Music

Music

It's hard to imagine anyone's heart not being lifted a little by Right Back Where We Started From: the euphoric rush of new love rendered into three minutes of cod-northern soul (performed, unexpectedly, by various ex members of ELO, the Animals and 60s soft-poppers Honeybus). Avoid the 80s cover by Sinitta at all costs. A song about fresh starts for anyone who's made a new year resolution with no intention of sticking to it.

Of our 20 predictions for this past year, only two have definitively come true: one great ( Beyoncé won album of the year !) and one terrible (a Jared Leto exposé finally dropped -not that it appears to have really affected him at all ). A couple of others remain possibly true ( Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck have been seen together a number of times in recent months); some were obviously wishful thinking ( Marcello Hernández movie vehicle when??); and some were flat-out wrong ( Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco didn't break up, they got married!).

Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) is best remembered now as a hugely influential teacher, who spread the gospel of neoclassicism through several generations of composers on both sides of the Atlantic. She was also a conductor and organist, and at the beginning of her career, at least, had ambitions as a composer in her own right, which she largely abandoned in the early 1920s some years after the deaths of both her enormously talented younger sister Lili, and her mentor, the pianist and composer Raoul Pugno.

I'm a year-round listener of "Auld Lang Syne," the Scottish folk song about distanced friends catching up over a few pints, so the countdown to the new year is my time to shine. When the clocks strike midnight on Wednesday, I hope millions more will also be belting this New Year's Eve anthem at the top of our lungs, from beginning to end (or at least the pieces you can remember and/or pronounce). But I also need everyone to know

Seventeen years on from the release of her debut single, Florence Welch finds herself in an intriguingly strong position: while most of her early 00s indie peers are forgotten or in reduced circumstances, she is a major influence on pop, from Ethel Cain to the Last Dinner Party to Chappell Roan. Her recent album Everybody Scream was a strong restatement of her theatrical approach with more light and shade than you might expect but it's on stage that she really comes into her own.

Role Model went viral for his song, "Sally, When the Wine Runs Out," largely because of its earworm bridge during which he screams to the crowd, "Where's my Sally tonight?!" and brings a fan onstage to dance around with him. As the song blew up over the summer, Sally became less a fan moment and more a celebrity guest appearance moment, with Natalie Portman, Hilary Duff, Bowen Yang, Olivia Rodrigo, Lewis Capaldi, Charli xcx, and Kate Hudson, among others, all getting a moment to be "Sally".

The prehistory of drone music begins with the recognition of sound as a temporal event. In ritual, chant and natural acoustics, drones mark ambience and continuity. Ancient instruments such as horns and bells produce extended vibrations that transform time into a perceptual field, and this stretching of temporal experience is as much social as musical. These instruments and others have proliferated into the rhythms of the human world.

Every playoff game should be played every single weekend until you finish the season. Even if it means we start Week 0 or you eliminate a bye, the season ends Jan. 1, and then the portal opens, then coaches that have to move on to their next opportunities get to move to their next opportunities.

Despite the fact that she was wearing a helmet, Amy was knocked unconscious for 10 minutes. It left her with memory loss and also caused a cyst in her throat that she hadn't known about to go into "hypergrowth," she says. The singer, who will perform at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast next month and whose hits include Simple Things, Takes A Little Time and Lucky One, later had five-hour surgery to have the cyst removed, during which doctors cut open her throat.

At 13, I was like, if I could ever hang out with Skrillex, my life would be complete, he says, sipping a pilsner on an icy day in Washington DC. Then by 15, I'm doing it. Enticed by the sugar rush of America's booming EDM scene, and armed with little more than a Soundcloud account, a knack for knocking out zeitgeisty bootlegs and a little teenage bravado, this kid from Bethesda a comfy suburb north-west of the US capital was suddenly opening for Diplo.

Locals are invited to relive and reload on the glory daze of 2010-2020 dance floor bangers, when "woke" still meant being on the right side of the fight. A throwback hip hop, rap tribute dance party. DJ Romeo and friends will be dropping tracks from Beyonce (before she went country), Kanye (before he went anti-woke), and Rihanna (when she was still a best-selling artist).

Podcasts have devastated my relationship to music. Confirmation of that sad fact came earlier this month in the form of my Spotify "Wrapped," the streaming service's personalized report of what I listened to this year, including a playlist of my top songs. In the past, this annual playlist supplied a loop of sonic pleasure, propelling me through workouts, dinner preps, and hours-long commutes. This year, I haven't even opened it.

We are here to announce that we have come together one last time to resolve our differences, so that the legacy of Jane's Addiction will remain the work the four of us created together. We now look forward to the future as we embark on our separate musical and creative endeavors. Jane's Addiction will forever live in our hearts.

