, creating a pictorial landscape that invites the listener to feel and imagine something uniquely personal.”

On 22 May 2017, UK-based filmmaker Max Weiland visited Elton John’s spectacular 1920s villa known as the ‘Yellow Palace’, perched high on the lush, forested hill of Mont Boron overlooking Nice, which has been the singer-songwriter’s main home on the French Riviera since the ’90s.

Weiland had been invited by John and his songwriting partner Bernie Taupin to show them the video he had created for their 1971 song Tiny Dancer, which was due to receive its world premiere at that year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Weiland was one of three filmmakers selected to create videos for a YouTube-supported competition called The Cut, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of John and Taupin’s songwriting partnership.

Weiland’s video for Tiny Dancer captures the free-spirited characters of LA and is a sun-soaked homage to the Golden State. It also evokes that city’s bohemian spirit at the time.

In a short film about the making of the video, John and Taupin can be seen sitting on a sun-dappled balcony at John’s villa, watching the video on a laptop as Weiland looks on.

“Love, it, love it,” beams Taupin as he turns to face Weiland when the video ends. “The humour and the pathos you’ve got going there is just fabulous.”

“It’s so brilliant, because it sums up the LA you were writing about,” says John to Taupin. “It’s absolutely beautiful,” he tells Weiland. “It’s cinematic, it tells a story… it’s just got the essence of the song.”

For all its status as a classic song from the rich vein of Elton John’s early ’70s back catalogue, the song Tiny Dancer was actually something of a slow burner.

Released as a single in February 1972, it was the opening song on John’s fourth album Madman Across The Water (1971) but reached only No 41 in the US and wasn’t even released in the UK.

The disappointing chart performance was partly due to its epic running time of 6:12. The radio edit for the single stripped the song of its subtleties, its slow, graceful build, Elton John’s inspired arrangement and his stellar performance in the studio.

But in the years that followed Tiny Dancer grew to become one of John’s best-loved songs, appreciated in its epic entirety when embraced by FM radio’s emerging AOR format in the mid- to late-’70s.

With its stunning melody, sweeping strings and country-pop tinges, Tiny Dancer would slowly sear itself into the public consciousness.

It was late 1970 when Bernie Taupin made his first trip to the US, an experience that inspired the lyrics for Tiny Dancer.

Taupin wanted to capture the feel and the vibrancy of California at the time. In particular, he was struck by the young women around the Sunset Strip, who appeared freer, more expressive, and very different from the women he had known growing up in England.

“We came to California in the fall of 1970 and it seemed like sunshine just radiated from the populace,” Taupin told Rolling Stone magazine. “I guess I was trying to capture the spirit of that time, encapsulated by the women we met, especially at the clothes stores and restaurants and bars all up and down the Sunset Strip. They were these free spirits, sexy, all hip-huggers and lacy blouses, very ethereal in the way they moved.”

He continued: “They were just so different from what I’d been used to in England. They had this thing about embroidering your clothes. They wanted to sew patches on your jeans. They mothered you and slept with you. It was the perfect Oedipal complex.”

In the interview, Taupin stated that the song was also inspired by his girlfriend at the time and future wife, Maxine Feibelman, referred to in the song as “seamstress for the band”.

Taupin weaved elements of the people he met into the emerging song, conjuring up the freewheeling essence, bohemian style and the optimism of early 1970s Los Angeles.

In a 1971 interview featured in the US TV series Our American Stories, Elton John explained how he transformed Taupin’s lyrics into the song Tiny Dancer. John is seen seated at a white upright piano, wearing an orange satin jacket with huge yellow polka dots. He is holding sheets of paper on which Taupin’s lyrics are written.

“These are all lyrics here and I just sift through them,” says John. “There’s one that I’ve sort of done the other day called Tiny Dancer… that was the one that I fancied writing, mainly because I knew Bernie would like me to do this one because it’s about his girlfriend.”

John then takes the lyric sheet and places it on the music rack in front of him.

“I mean, you look at it and the words ‘Blue-jean baby, LA lady, seamstress for the band/Pretty-eyed, pirate smile, you’ll marry a music man’. ‘Ballerina…’ as soon as you get to the word ballerina you know it’s not going to be fast, it’s got to be kind of gentle and quite slow.”

“The way it’s written here,” says John, pointing at the lyric sheet in front of him, “is a verse, a middle eight and a chorus, then another verse, and I just ran it through and put two verses together, then a middle eight then a chorus and then back to the verse sort of thing. It happens very quickly. It sounds long but it sort of starts off…”

And then John proceeds to play the new song, going straight in on the first verse. It’s a beautifully natural rendition.

At its core, Tiny Dancer is a love song, a heartfelt tribute from Taupin to his future wife. But what is striking is John’s stunning melodic prowess in imbuing Taupin’s words with such achingly beautiful and graceful melodies. The speed at which he works is also impressive.

“Reg has to write very fast,” said Taupin in the same Our American Stories programme, still referring to John by his real name, Reginald Dwight, “because he hasn’t got the patience to spend hours or days on something, you know.”

Tiny Dancer is written in the key of C major and is anchored by John’s iconic, arpeggiated piano riff, which carries the rhythm. Much of the power of Tiny Dancer stems from its slow build. The chorus doesn’t actually arrive until two-and-a-half minutes in.

Up until that point, the song meanders through a verse and a lengthy pre-chorus before looping back, while instruments are steadily added to the mix.

Trident Studios in the heart of Soho in London was the facility chosen to record Tiny Dancer and the Madman Across The Water album from which it came. Ever since The Beatles recorded Hey Jude there on 31 July and 1 August 1968, Trident had become the studio of choice for artists such as David Bowie, drawn by Trident’s relaxed creative ethos, its Ampex eight-track recorder and its 24-hour opening times.

John had recorded his eponymous second album (1970) and its follow-up Tumbleweed Connection (1970) at Trident, and on Tiny Dancer he would once again be playing Trident’s house piano, a handmade 1898 Bechstein grand which has since attained legendary status for its bright, distinctive sound.

“I have heard many pianos in my time but I have never heard a better ‘rock’ piano than that one,” wrote Ken Scott, in-house engineer at EMI Abbey Road Studios who joined Trident Studios in 1969.

Tiny Dancer was recorded on 9 August 1971 and was produced by Gus Dudgeon.

The song features English pedal steel guitarist BJ Cole. Cole’s pedal steel glides into the mix at 0:53, just before the final line of the first verse “And now she’s in me, always with me/Tiny dancer in my hand”, before the backing choir, acoustic rhythm guitar and the rest of the rhythm section fully join in.

Another notable feature of the recording is Paul Buckmaster’s sweeping, soaring string arrangements, which first really make their presence felt at 2:45 on the chorus and remain a lush, strident force throughout the rest of the epic track.

Then there is the choir of ten backing vocalists – including prolific session musician Tony Burrows, bassist Dee Murray and John’s touring drummer at the time, Nigel Olsson.

It’s a masterful arrangement from John, beginning with an intimate piano accompaniment, then each verse slowly building the emotional intensity right up to the chorus. John’s playing anchors everything. It is both elegant and tasteful yet gutsy as the track opens up and the melody ascends.

The strings soar but never overwhelm, while the backing vocals bring a communal feel to the song. Throughout it all, the emotional impact builds.

