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!
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,
"tissue paper, onionskin, gift-wrap, napkins, concert programs, and even place mats"-scraps of ballads, union songs, and protest hymns for the next generation to sing. Guthrie's prolific posthumous catalog has meant that, at the invitation of his daughter and archivist, Nora Guthrie, contemporary musicians like Billy Bragg & Wilco, Del McCoury, the Klezmatics, and the Dropkick Murphys have tried on Guthrie's unsung lyrics over the years to find that his messages of radical humanism still fit perfectly.
Thanksgiving is all about family, and Eminem made sure his was close by when he took the stage for a surprise guest appearance during Jack White's halftime show at the Lions-Packers Thanksgiving Day game. In an Instagram video shared by Eminem's daughter Hailie Jade, the rapper's grandson, Elliot Marshall McClintock, was on hand to watch his grandpa perform "'Till I Collapse" with White.
From the moment the Fugees shot to fame in the mid-90s, Prakazrel Pras Michel was discounted as an incidental member of the hip-hop superstars. He was the unremarkable New Jersey rhyme spitter by way of Brooklyn who was lucky enough to be a high school classmate of the mesmerizing Lauryn Hill and a cousin to mercurial Wyclef Jean. On the group's breakout album The Score, Michel's eight-bar features were minor contributions, relative to Hill's adroitness as an emcee and balladeer and Jean's compositional polymathy.
Their guitarist Vini Reilly was so poleaxed by depression that he was virtually unable to leave his house: 12 different attempts were made to section him over the course of 1979. Believing that Reilly was going to die, Factory Records boss Tony Wilson intervened, buying him a new guitar, then suggested he visit a studio with the label's troubled but visionary producer Martin Hannett as an experiment.
Last night, De La Soul were the musical guests on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where they played two tracks from their new album, Cabin in the Sky. After leading the crowd through a chant, Posdnuos rapped his way through "Run It Back!!," while Maseo oversaw the production boards. A horn section then walked onstage to segue into " The Package," with De La Soul and the instrumentalists moving side to side in tandem. They also gestured to the side screen at one point to let the late Trugoy 's verse play on its own. Watch a replay of the performance below.
It is with deep sorrow that we share that on the morning of November 25, 2025, Ethan Browne, the son of Jackson Browne and Phyllis Major, was found unresponsive in his home and has passed away. We ask for privacy and respect for the family during this difficult time. No further details are available at this moment.
The Abba Voyage show is set to head across the pond show after becoming a roaring success in the capital. The show has been in East London for the past three and a half years and is still selling out week after week. And now, thanks to the success of the concert, they will be taking the show stateside. Bosses want to take the digital concert's residency to New York, after talks for launching it in Las Vegas stalled.
Like all binaries, these overlap: there's a folkish element in almost all classical music - at least, all the classical music that's worth listening to - and every musical element we crown with the term "classical" (counterpoint, formal structure, broadly speaking the "intellectual" layer) is present to some degree in the various folk traditions. These two instincts, which we might as well call Apollonian and Dionysian, create in their eternal dance all art and perhaps all life.
On social media, keen-eyed music fans believe they have spotted a pattern in Spotify Wrapped's recent release dates. And their prediction suggests that there's not much longer to wait. Last year, Spotify Wrapped was launched on December 4, while the annual recap came on November 29 in 2023 and November 30 in 2022. If the music streaming giant sticks to its past pattern, that could mean there are only days before users get to look back on their year in music.
It's impossible not to be thankful for Kpop Demon Hunters; they're slaying the demons for us through song! For their Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade debut, Ejae, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami, the singing voices of Huntrix, performed their no. 1 hit "Golden" while wearing cozy snowsuits with nods to their characters; Ejae had a bright purple headband for Rumi, Nuna had two framing pieces for her hair, and Ami had earmuffs performing as her hairbuns.