In 2025, we crammed rap and rock legends, instrumental virtuosos, Broadway musicals and, well, puppets and robots behind a desk in the NPR Music office. Never forget: Tiny Desk has the range. We published 115 (!) concerts this year. There's no way to encompass the scope of such a stellar and diverse roster Bad Bunny! Living Colour! Wiz Khalifa! PinkPantheress! so we asked the team that produces, films, engineers and edits these videos to share their favorite Tiny Desks of 2025, yearbook superlative style.

"This system will take your ancestral traditions and twist 'em indigenous", raps billy woods on "Make No Mistake" from Golliwog. Raising questions about where the boundaries of tradition are drawn, that line seems to get longer through repeat listens. Time doesn't move sequentially on Golliwog. The record opens with a back-spinning sample, swiftly followed by an incessant tick-tock. The tracks feel time-dilated, with warm soul, jazz and R&B instrumentation hitting disturbed beats as woods seemingly folds eras into each other.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra paid tribute to Ozzy Osbourne, performing part of Black Sabbath's "Changes" during TSO's tour finale on December 21st in Philadelphia. The group performed the partial cover as part of a mashup with the Savatage song "Sleep." Addressing the audience before the performance, the band dedicated the medley to Ozzy, as well as TSO's late producer, composer, and lyricist Paul O'Neill, who died in 2017. Watch audience footage of the performance below.

We are deeply grateful and very happy for this special moment in our history, being part of the universe of The Simpsons. For us, it's an honor that our stories continue to cross borders, cultures, and generations. When music tells stories, it can reach anywhere... even Springfield.

Tickets are on sale for concerts featuring the works of African American composers to benefit Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto. The theme for the concerts is "Hold Out for Joy: Music of Hope and Resilience by African American Composers." Composers featured in these concerts include William Grant Still, Harry Burleigh, Margaret Bonds, Betty Jackson King, Zenobia Powell Perry, Regina Baiocchi, Joshua McGhee, Valerie Capers, and Earth, Wind & Fire.

Peppa Pig is heading across the pond for a major spring tour. The children's entertainment icon has announced "My First Concert" tour, featuring performances across North America in 2026. The tour launches February 6th in Silverdale, Washington and includes more than 50 shows at theaters and performing arts centers across the United States and Canada. The concerts will feature a full orchestra performing songs from the TV show, along with sketches about the history of classical music sung by Peppa and her family.

And, I'm grateful for my work - for being able to bring music, something beautiful, into the worlds of those who are truly suffering and provide some reprieve that helps in a small way. That brings some comfort, and maybe even some joy during a joyless time. I'm grateful that I get to connect with them through the healing power of music.

Co-author Dan Rebellato, said: "The number of shows has definitely gone down, but attendances are up in 2023 compared to 2019, there's a lot of new work but most of it is new musicals." He added that the big decline was in new plays opening, with the report showing that there were 30% fewer plays opening in 2023 compared to 2019.

On Instagram and TikTok, the children of Mexican immigrants shared photos of their parents with the same trending audio: "Hasta la raíz," a song released by the Mexican artist Natalia Lafourcade in 2015, not long before Donald Trump descended his golden escalator. "It's personal because if my grandparents didn't risk their lives migrating 'Pal Norte,' I wouldn't be the first one in my family to graduate college," Grecia Lopez, a radio and TV host, wrote in an Instagram post.

When I was really little, the first worldwide superstar name I heard was Pele. I used to get a Pele book, cut out figures and put them up on my wall. He was later joined by Glenn Hoddle. I was a midfielder, believe it or not, and he was very much my hero. Dyche admits that his sense of boyhood awe quickly went away when he took his first steps in the game.

History Park's Leonard and David McKay Gallery hosts an exhibit that dives into San Jose's pivotal place in rock history. Titled South Bay Flashback: Riffs, Rhythms, and Revolution, the display features '60s rock posters from concerts that shaped the era. Icons like Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Airplane performed here, laying groundwork for cultural shifts that extended beyond music into technology and innovation.

As you probably know, earlier this month, Taylor Swift lifted the lid on her record-breaking Eras Tour in a docuseries for Disney+ called The End of an Era. The six-episode series took viewers behind the scenes of the star's mammoth 149-date, 21-month tour, which was widely lauded as both a cultural phenomenon and a huge career milestone for Taylor.

Towards the end of Tether, there is a song called Silk and Velvet; its sound is characteristic of Annahstasia's debut album. Fingerpicked acoustic guitar and her extraordinary vocals husky, expressive, elegant are front and centre. The arrangement is subtle but not drearily tasteful: arching noise that could be feedback or a distorted pedal steel guitar, which gradually swells into something climactic before dying away.