Tiny Dancer is a song that could so easily have sounded schmaltzy but John hits just the right tone vocally. There’s a wonderfully rich quality to his vocal take and he steers clear of oversinging, delivering instead a wholly natural and emotive performance.

Despite its disappointing chart placing in the US, the song would resonate across the subsequent decades, sometimes in the most unlikely of environs.

In 1990, John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers performed his first impromptu performance of Tiny Dancer at the Pinkpop Festival in Holland and he has since performed the song at least 50 times during Red Hot Chili Peppers shows.

In 2000, Tiny Dancer received a significant renaissance when Cameron Crowe used it in his film Almost Famous, a semi-autobiographical comedy drama based on Crowe's experiences as a teenage writer for Rolling Stone.

John was pleasantly surprised by its inclusion and the subsequent renewed popularity of the track, as he recalled to Rolling Stone in 2011. “Jeffrey Katzenberg [film producer and media proprietor] called me and said, ‘There’s a scene in this film which is going to make Tiny Dancer a hit all over again.’ When I saw it, I said, ‘Oh my God!'. I used to play Tiny Dancer in England and it would go down like a lead zeppelin. Cameron resurrected that song.”

From that point on, Tiny Dancer was reinstated in John’s live setlist. In 2018, he performed the song with Miley Cyrus at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards and the following year, it was featured in the trailer for the film Rocketman, starring Taron Egerton. A few days after the trailer was released, John and Egerton performed the song live at John’s annual Oscars party.

For Maxine Feibelman, who inspired the song, hearing Tiny Dancer for the first time was a revelatory experience. In a 2019 interview with the New York Post, Feibelman recalled listening to the song for the first time in the control room at Trident Studios back in 1971.

“I knew it was about me. I had been into ballet as a little girl and sewed patches on Elton’s jackets and jeans. I had goosebumps.

“Elton was on one side of me and Bernie was on the other. That song was like having your really good friends give you the best gift you could ever receive.”

Retired singer-songwriter Huey Lewis has revealed how hearing loss has transformed his life completely.

Speaking on Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, he opened up about his struggles making music in recent years, and detailed how he has been "basically deaf" for nine years.

“So eight, eight and a half years, and my life has changed immeasurably,” Lewis said. "I can't hear music. Music is not part of my life anymore, which is a hard pill to swallow."

The former frontman of Huey Lewis and the News was forced to cancel a tour with the band in 2018 after his hearing collapsed. At this point, he'd been relying on his left ear for decades, having lost hearing in his right ear in the early '90s.

Lewis was then diagnosed with Ménière’s disease, which impacts the inner ear and can cause ringing, dizziness and a feeling of congestion in the ear. In recent years, he's used a cochlear implant on one side and a hearing aid on the other.

"Now I'm deaf basically without the technology involved," he explained.

Raised in Marin County, California, Lewis started his career in music with the '70s Bay Area band Clover, but didn't achieve serious commercial success until after the formation of Huey Lewis and the News in '79. The band had several hits in the 1980s, including US No.1 The Power of Love, famously featured in the film Back To The Future.

In February 2025, Lewis became the first artist to be inducted into the People's Music Hall of Fame, a testament to his impact on the world of music over the last few decades.

After that landmark moment, he insisted that he wouldn't give up on producing new music.

However, this revealing interview with Michael Rosenbaum underlines just how debilitating his ear disease has become in recent years.

“It just ends up being frustrating for me when I can’t enjoy it,” Lewis said. “I can’t feel the warmth.”

Rolling Stones icon Keith Richards has spoken about his relationship with ex-Beatle Paul McCartney, claiming that he "really misses being in a band".

Chatting to Zane Lowe on Apple Music, Richards said: "You know I've realised that Paul really misses being in a band. And his joy of just being in that context is great. So if there's any more songs to do, I'll let you know, Paul."

The conversation came as part of the promo run for the Rolling Stones' new album Foreign Tongues, which is out July 10 and features a wide range of world-famous contributors including Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, The Cure's Robert Smith and, of course, McCartney himself.

A recent trailer posted on YouTube showed the band's three remaining members — Richards, Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood — on top form in the studio, an incredible 64 years after the group first formed.

They're joined by new drummer Steve Jordan, who appears to have slotted in seamlessly following the loss of original member Charlie Watts back in 2021.

"It was Charlie Watts that did suggest to me that if ever I was gonna work with another drummer, it should be Steve Jordan," Richards said. "I'm sure Charlie Watts is beaming down on us, so I feel good about that."

Reflecting on those studio sessions, Richards explained: "The only thing you're fighting is the room and the song, you're okay as long as you're not fighting each other. It was fun to make."

Asked by Lowe what the secret is to the Stones' longevity, Richards said: "Healthy living. Go to bed early. There's nothing like it. That's the formula: Be a good boy."

It's a formula McCartney has clearly been following himself; in 2022, he became the oldest solo headliner in Glastonbury festival history at the age of 80, and four years later, he's still going strong. According to Richards, the Beatles legend had an amazing time contributing to the new Stones record.

"I've known Paul… well basically since The Beatles started, since we started. John [Lennon] and Paul [McCartney] did a couple of backup vocals for us way back when on We Love You and Dandelion, I think way back in like '67 or something like that."

He added: "It's great to have somebody from your own era, from way back when. He's a lovely player and I'd like to do more with him."

Justin Bieber will co-headline the first-ever World Cup halftime show at the tournament final on Sunday, 19 July.

He'll join other huge global names like Madonna, Shakira, BTS, and Burna Boy in an 11-minute performance during the halftime break of the world's biggest sporting event.

Bieber said: “The FIFA World Cup brings the world together in a way nothing else can. I’m grateful to be part of this halftime show, and even more grateful knowing it’s already helping expand access to education for children around the world." (Music News)

His last comment refers to the fact that the show, curated by Coldplay's Chris Martin, will support the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund, which is raising $100 million to help children access education and soccer.

FIFA's decision to introduce a halftime show to the World Cup final for the first time ever - taking inspiration from the lavish, highly monetised interval performances seen in US sporting showpieces like the Super Bowl - has been roundly criticised by global football fans.

In response to FIFA's X post unveiling Bieber on the lineup, user Sportzz1 said: "The game is gone smh... this should be a one-off please, this is not the superball."

Meanwhile, @ehvsinner commented: "You should bother about football and not destroy it. We don't care about that show, because football is the show. The 15 minutes break is for pissing and grabbing a beer."

Fan concerns are unlikely to bother Bieber and co., whose performances at the New York New Jersey Stadium will be broadcast globally to hundreds of millions of viewers. Regardless of how the interval plays out, the backlash from supporters suggests that FIFA will be under real pressure to scrap its World Cup halftime show ahead of the next tournament.

Ahead of the release of his new album The Confuser (July 24), cult psychedelic rocker Robyn Hitchcock has spoken at length about the incredible musicians that have inspired him over his six decades in rock music.

In an interview with Stewart Lee for The Guardian, he reflected on the experience of coming of age in 1967 when Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, psychedelic-era The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and acid-folk pioneers the Incredible String Band were all in their pomp.

"Although my prime influence was Bob Dylan, and Dylan showed me what I wanted to be, Syd Barrett showed me how I could be it," he said. "And I actually wound up sounding like John Lennon. To me, the Beatles are at the beginning and the end of everything. But my role has always just been to carry on a certain kind of music, which appeared in 66 and 67."