For decades, musical performances and other non-religious public gatherings were strictly controlled by the Saudi government. This practically confined most forms of public cultural expression, especially music, to the privacy of homes and gated communities. By 2016, the country witnessed wholesale social, cultural, and economic transformations to wean off religious extremism, improve the quality of life, and attract foreign investment.
Over the past quarter of a century the Australian Chamber Orchestra has become a regular visitor to Europe, establishing itself as one of the world's foremost chamber bands. The group was founded in 1975, and this pairing of perhaps the two greatest violin concertos in the repertory is being released to mark the ACO's 50th birthday. The soloist and conductor in both works is Richard Tognetti, who has been the orchestra's leader and artistic director for the past 35 years.
In the famous words of Sister Catherine Rose Holzman-one of the nuns who went to legal battle with Katy Perry over her purchase of their 8-acre convent-"Katy Perry, please stop." Perry has earned herself a reputation for purchasing property from elderly people who did not want to or did not mean to sell it. This has technically only happened twice, but both legal battles have
Robert Kyncl, the chief executive of Warner Music Group, said the deal showed that artificial intelligence could be pro-artist when it is licensed to reflect the value of music. This landmark pact with Suno is a victory for the creative community that benefits everyone, he said. With Suno rapidly scaling, both in users and monetisation, we've seized this opportunity to shape models that expand revenue and deliver new fan experiences.
Enter for a chance to win a $100 gift certificate to Streetlight Records in San Jose or Santa Cruz. Buy, Sell, trade, new & used, CDs, LPs, tapes, videos, laserdiscs, DVDs, new releases, old releases. A definite spot for any music lover, Streetlight Records houses plenty of styles and genres of music to check out. Drawing Date for this Giveaway is Wednesday, January 7, 2026.Winners notified by email and have 48 hours to respond or forfeit. Must be 18+ to win.
How exciting for women to be present at its birth pangs, ready to help it evolve to maturity in the world of the arts. To evolve as a true and practical instrument for conveying women's inner thoughts, just as the novel did nearly two centuries ago...
I think if he'd walked in and sang that version, I'm not gonna lie, I would've gone, 'Forget it.' Seriously. Because I didn't even know he wrote the song, when I heard his version, I was like, 'Whoa.' I just don't think that would have been a great audition.
Since it was founded, just a little over a decade ago, Wisdom Teeth has traversed a gamut of styles, moving as steadily as the progress bar crawling across the waveform of a DJ mix. Early experiments in dubstep gave way to unorthodox bass music and leftfield techno; successive compilations have been dedicated to narrowly bounded experiments in the wiggly terrain around 100 BPM or the quick-stepping possibilities of the 150-170 zone.
Handel with care: There are many Messiah's to choose from this season, and we're looking forward to this one, with Director Lawrence Kohl leading the Pacific Chamber Orchestra in Handel's great oratorio. Four fine vocalists soprano Raven McMillon, alto Sara Couden, tenor Ricardo Garcia, and bass Matt Boehler are the soloists. Details: 3 p.m. Nov. 30; Bankhead Theater, Livermore; $25-$85; livermorearts.org.
Daniel Lopatin has announced a spring 2026 tour of Europe in support of his new Oneohtrix Point Never album, Tranquilizer. The shows take place in the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, England, and Switzerland, following a pair of concerts in Japan. See all of the musician's tour dates below. Lopatin released Tranquilizer, his proper follow-up to 2023's , last week. Below, watch filmmaker Elliott Elder (of Uncanny)'s newly shared visualizer for the album.
The Lemon Twigs are following up 2024's excellent A Dream is All We Know with a new 7″ single that will be out January 30 via Captured Tracks. "I've Got A Broken Heart" is pure jangly powerpop from Brian D'Addario, while b-side "Friday (I'm Gonna Love You)" is by his brother Michael D'Addario and gets just a little more psychedelic (hello electric sitar!). Both are certified earworms and you can listen below.
