Music

Music

"I had been sitting on all of this music long enough that there was like a tiny man in my soul beating down the door of my soul," Hobert, 26, said on a recent rainy morning at Swingers Diner in Hollywood. This week, the L.A. native sets out on her Staircase to Stardom tour across North America, Europe and Australia. Intimate venues will see her perform from her debut album, "Who's the Clown?," released via RCA Records in August.

We all came from, I mean, pretty humble beginnings. At a certain point you realize, like, hey, you know, we're selling tickets, we're doing well, the ship's not sinking. What can we do to make people's lives better?

It's right there in the title of the first track, "Vegetation Grows Thick," whose textures feel like mutant organic tissue. With dusty hip-hop drums straightened out and sped up, it feels a bit like an old Mo' Wax record left in a damp attic until it grew mold in its grooves-humid, buzzed, and a little blissed-out in its spongy transformation. It's a head rush grounded in the earth, electronics running through soil and sending messages to god knows where.

The festival announced Gorillaz for the top slot and Ireland's very own Fontaines D.C will take the Sunday night headline slot. And the iconic lineup continues with Irish star CMAT joining the headliners, along with the following acts: Sombr, Zara Larsson, Skepta, Wunderhorse, Role Model and Geese. Electric Picnic will take place from August 28 to August next year and tickets sold out within 90 minutes of going on sale.

"I remember seeing him walk into this room and saying: 'God, you look amazing, Liam. What have you done?' Cowell said from his London home. "'Well, I'm going to the gym' and blah, blah, blah. We talked about his son and how much it means to be a dad. And I was talking to him about there's more to life than just music; you've got to a point in your life where you've got choice now, etc. We just hung out as friends."

Much to the delight of dead-eyed, toothy-grinned CEOs, AI is steadily coiling around the music industry's throat. It's ubiquitous: Hip-hop producers are turning computer-concocted samples into viral sensations, record labels are licensing their catalogs to companies like Klay and Udio, and data-center slop is topping the country charts. It's so woven into our reality, it wouldn't be surprising to see a troupe of brewery chooglers cover a Velvet Sundown song sometime soon.

Paddington the Musical, which features new songs by McFly's Tom Fletcher, follows the beloved bear as he arrives in London and is taken in by the Brown family. The Guardian's five-star review said the show is "imaginatively staged, immaculately performed and utterly winning", while the Telegraph described it as a "funny, feel-good, family-friendly musical that looks set to run and run".

Reading and Leeds 2026 Festival will feature headline performances from British artist Raye and certified queer icon Charli XCX. It's a strong follow-up after 2025's headliner, Chappell Roan, stunned festival goers with a tour de force performance. Organisers announced that, for the first time in 25 years, the headliners are exclusively British and Irish acts. Over this year's August bank holiday weekend, Irish rockers Fontaines DC, electronic duo Chase & Status and singer Florence + The Machine will also be playing.

I've done a lot of work on myself. I've been in therapy for a long time, and I'm fascinated by my own mind in understanding who I am, but also who I am to others and how I can be better to others. It would be impossible for that not to seep into the music. I'm very interested in the concept of music as therapy, she said in an interview with Harper's Bazaar last October.

"After more than 40 years as a touring singer I've finally taken a sabbatical," Daniel told the Irish Independent.

If you want to get your hands on a physical copy of the intriguing new DC-music zine Jazz as Resistance, you could scope out local music venues, where copies will sporadically be available, and hope to get lucky. But the publication's editor, Giovanni Russonello, has a better idea: "The real answer is, write to us at the link on the site and volunteer to fold some for us. We'll send you a bunch so that you can be a part of it."

I don't know who EsDeeKid is. EsDeeKid is a Merseyside rapper who recently got his first Top 10 hit and currently holds three spots in the UK Top 40. And he looks like Timothee Chalamet? Oh yes, EsDeeKid looks like Timothee Chalamet. He looks just like Timothee Chalamet. Are you suggesting that EsDeeKid is actually Timothee Chalamet in disguise? I couldn't possibly comment on such unverified hearsay. But the entire internet could. And it is. Relentlessly.

Madison Lawrence Tabbey was scrolling through X in late October when a post from a Wicked update account caught her attention. Ariana Grande, who stars in the movies as Glinda, had just liked a meme on Instagram about never wanting to see another AI-generated image again. Grande had also purportedly blocked a fan account that had made AI edits of her.

Twin UK festivals Reading and Leeds will hold their 2026 editions on August 27-30 with mostly identical lineups, albeit with the artists playing on different days. Charli XCX, Dave, Florence + The Machine, Fontaines D.C., Chase & Status Live, and Raye are this year's headliners and both fests also have Kneecap, Geese, Skepta, Sombr, Role Model and more. Leeds has Kasabian, who aren't currently listed on Reading's poster, on its Thursday night.