This remains the case on Hitchcock's new record The Confuser, which opens with 'I Am This Thing', a track that contains idiosyncratic lines like "I owe a lot to a dead man's cock / Tick-tock, I love to rock… I come at a price like egg fried rice / Every Sunday morning and it's ever so nice".

Across the project, there are strong traces of Barrett's lyricism, and of the humour that the Beatles continually revelled in. According to the 73-year-old, the focus remains on "creating a version of my existence [rather] than actually showing people the real Robyn." He suggests that across his 20+ studio albums with the Soft Boys, the Egyptians, the Venus 3 and as a solo artist, this has been a consistent thread.

At times, the tendency to hide behind his music led to moments of meanness, for example "writing a nasty song about his elderly neighbours.

"I was a self-centred, entitled little horror and arguably I still am," he says. "I've just learned to mask it more, and also I've learned to make a living out of it."

"I didn't invent this field of music, but I've perpetuated it," Hitchcock continued. "I wanted to maintain a tradition and do new work in that tradition. But the guys I worship were innovators. I'm the opposite. I'm sweeping up after them. It's like, 'Oh God, here comes Hitchcock with the broom.'"

Speaking on how he's often avoided major fame during his six decades in rock music, he added: "I always manage to dodge the extreme limelight. You know, in some ways I've avoided both success and failure. It's fantastic."

Few songs merit the term ‘power ballad’ quite as emphatically as Total Eclipse Of The Heart, the 1983 hit for singer Bonnie Tyler, who died on 8 July 2026 at the age of 75.

Tyler, born Gaynor Hopkins in the village of Skewen in Neath, Wales, had a long career in which she had a number of hits, but none bigger than Total Eclipse Of The Heart, which shot to No 1 in the UK, US and all across the world, and which, on 26 January 2026, surpassed one billion streams on Spotify.

Total Eclipse Of The Heart has everything a great power ballad needs – melodrama, bombast, massive hooks, a blistering build-up and a voice and lyrics that inspire and excite.

Admittedly, it’s all subtle as a flying mallet at times, but that’s the whole point. This is emotion writ large and it’s all delivered with straight-for-the-jugular emotional impact.

Total Eclipse Of The Heart was written and produced by Jim Steinman, who was best known for writing Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell album (1977).

Steinman had been a student at Amherst College, Massachusetts in 1969 when he wrote an experimental musical called The Dream Engine. The musical featured nudity. It also featured the line “turn around bright eyes”, which became a pivotal lyric in Total Eclipse Of The Heart.

The song had dark origins, as Steinman told Playbill magazine in 2002.

“I was trying to come up with a love song… its original title was Vampires In Love because I was working on a musical of Nosferatu… if anyone listens to the lyrics, they're really like vampire lines. It's all about the darkness, the power of darkness and love's place in the dark."

Reportedly written during a lunar eclipse, the song remained unfinished when the musical was shelved. Steinman next revisited it when Bonnie Tyler contacted him 13 years later.

By 1982, Tyler had racked up four albums and come a long way from her humble beginnings in the village of Skewen, South Wales.

Born Gaynor Hopkins, she was the daughter of a coal miner and grew up with five siblings in a four-bedroomed council house. She started out as a backing singer and changed her name to Sherene Davis to avoid being confused with the singer Mary Hopkin.

In 1975, she was spotted singing in a Swansea club by a talent scout, which led to RCA Records offering her a record deal. When RCA requested another name change, she hit on Bonnie Tyler.

Her first single flopped but the follow-up Lost In France (1977) reached No.9 in the UK, No.2 in South Africa and charted in Europe and Australia.

Then, in the spring of 1977, an event occurred that gave her the distinct vocal sound for which she would become known. Tyler underwent surgery to remove vocal cord nodules and was advised to rest her voice for six weeks. One day, she screamed with frustration, which resulted in a permanent raspy tone.

“After I got my voice back, I went into the studio for the first time and started singing,” Tyler told The Guardian in 2009. “The band said, ‘Woah, your voice sounds great’. My voice was huskier than before, and had more of an edge… I had my first hit in America with my new husky voice on It's A Heartache.”

Released in 1977, It’s A Heartache reached No.1 in Spain, Sweden, Norway, France, Brazil, Canada, Argentina and Australia and went top five in the UK, US and seven other countries.

Her second studio album Natural Force went platinum but follow-up albums Diamond Cut and Goodbye To The Island fared less well, with the latter only charting in Norway.

By 1982, her career was floundering. RCA offered to extend her contract for another five years, but Tyler declined. Instead, she signed with another label and began looking for a whole new sound.

“I’d just signed to Sony and wanted to change from country rock to rock,” Tyler told The Guardian in 2023. “I’d seen Meat Loaf on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test doing Bat Out Of Hell, so I told [A&R man] Muff Winwood that I wanted to work with Jim Steinman. Muff looked at me like I was barmy and told me that Jim would never do it. ‘I just want you to ask him,’ I said.”

For her next album, Tyler wanted the production to emulate Phil Spector’s Wall Of Sound. As Spector had all but retired, she felt Steinman was the only producer capable of achieving such a sound.

Steinman initially declined Tyler’s request, but after hearing demos of her singing he was swayed, explaining that she had “the perfect voice” for the sound he was striving to achieve.

In April 1982, Tyler and her manager visited Steinman in his New York apartment, where he played her two of his favourite songs – Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Have You Ever Seen the Rain? and Blue Öyster Cult’s Goin’ Through the Motions.

Steinman wanted to gauge her reaction to these songs. Tyler’s response was overwhelmingly positive and Steinman agreed to produce her next album, Faster Than The Speed Of Night. Tyler would cover both songs on the album.

Steinman told People magazine that he wrote Total Eclipse Of The Heart as a showcase for Tyler’s voice. “It sounds ravaged,” he said, “like it's been through a lot. It's what rock 'n' roll is all about.”

He said the song was like “an aria to me, a Wagnerian-like onslaught of sound and emotion”.

A few weeks after their first meeting, Tyler returned to Steinman’s apartment, where he and Canadian vocalist Rory Dodd performed the newly-written Total Eclipse Of The Heart. The song was written as a duet and it was Dodd who would sing the line “Turn around bright eyes”.

Tyler was transfixed by what she heard. “I just had shivers right up my spine,” she told The Times, “I couldn't wait to actually get in and record it.”

Power Station in midtown Manhattan was one of three New York studios chosen by Steinman for the album, and the song was recorded and mixed in the summer of 1982.

When it came to selecting musicians, Steinman recruited some real heavyweights.

On drums was Max Weinberg from Bruce Springteen’s E-Street Band while his equally revered bandmate Roy Bittan played the iconic piano part.

Rick Derringer handled guitar duties and the line-up also included veteran Meat Loaf bassist Steve Buslowe. Larry Fast and Steve Margoshes were on synths while Jimmy Maelen handled percussion.

Total Eclipse Of The Heart is an epic emotional journey and everything about the song is maxed out. As Craig Marks of Time magazine noted in 2024, “Steinman didn’t do understated”.

Steinman built his mixes like Broadway productions and he honoured Tyler’s desire for the symphonic, reverb-laden Spector-style Wall Of Sound. Steinman and engineers Neil Dorfsman and John Jansen fully exploited Power Station's echoey stairwells for optimum reverb, while Steinman’s musical theatre background and Wagnerian strains came to the fore.

