Music

They only met once in person. August 1965. The Beatles were at the absolute peak of their first wave of fame — freshly arrived in America, still slightly disbelieving that any of this was real — and Elvis Presley invited them to his house in Bel Air. It was the meeting of two worlds, two … Read more

Paul Simon is one of the greatest lyricists the twentieth century produced. That is not a controversial statement. It is simply what the evidence shows — album after album of writing so precise, so emotionally intelligent, so perfectly calibrated between the specific and the universal, that generations of listeners have heard his songs and felt … Read more

David Bowie and Freddie Mercury occupied the same cultural space for years without ever quite occupying the same room. They were aware of each other — deeply, professionally, with the specific alertness that major artists have toward other major artists who are working in adjacent territory — but they maintained a careful distance for most … Read more

There is a version of Jim Morrison that the mythology has constructed — the leather-pants poet, the Dionysian shaman, the beautiful self-destructive face of a generation’s excess — and it is not entirely false. But it is incomplete in the specific way that mythologies are always incomplete: it sacrifices the complexity of the actual person … Read more

Eric Clapton has spoken about grief more honestly than almost any major rock musician of his generation. Not always in words — words were sometimes too direct, too exposed, too much — but in the specific choices he made about what to play and what not to play and what to step away from entirely … Read more

History needed a simple story and Yoko Ono was available to be the simple story. She was present. She was visible. She was different from everything the Beatles had been — Japanese, avant-garde, older, a serious conceptual artist who made demands on Lennon’s attention and time that the band resented openly. She sat in on … Read more

For decades, Sir Paul McCartney has stood among the most celebrated musicians in history. As a founding member of The Beatles and one of the most successful songwriters of all time, his legacy is beyond dispute. Yet, despite his legendary status, McCartney has not escaped criticism in recent years. Over the last decade, a growing … Read more

Metallica’s unstoppable M72 World Tour has reached another historic milestone, with the metal legends setting a new attendance record at Berlin’s iconic Olympiastadion on Saturday, 30th May. The achievement marks the second time on the 2026 European leg of the tour that Metallica have broken a venue attendance record. Earlier this month, the band drew … Read more