Bucharest's iconic Club Guesthouse celebrates 15 years with a new documentary, If These Walls Could Talk, a film that traces the venue's evolution from a hidden house party on Traian 42 to one of Europe's most respected hubs for deep, hypnotic and long-form electronic music. The documentary blends intimate interviews with Cap, Herodot, Edward, Priku and architect Corvin Cristian with rare archive footage capturing the club's quiet rise.

The thing that carved a path for me was the UC Berkeley music department. The practice rooms were also being used by a program called the Young Musicians Program (YMP) that taught local kids. Since I was in that practice room all the time, I met teachers who were also gigging musicians in the area. I started playing with them and slowly started doing gigs.

Deezer launched " My Deezer Year 2025 " on Monday, its annual recap similar to Spotify Wrapped. By releasing early, Deezer beats other streaming music platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music, in providing an annual summary of listeners' favorite songs, artists, albums, and genres for 2025. The feature, called "My Deezer Year," offers users a detailed overview of their top tracks, top artists, favorite albums, and the amount of time spent listening to their most-played artist and their best track.

But the first I truly loved was Did I Hear You Say You Love Me, by Stevie Wonder, which I remember clearly when I was around two years old. The first single I bought I bought an iTunes single by Take 6 when I was 13. They are a six-part a cappella, gospel, jazz group, and they completely exploded my creative imagination. The song, He Never Sleeps, has the most unbelievable harmonic journey.

AVTT/PTTN, the new collaborative project from The Avett Brothers and Mike Patton, made their late-night TV debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday, November 26th with a performance of "Eternal Love." Get Avett Brothers + Mike Patton Tickets Here Ahead of performing on The Tonight Show, AVTT/PTTN made their live debut together at a mini concert as part of the Grammy Museum's "New York Evening" series, performing four tracks from their self-titled debut album, which arrived on November 14th.

Five San Jose residents are among 20 Bay Area musicians to receive a $1,000 grant from San Jose Jazz. Based in San Jose as an audio QA engineer, Dave Dolengewicz founded the Bay Area Jazz Inventors Collective and plays tenor saxophone with Ultra Combo, a video game music jazz fusion band. Jason Lewis earned his bachelor's degree in classical percussion at San Jose State University, where he's a lecturer in SJSU's Jazz Studies Department.

To make it fair, I sent both the same message: "Who wants to see Oasis with me? I can only take one of you." Of course, Charlie replied instantly, as they're his favorite band. We had a year until the concert, and Charlie spent it playing Oasis constantly. Most nights, I'd hear him belting out Oasis songs from the shower.

The legend goes that the singer Chavela Vargas and the actor Jose Alfredo Jimenez locked themselves away for three nights in Salon Tenampa, in northern Mexico City, drinking tequila and singing along to the musicians, who mingled with the patrons of the grand cantina. Many years later, on the night of Wednesday, November 19, a mariachi band begins to play one of Paquita la del Barrio's classics: Tres veces te engane (I cheated on you three times).

Born in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, Rebecca Lucy Taylor, 39, was in the duo Slow Club. After 10 years, she went solo as Self Esteem and received Mercury prize, NME and Brit nominations for her second album, 2021's Prioritise Pleasure. This year, she won the Ivor Novello Visionary award and released a book and album, both called A Complicated Woman. In March, she stars in David Hare's Teeth 'n' Smiles at the Duke of York's theatre, London. She lives in London with her partner.

La Petite Mort is not just a fragrance; it embodies the essence of Adonxs' enchanting single "Perfume." Inspired by the profound connection between scent and memory, this olfactory masterpiece manifests the invisible thread woven through emotional experiences. Recall, if you will, the soft moment you enter a perfumery, where a single whiff can awaken echoes of laughter and love.

HTRK have been making their gloomy, sensual brand of music, at the intersection of electronic pop and noise rock, for 22 years. To mark the milestone comes String of Hearts, a collection of covers and remixes featuring an all-star cast of friends and collaborators, from next-gen underground favourites like Coby Sey to fellow old-school experimentalists Liars. This brilliant, genre-agnostic record allows you to trace the breadth of the Melbourne band's shapeshifting sound, echoes of which can now be found all over underground and commercial music,

Jack White has released a live recording of his epic Thanksgiving Day halftime show featuring Eminem.

It's that time of year again - Christmas is coming and the release schedules are fattening up with every day. So it's time to watch the contenders gather on the starting line for one of the year's biggest chart races. This year, there is a wide variety of contenders - including children's favourites, charity fund raisers, daytime TV icons and Aussie pop queens, among many more. Within three weeks we'll know the winner. Until then... On your marks, get set, go!