“It makes you feel like you're a Norseman in a blizzard,” observed Dr Freya Jarman, from the University of Liverpool's department of music, in an interview with BBC Culture.

In 1983, Tyler told North Carolina newspaper Times-News that the song was "a challenge [to sing]”, adding, “I like songs that need a lot of energy. It’s such a passionate song and it builds all the time… it’s incredible.”

Total Eclipse Of The Heart was recorded at Power Station while backing vocals were recorded at the nearby Right Track Studios.

In an interview with Mix magazine in 2024, engineer Neil Dorfsman says the track was cut live in studio A of Power Station with drummer Max Weinberg and bassist Steve Buslowe in the rhythm room, Roy Bittan in the piano booth and Tyler singing live with Rory Dodd in separate isolation booths. Rick Derringer’s guitar part and Larry Fast’s synth parts were overdubs.

Dorfsman told Mix magazine that Tyler and the band laid down about 20 takes of the track, which included the live lead vocals. He remembers that during the mixing in Studio B at Power Station, they literally ran out of reverb, as every reverb send on every fader on the desk was as far up as it could go, on everything but the kick drum and bass guitar.

Producer and engineer Frank Filipetti was in charge of recording the majority of the background vocals at Right Track Studios.

A “vocal tour de force” is how Filipetti described Total Eclipse Of The Heart. “Jim wasn’t as interested in adhering to traditional ways of doing things. He was always looking for something a little different. He was more interested in the emotional arc that the song was taking rather than going by the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge formula. In doing so, his music took you on a journey.”

The multiple recording and stacking of backing vocals was arduous, recalled Filipetti, but the results were worth it. “Jim really treated everyone first class, so it made all the hard work something you wanted to do.”

The track was mixed on the evening of 4 July 1982 during a 12-hour session at the Power Station’s studio B.

“You can tell from the final mix that Jim wanted the biggest drum sound to ever have been recorded,” Dorfsman told Mix magazine. “In the ’80s there was a competition to see who could have the loudest snare drum… I just remember all the faders just creeping, creeping, creeping, creeping.”

Everything about Total Eclipse Of The Heart is grandiose and it builds and builds, with dramatic shifting keys fuelling the intensity.

A plaintive piano melody intros the song, before Dodd’s sweet, haunting tenor on opening refrain “Turn around” is followed by Tyler’s soulful, gravelly vocal on the first line: “Every now and then I get a little bit lonely/And you're never coming 'round”.

After the first chorus, at 1:50, the whole walloping track powers upwards – “Together we can take it to the end of the line/Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time” sings Tyler in powerful gravelly tones.

Even from a distance of over four decades, Max Weinberg’s snare still sounds all-encompassingly massive in the mix.

There’s a depth and richness to Tyler’s voice as the song develops. It’s powerful, heartrending and defiant, and the call-and-response of Tyler’s and Dodd’s voices creates a compelling contrast.

Total Eclipse Of The Heart was released on 11 February 1983. Steinman’s theatricality made him an easy target for critics. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Trevor Dann denounced the song’s lack of subtlety, suggesting that “Bonnie should be taken to see a Joni Mitchell concert”. The Guardian, meanwhile deemed it an “amusing, mildly camp curiosity”.

But Steinman’s theatrical impulses are precisely what make the song so thrilling and audacious.

Legendary songwriter Diane Warren – a doyenne of the power ballad who wrote or co-wrote classics such as Cher’s If I Could Turn Back Time – has nothing but praise for Steinman and Tyler’s achievement.

“It’s a perfect song,” Warren told Time magazine in 2024. “And Bonnie really conveys the drama. That voice brought Jim’s song to life.”

A shy 16-year-old Thai musician stunned the America's Got Talent audience and blew away judges, including Simon Cowell and Mel B, with an explosive rendition of The Cranberries' '90s hit Zombie.

The video of Nene Royal's performance, posted on YouTube, has already gathered over 2 million views in just a day, with viewers in awe of the teenager's incredible guitar shredding, vocal range, and stage presence.

Within a minute, she had a packed-out Pasadena Civic Auditorium (the arena where AGT auditions are filmed) singing every word with her, while host Terry Crews went wild to the side of the stage.

The song she chose to deliver has a fascinating backstory of its own. One of the biggest alternative rock anthems of the 1990s, Zombie was inspired by the violence of The Troubles, which at that point had plagued Northern Ireland for decades.

“A lot of people were very surprised at the dramatic change from Dreams, which was the last single they’d heard from us,” the band's guitarist Noel Hogan told MusicRadar. “Dreams and Zombie were completely different types of songs. But look – it worked." (MusicRadar).

Since its release, Zombie has developed into an unstoppable cultural phenomenon, with over 1.8 billion Spotify streams and enormous global reach — as this particular talent show audition proved.

"You are a rock star, young lady, you really are," said Howie Mandel, one of the four America's Got Talent who voted Royal through with a unanimous 'Yes'.

Simon Cowell added: "The tone of your voice is really authentic. Even the fact that it was all a bit messy made the audition for me really good." Meanwhile, ex-Spice Girl Mel B commented: "You've got really good vocal control and you can kill it on the guitar. You're like a match made in heaven. You're brilliant."

The 16-year-old guitar prodigy had travelled all the way from Phuket, Thailand, with her father to audition for the show. The 3,000-cap venue auditorium was by far the biggest stage she had ever performed on. (Loudwire)

"I started playing guitar since I was seven and my biggest dream is that I really want to be a superstar on tour," she told the judging panel. Their response suggests she's well on her way.

"You have a real chance to do very good in this competition," Sofia Vergara said. "That was spectacular."

Following the release of her fourth studio album Creature of Habit, Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett has opened up about her experiences recording the album, showering praise on one collaborator in particular: Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea.

“He is just such an incredible musician. The way that he approaches music, he’s so full of love," she said, speaking on the Kyle Meredith With... podcast (LPM).

Barnett also spoke about the experiences living and working in Los Angeles, a location that has allowed her to meet a range of other creatives and seek new sources of inspiration. Her focus on Creature of Habit was never to capture "bright sunny LA" but she claims the city seeped into the record in a "more metaphorical" way.

“I feel grateful that I have moved around a fair bit in my life and I get to kind of experience these different pockets of communities," she said. "You learn a lot from those things.”

In recent years, Barnett has received her fair share of critical acclaim, including being named in MusicRadar's Top 10 Alternative Guitarists following the release of her third album, Tell Me How You Really Feel.

The impressive list of musicians who contributed to Creature of Habit underlines how much respect she has garnered across the industry. As well as core collaborators like Warpaint drummer Stella Mozgawa and bassist Zach Dawes, she also worked alongside artists like vocalist Waxahatchee (Katie Crutchfield) and synth player and producer Sam Shepherd (aka Floating Points).

That's not to mention Flea, who played bass on the song One Thing at a Time and whom Barnett clearly has nothing but respect for. Of that track, she enthused: "It's a real fun one to play."

On Flea, she added: "He was so connected and so present the whole time. You can just tell when someone lives and breathes music. There’s just a lot of heart in the way that he plays.”

Figures from across the world of music have spoken out in support of Yorkshire musician Yungblud after he shared a heartfelt Instagram post detailing his recent mental health struggles.

The Doncaster artist, real name Dominic Harrison, posted a video of himself addressing fans during a headline set at his Czechia-based festival BludFest 2026 on June 27.

He told the crowd: "Lately I have felt so disconnected from everything. I have been trying my best to wake up every day. I have felt in pain a lot and I don't know why, for a long time. But every time I find your faces, every time I find your eyes, every time I look at you, I know I belong somewhere."

In a longer caption posted alongside the video, Yungblud wrote: "Recently, I’ve been really struggling and this moment is a byproduct of my body releasing the wave of emotion that has hit me in the past year that I’ve been unable to process. I’m not gonna lie to you when I got off this stage I felt elated but 20 minutes later when I was in the shower on my own I had a breakdown."

"In the past 10 years I’ve been on a million different journeys tried a million different sounds trying to figure out who I am or what I can mean to the world everyday whilst the world shouts back.

"The amount of hate and disbelief around me from strangers on the Internet or bitter musicians really weighs on my heart as all I’ve been trying to do for the past 10 years is spread love, build something I believe in and unify people in a safe space."

The 28-year-old also referenced a recent article that attempted to debunk widespread accusations that he is an "industry plant" who owes his success to label support and experienced management (Blunt Magazine).

The article wrote: "First releases. Small rooms. Warped Tour. Support slots. Fan photos. EPs. Albums. Sold-out dates. Fan accounts. No.1 albums. BLUDFEST. Then Ozzy. Then the wider world finally caught up. That is not a clean corporate launch. That is a public build."

In the comments under Yungblud's Instagram post, a wide variety of artists backed up that claim. Scott Ian of metal band Anthrax commented: "I stood side stage at BTTB [Back To The Beginning] and watched you breathe rarified air the way you elevated Changes. You’ve earned it all Dom. Cheers brother."

Paloma Faith added: "Mate…. I feel you. Anyone who can live in this world right now and feel ok is not right in the head. It’s a mess…. Empathy drains out of this world like waste. But it’s not waste. It will come back. Be kind to yourself … it’s not you. It’s this messed up world and all its injustices."

Meanwhile, US pop superstar SZA replied: "rooting for you" and Sheffield band Reverend and the Makers commented: "Keep going lad. South Yorkshire vibes".

With that range of voices coming out in support of the young musician, it's clear his message is cutting through.

Having previously claimed that Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter “couldn’t have got arrested” back in his ‘80s pop heyday, producer and songwriter Mike Stock has been fleshing out his argument in an interview with MusicRadar.

Stock, of course, was one third of crack music production outfit Stock Aitken Waterman, who had hits with Kylie Minogue, Rick Astley and many, many more. As he discusses how the industry has changed in the almost 40 years since then, though, it’s clear that Stock doesn’t believe that the current streaming-centric landscape is a hotbed for great pop music...

The music business has changed immeasurably since your hits started in the ‘80s. Do you think that now – living in a world of streaming – we’re in a better or worse place for making, finding and enjoying music?

“Well, you could ask this question first: How many artists in the last 10 to 20 years have achieved iconic status? That’s artists that are going to be around in 20 years. Is Taylor Swift that person? Is Ed Sheeran?

“The number of people achieving that ‘superstar’ status is always the same as it ever was – only one or two in any generation. And to be number one on the charts now is to be invisible. If you're a fan you’ll know if your artist is in the charts, but there's nothing now that we can focus on and so there’s nothing to measure your success against.

“For example, you see Harry Styles, and you say, ‘What a fantastic video. What a brilliant blah blah blah’, and it’s an interesting sound, it’s a bit art house, he's a bit this, he's a bit that, he's very… Harry Stylish. That's what he is. But that's all that he is. It's very superficial.”

“And I don't like Taylor Swift as an artist, I don't get that. I want to hear something that’s got the passion in it that deserves the love from the audience. That's what I want to hear, and I don't know many of those now. I can't remember the last time I heard one.”

Do you think that streaming has taken the magic out of making and discovering music?

“Back in the day, when you bought a record, you made an effort. First of all you would show your love for the artist by getting on a bus and going down to Woolworths and paying three quid for it. But that's an effort and who wants to do that nowadays?

“But we used to make records knowing that that's what somebody was going to have to do, and because of that we put love and passion into it, thinking that we want to make this exciting. We want you to love it like we love it. But these days… Who cares if the music just goes on Spotify?

“Most people use Spotify like it's a radio. They pick a list, they start it playing and go about the housework, or whatever. They don't lean forward. They're not going on to Spotify and typing, ‘I want this song’, playing it, and then being happy. They just lean back, put the thing on and let it run. So that means the passion for the music is less from the user, and that bounces back on the maker of the music, who's not that bothered either. Because if you don't have to work up any passion or thought or effort, then neither will I.

“Like, I hated the name ‘hit factory’ [used to describe Stock Aitken Waterman’s output]. I thought it made us sound like a sausage factory – that we were just churning them out – and that couldn't be further from the truth, because we always put the time and the hours and the effort in.”

Crazy Shot In The Dark by The Fizz and the long-awaited, self-titled debut album from Suzette Charles are out now.

As we approach the release of Foreign Tongues, the new album by the Rolling Stones, frontman Mick Jagger has been discussing Paul McCartney’s contribution to it.

Macca plays bass on an as yet unheard song called Covered In You, and Jagger has told the NME that he recorded his part in the same session that yielded Bite My Head Off, from the Stones' 2023 album, Hackney Diamonds.

However, in the case of Covered In You, he says that he had to seek assurances from producer Andrew Watt, who would go on to work with McCartney on his recent album The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, that the former Beatle was the right fit.

“Obviously, I've known Paul for ages – he’s not a stranger – but I mean, he’d never played bass with us before,” says Jagger. “It's a different thing, you know? I’d sung with him before, done harmonies and stuff. But you were thinking, well, it's a punk tune.

“I said to Andy, ‘Is he into this?’ Because it's really a punk tune, and it's going to go really fast, and I want it to do that, and it's going to be… I want overdriven bass. It's gonna be simple. No mucking about, you know.”

We’re guessing that means hammering away on the root note rather than taking the bassline ‘for a walk’, so to speak, but Jagger says that Watt set his mind at rest.

“He said ‘No, no, no. Paul can do that,’ and he did it,” he remembers. “He did exactly what was needed in like, 10 minutes.”

Also speaking to the NME recently, McCartney shared his own memories of that Stones studio experience.

“It was really exciting, because I normally don’t play as a session guy,” he said. “And it's really nice to just show up at a studio with your bass and say 'Right, where do you want me? Where do I plug in?’ And you start playing and they show you the song and I start thinking, ‘I’m playing with the Stones.’ And I’m well chuffed, you know? You could be a bit blasé and go, ‘Yeah, OK, so what?’ But for me, it wasn’t – it went the other way. It was like, ‘Wow, there’s Mick! Ooh, there’s Keith! Woah, there’s Ronnie!’ It was exciting. It was really good. And the great thing is all I had to do was play bass and not make mistakes, so it was good.”

Foreign Tongues is released on 10 July.

Before they reached Wichita, there was Phoenix. When you think of Jimmy Webb and Glen Campbell collaborations, Wichita Lineman and its poignant imagery immediately leap to mind, but the hit Webb fashioned for Campbell prior to that is no less moving.

You’re probably familiar with the song. The lyrics tell the tale of a man who has left his lover and is driving eastwards across the US. The narrator wonders what his ex will be doing by the time he hits the various cities along the way.

It contains a number of heart-wrenching details (the note, the unanswered lunchtime phone call) that intrigue the listener – just what happened in their relationship? Why is it that leaving is such a wrench for him? And what happened next?

Webb penned the song while he was a staff writer at Motown. Signed at just 17, he’d been asked to provide a hit for the actor/ singer Paul Petersen, who was signed to the label. In a 2011 interview with Song Facts, Webb remembered: “They came to me and said, ‘We need a song for Paul Petersen.’ And I wrote By the Time I Get to Phoenix. And they didn't like it for him.

"They didn't like it for anybody. They ended up cutting it with a couple of different people and not really being happy with it. And when I left the company they gave me the song and said, ‘You can take this one with you.’ And I said, ‘Okay, I will. I like it.’ They liked verses and choruses there. Verses and big choruses. And By the Time I Get to Phoenix is three verses, very simple, very direct storyline.”

The lyrics came from a place of real pain. Webb had broken up with his girlfriend of the time. “I never even got as far as Riverside,” he said in a 2007 interview with the Los Angeles Times. “But I lost her. She married some other guy. We’re still friends. Her name is Susan Ronstadt” (a cousin to singer Linda Ronstadt.)

Many have commented on the physical impossibility of the narrator driving so quickly across the country.

“In fact, a guy approached me one night after a concert, and he had a map, and he had all the times, and he had a stopwatch,” Webb told NPR in 2010. “And he showed me how it was impossible for me to drive from LA to Phoenix, and then how far it was to Albuquerque and then - in short, he told me, 'This song is impossible.' And so it is. It's a kind of fantasy about something I wish I would have done, and it sort of takes place in a twilight zone of reality.”

Webb reflected that part of its eventual success lay in its lyrical economy. “I think that the appeal of the song lies in its sort of succinct tale - its beginning, middle and end - and the fact that it sort of has an O. Henry-esque twist at the end, which consists merely of the guy saying, 'She didn't really think that I would go,' but he did. And, in fact, I didn't. I didn't go. I stayed for more punishment."

Having left Motown armed with the song, Webb gave it to Tony Martin, a popular crooner of the old skool pre-rock n’ roll era. He recorded a version with a florid orchestral arrangement, but for one reason or another it never came out.

Next it landed on the lap of the pop/ soul singer Johnny Rivers, who cut a version in 1965. In the end, Rivers decided to not to release the record and decided to pass it on to a talented guitarist and singer who had yet to find his niche within the industry: a well-regarded session musician called Glen Campbell.

Campbell at the time was best known as a member of the so-called Wrecking Crew, an informal group of sessioners who invariably ended up playing on the many pop hits that were made in the LA studios.

He’d played guitar on Pet Sounds and indeed had become more involved with the Beach Boys – he’d replaced Brian Wilson in the touring line-up of the band during 1964-65, before being replaced himself by Bruce Johnston.

But Campbell really hankered after a proper solo career. He’d signed to Capitol as a solo artist in 1962 but only enjoyed sporadic minor hits. Even the gift of a Brian Wilson-penned A-side Guess I’m Dumb hadn’t led to an upturn in his fortunes.

Campbell fitted the song in a way Martin and Rivers did not. A tall, stolid individual who seemed to evoke the stoic American everyman, Campbell was perfect for Phoenix, a song where so much is left unsaid for the listener to puzzle over. His version is brilliantly restrained but still full of emotion.

There’s tenderness and resignation in his voice. His delivery wins you over to the narrator’s side of this breakup – it really sounds as if this is something he had to do, painful as it may have been for them both.

Campbell’s previous single Gentle On My Mind had been a modest hit in the summer of 1967, reaching Number 62 on Billboard. Released as the follow-up that autumn, Phoenix reached Number 26, Campbell’s biggest success to date. It won him a Grammy the following year for Best Male Vocal Performance. For both him and Jimmy Webb, it represented a breakthrough. Ahead lay Wichita Lineman, Galveston and, for Campbell, mainstream fame.

The version that Campbell recorded was a succinct two minutes forty. But the following year came a cover that elongated Webb’s original piece into a piece of groundbreaking aural cinema.

Isaac Hayes’s take on By The Time I Get To Phoenix stretched out for nearly 19 minutes, including an eight-minute spoken-word introduction that gives a shout-out to Webb (“one of the great young songwriters of today”) and takes up a whole side of his 1969 album Hot Buttered Soul.

If Campbell’s version is an exercise in restraint, Hayes spills his soul out for all to witness. It’s a beautiful example of how an imaginative artist can remould something fresh out of existing material.

In an NPR interview, Hayes explained how he got the idea: “There's a local club in Memphis, primarily black, called The Tiki Club. One day there I heard this song by Glen Campbell - By the Time I Get to Phoenix. I thought, 'Wow, this song is great, this man must really love this woman.' I ran down to the studio and told them about the song, and they said 'yeah, yeah.' They didn't feel what I felt, I thought maybe they weren't getting it.”

“The Bar-Kays were playing the Tiki Club a few days later, so I told them to learn the song and that I would sit in. I told them to keep cycling the first chord, and I started talking, just telling the story about what could have happened to cause this man to leave. Halfway through the song, conversations started to subside, and by the time I finished the song, there wasn't a dry eye in the house."

There have been other covers of Phoenix – Sinatra had a go at it and indeed once described it as “the greatest torch song ever written”. Nick Cave also covered it on his 1986 album Kicking Against The Pricks. But really Campbell’s and Hayes’ are the only two worth talking about.

They show that a song only truly becomes great once it meets the right interpreter, someone who can make you believe they really have lived the heartache of the lyrics.

Spare a thought for Lizzo. Her fifth album, Bitch, only came out three weeks ago and it’s already been branded a flop, and the subject of a feature in Rolling Stone that ponders what exactly went wrong?

The numbers don’t lie. Bitch only sold 2,649 copies in its first week and racked up just under 2.7 million streams. The next week saw a dramatic falling off – just 650 units and 900,000 streams. Whereas her previous album, 2022’s Special, debuted at Number Two on Billboard, Bitch has missed the chart entirely.

It’s a similar story in the UK. None of Bitch’s singles have reached the Top 100. Neither has the album.

Speaking to the Swiftologist Proto Pop podcast about the album's disappointing numbers, Lizzo said: “I was so excited, 'cause I met my pre-saves goal, and then it dropped, and I was like, ‘Oh, OK, this isn't what I thought it would be. I didn't think it would be crazy, but I also didn't think it would be this. And I think that there was 24 hours of my life where I based my success and my worth on a number. And I think that was soul-crushing.”

Rolling Stone doesn’t pinpoint a single reason for this spectacular descent in popularity, but one anonymous label executive suggests she never really had a core fanbase. "She was a very song-driven, radio-hits-driven artist who lacked a core fanbase, and that’s what you need today for career longevity,” is their thinking.

Lizzo herself said in a post on Twitter/X that she thinks it might be the decline in popularity of radio in the US. “The industry changed so much in the last 3 yrs streaming replaced radio & I was a radio darling. That’s how my fans discovered my music.”

Industry pundit Ray Daniels, charmingly, describes Lizzo’s excuse as “all BS to me... If you know that the industry is changing, you should be warning your fans ahead of time. Why are you not telling your fans to request your song on radio? They’re your fans, they’ll do what you ask them to do.”

Perhaps her fans aren’t quite so fervent any more? Lizzo has had a few PR problems in the last few years. She has been accused of sexual harassment and creating ‘a hostile work environment’ by former backing dancers.

“A big part of her brand was being the underdog and being very self-confident, I am who I am, I support everyone, body positivity,” the anonymous label executive suggested. “And when you’re called to task for the mistreatment of exactly what you held out as being your, quote-unquote, brand, then fans don’t wanna see you win anymore, and they desert you.”

Lizzo has alleged a lack of support from her label, Warners. This may have some truth to it, in that the team at the label who signed her has changed. “It was a fluke, her blowing up,” an anonymous ‘veteran’ industry executive interviewed by the magazine says. “Nobody went and put millions of dollars behind her.”

“She is positioned to really be more successful than a lot of artists, so it is baffling,” they continued. “But it also shows you a classic industry underbelly fact, which is that the music industry does not care about its legacy artists at all, actually. If you fall off, you’re literally like nothing to your labels, or to anything.”

So is it all over for the 38-year-old singer and rapper? Not necessarily. “I think there’s always hope for every artist. A hit cures all,” the ‘veteran’ exec says.

“I don’t think she’s done at all,” Daniels adds. “This is just a moment to remind her that she still has work to do.”

Pop stars talk a lot about ‘world building’ these days, so it seems fitting that Olivia Rodrigo is now taking this concept to the next level by releasing her own range of five LEGO sets.

This LEGO Editions collection takes inspiration from songs, symbols and moments from throughout Rodrigo’s career, referencing all three of her albums (Sour, Guts and the newly-released You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love). Each of the five minifigures showcases a different Rodrigo look and a choice of two facial expressions, and there are numerous easter eggs for in-the-know fans to discover.

This is the first time that any artist has been honoured with multiple LEGO sets, and Rodrigo has confirmed that she was heavily involved in their creation.

“I’ve always loved hiding little details and meanings in my music and videos, so working with the LEGO team to bring something that fans can actually build and explore together has been so exciting,” she says. “There are so many pieces of my world inside these sets – little nods to songs, memories, outfits and moments that mean a lot to me.”

The highlight of the new range has got to be the purple Dual Guitar ($120/£110/€120) – “a split acoustic-and-electric guitar design that celebrates the two sides of Olivia’s artistry”. Nodding to the custom purple Music Man St Vincent Goldie signature model she’s played on stage, this 1228-piece set draws inspiration from the Guts world tour and other iconic Rodrigo performances, and opens up to reveal hidden stage scenes, backstage details and secret storage compartments.

Guts world tour goers will also recognise the Concert Moon set ($50/£45/€50), which showcases the lunar object that Rodrigo rode on above the audience at her shows. This 670-piece set features hidden drawers, picture holders and concert-inspired details.

There’s also a 360-piece Vinyl display set ($35/€30) that references all three of Rodrigo’s albums, a bumper 1085-piece Secret Storage set ($80/£70/€80) and a 400-piece LEGO Botanicals Flower Bouquet ($50/€45).

The full Olivia Rodrigo collection will launch on 1 August on the LEGO website, but the Dual Guitar, Concert Moon and Flower Bouquet are available for pre-order now.

Sean Ono Lennon has sat down for a full-length interview with Rick Beato, in which he talks about creativity, music in general and, inevitably, his two parents.

It’s hard to believe, but the toddler who was hymned on his dad’s final album as Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) is now 50 years old and, with his long tresses and beard, looks the spit of his old man circa 1969.

At one point Lennon talks about how as an artist himself, he’s drawn to dark, dissonant music and how possibly that’s because of one particular song of his dad’s: “I’ve always had a love of that and I think it’s because of I Want You (She’s So Heavy) – that really impacted me a lot as a kid. I've really wondered where it came from, you know. It's so unprecedented at that time. In a way I think of it like the first really heavy riff. It’s so sophisticated and unlike anything else he wrote otherwise.”

He goes on to talk about another Abbey Road song: Because. “I know where that one came from, because the famous story is that my mom was playing Moonlight Sonata, and he and my dad said, 'Wait, stop, can you play those chords backwards or maybe write them down for me?' And she did, and that was sort of the basis of Because... And that is true. I mean, according to my mom."

At one point Beato asks Lennon about the Beatles' incredible work rate – where did they find the time to write all those songs? "Yeah, the amount of productivity is shocking, because it's two records a year, for eight years… Obviously it’s shocking and it’s unprecedented and inexplicable.”

“But, I’ve thought about it a lot and you know, really, on some records my dad just wrote Walrus for Magical Mystery Tour. That’s one song in six months. Paul and he had each other and then George wrote a song so you know they could go in with three, four songs per record, so it's not like today where they had to write 10 songs and also today some records have 15, 20 songs because of CDs. They were shorter records – they were 30-minute records and they split up the songwriting.”

He also talked about his (very) catholic music taste. “I always felt like I liked something at least from every genre, because there’s always something amazing. I can’t even think of a genre that I really don’t like, maybe some obscure EDM genres that I’m not into.”

“I really like a lot of music from India, Turkey, from the Middle Ages… psyche bands from Greece from the 1970s. I have a lot of Ethiopian jazz. And I’m a bit prog fan.” (That's not that much of a surprise since one of Lennon’s many projects is his collaboration with Primus man Les Claypool, the wonderfully titled Claypool Lennon Delirium.)

This week sees the release of Confessions II, Madonna’s new album and a spiritual sequel to Confessions on a Dance Floor, the 2005 long-player that she made with producer Stuart Price.

Price is back this time, too, and has been talking to The Times about his working relationship with Madonna, which began when he ended up joining her touring band in 2001 as keyboard player and musical director on the Drowned tour

This might not have happened, though; Price says that he was initially intimidated by the “incredible musicians with an array of gear” that he encountered when all he had was a monosynth that “only makes one sound at a time”.

In fact, such was the level of Price’s imposter syndrome that he raised doubts about his suitability for the role.

“I’m from dance music – there’s nothing wrong with staying on one note for six minutes as long as it’s a really good note,” he argues. “So I said to her: ‘I don’t think I’m the right person to do this.’

Rather than accept that he was a bad fit, though, Madonna supported Price’s musical vision. “She reconfigured the whole setup on the basis of that comment. Instead of going back to my parents’ house in Reading, I ended up staying and she made me musical director of the Drowned world tour. So our relationship is ultimately based on honesty.”

It sounds like this high level of trust helps when the pair are in the studio together, too. “You always tackle a problem with a solution,” is Price’s diplomatic answer when asked if he and Madonna ever disagree. “When you have faith in your writing partner, the whole thing becomes pleasant.”

So pleasant, in fact, that Price describes their sessions “like being in a school band,” with both parties feeling able to be themselves. “Madonna will say, ‘I think I have something,’ and what comes out is not calculated, it’s just unquestionably her.”

The biggest hit from the original Confessions on a Dance Floor, of course, was the ABBA-sampling Hung Up, and Price previously spoke about the origins of that record to Music Week.

“Madonna was doing a movie at the time with Luc Besson, that didn’t materialise, which was going to feature music from different generations – a punk rock era, a ’20s era, and a disco era. So she asked, “Do you have anything that is like ABBA at Studio 54?” Originally, I said no.

“However, six months beforehand, I had a DJing residency at a club in Liverpool called The Masque, at the Chibuku Shake Shake night. One night, I was coming back from Chibuku, it was 5am on the M1, I was falling asleep – I wasn’t driving! – and Radio 2 was on. Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! started playing, and in that dream state I thought, ‘Wow, that would be a really good sample for a song.’

“So just before I went up to play Chibuku again, I quickly hacked the sample into a track that I could play in my DJ set. It was immediate – the whole room felt pretty special. I played it for the next couple of months, but like most DJs, I wore out my records and moved on. So when Madonna mentioned ABBA, I suddenly went, ‘Well, there is one thing…’

“I played her the track, she listened intently, then she just opened her mouth and sang: ‘Every little thing that you say or do, I’m hung up, I’m hung up on you…’ It really happened that quickly. We were in the studio, which was in the attic of my flat in Maida Vale, so I recorded her. Subsequently, the production took some work, but the whole thing about making Confessions On A Dance Floor was that it was such fun. Hung Up really set the tone for that album. In her brilliantly instinctive way, Madonna just pivoted, and instead of doing the movie with loads of sections, she went, ‘We’re going to make a dance record!’”

Confessions II is released on Friday, 3 July.

In the wake of his death, much has been written this week about Clive Davis’s ability to identify a hit when he heard it, but even legendary talent-spotters get it wrong sometimes.

Such was the case with '70s soft-rock outfit Player, and a 1977 song of theirs that would end up topping the US Billboard Hot 100 chart for three consecutive weeks. Prior to this, Davis had the chance to sign the band and release said song, but he elected to pass.

We’re talking about Baby Come Back, the soulful lead single from Player’s eponymous debut album. Written by guitarist/vocalist Peter Beckett and keyboard player JC Crowley, the band’s founding members, it sounds like the epitome of smooth west coast pop, but the song’s road to the top was actually rather rocky.

Born in Liverpool, Beckett moved to LA in 1974 to try and make it as an artist and songwriter, but he wasn’t having much luck. With money running out, he was eventually invited up to a party in the Hollywood Hills, where he met and bonded with Crowley.

Speaking to the Rock History Music channel on YouTube, Beckett said: “He was totally different to me – he was a Texan country singer and I was a Liverpool rocker – but we got on great, and so a couple of days later we got together and started writing in his garage. We wrote a handful of songs which we eventually started hawking around the producers in LA without much success.”

That was about to change, though: “One afternoon [Crowley] started plonking around on this chord and we started just writing a verse around it,” says Beckett. “By the end of that day we had the verses basically, with some of the words.”

The seeds of a hit record had been sown: “Second day he came to my place and we worked on it some more,” Beckett recalls. “Overnight I had come up with Baby Come Back, the title. We were looking for something that went [sings Baby Come Back chorus hook melody] because we had the tune, we had the chords and it just came into my head. It’s like a trumpet blast.”

With the verses and chorus sorted, Beckett then had an idea for a bridge.

“I always loved the Righteous Brothers and I said, ‘What if we do a bridge where you sing a line and I do like the Bobby Hatfield part, the high part?’ We just put it in there, and it worked. I think that has a lot to do with why the song was a hit.”

Beckett and Crowley now had to find a way of getting the song released, and they managed to arrange a showcase for a man who definitely had the ability to make that happen.

“We had that song and we went to the Beverly Hilton Hotel – which is Hotel California, by the way – and we're in the ballroom to play to Clive Davis,” says Beckett. “And by then we had the rest of the guys who were gonna become Player, and we were on this stage in the ballroom just sitting on stools, Pignose amp for the bass and just acoustic guitars.

“Clive Davis came in, sat in the front. He's the only guy in there, you know – he's sitting like this with his arms folded, in a suit, you know, ‘impress me’ – and so we started playing and we played a couple of songs and then we thought, ‘We got it now when we do Baby Come Back’. And we did Baby Come Back and he goes ‘Yeah… you guys look good, you sound good, but I don’t hear a hit,’ and so that was the end of our chances with Clive Davis.”

To be fair to Davis, he wasn’t the only one who didn’t hear the song’s potential. Recalling another showcase, Beckett says: “We did about five songs, and then I walked up to the mic. There's about 30 people in there at the back of the room and I just felt something come over me and I said, ‘Now we're gonna do our first number one record. It's called Baby Come Back – hope you like it.”

According to Beckett, even this didn’t do the trick, but the breakthrough did come when he and Crowley were sitting in the offices of some other record company executives. They played a few songs and didn’t get much of a reaction, but then they put on Baby Come Back.

“Everything changed,” says Beckett. “Before that it was like ‘Yeah, nice. You guys look good, nice songs,’ and then when we threw that in the mix it was just like, mouths dropped, silence for a few seconds.”

This opened the door to meeting with Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter, who could eventually produce Baby Come Back. “They said, ‘I think that song’s a hit,’” remembers Beckett.

It was Lambert and Potter who then played the song to another industry heavyweight, RSO records co-founder Al Coury.

“He fell in love with it and the rest is history,” says Beckett.

History may have been slightly different, of course, if Clive Davis hadn’t passed on the record, but the fact that Player could never quite repeat the trick may have made Baby Come Back’s eventual success a slightly less tough pill to swallow.

The song has certainly stood the test of time, though, and continues to pick up new generations of fans thanks to its presence in film and TV and on social media.

In fact, Baby Come Back is just about to get a limited edition reissue as a vinyl single (just 1,000 copies will be pressed) so if you want to hear it just like people did almost 50 years ago, now's your chance.

The single will be available on Fontana Records from 28 August.

Sombr has been reflecting on the experience of being asked by Taylor Swift to perform two of her songs at her Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony earlier this month.

To begin with, the singer-songwriter says that he was both surprised and delighted to be asked.

“It was crazy,” he told Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show. “I mean, it was really her night, and she wanted me, out of all the people she could have asked, to perform two songs to help induct her.”

Asked by Fallon if the songs he sang were given to him or were his choices, Sombr said that he had free rein.

“So, basically I was like, ‘Taylor, what songs do you want me to sing? You know, this is your night.’ And she was like, ‘No, you choose.’ So I was like, ‘Seriously?’ So that really put the pressure on – she has such a vast discography of so many hits.

“So, I went through, I picked two songs, and I suggested them to her and she was like, ‘Perfect.’ So, I was like, ‘OK.’”

Sombr says that Dear John and Cardigan, the songs in question, are two of his favourite Taylor tunes, and Swift has also been very complimentary about his music in the past.

In fact, Fallon read Sombr something that Swift previously said about him: "His writing is so exceptional that it makes me actually envious. He's going to be the top of my Spotify Wrapped this year, guaranteed. Sombr is the future."

Looking slightly sheepish, Sombr responded by saying, “I'm so grateful for her. That's really such an honour.”

Of course, given that he was appearing on a talk show, Sombr also had something of his own to promote, and that something is a new single, My Body Isn’t Ready, which he talked about and then performed.

“This song I wrote about something I've been struggling with my whole life, which is issues with my body image,” he explained. “I feel like, growing up, feeling like I look different from the other kids in school, I always wanted a song that talked about that. So I just made it, first of all, to express myself, but to also have a song for anyone who struggles with their body image to know they're not alone.”