"I don't think I respected older people; if they didn't say anything I just thought they were boring. Now that I'm a 40-year-old, I'm not saying anything because I have so many experiences that make me quiet, there are certain reasons that make me not talk" - interesting thing to say for somebody who makes […]
"I occupy a space which is straight-up between experimental jazz music and these high-level pop sessions" - rising multi-instrumental virtuoso, songwriter and producer Nate Mercereau tells in a PopMatters interview about his debut album 'Joy Techniques', out now. He has played electric guitar for Lizzo, co-wrote with Shawn Mendes, worked with Sheila E. and Jay-Z, and on […]
“Sometimes I don’t understand why I’m not bigger than I am. I feel very comfortable in my section of pop. I’m beginning to feel like the people who know, know. And the people who don’t? They wouldn’t get it anyway” - pop singer Charli XCX says in a big Pitchfork feature. She is preparing a […]
“My father told me to stop wasting my time. I should be busy looking after the cows" - Fatou Seidi Ghali, the first female Tuareg guitarist, says in Guardian interview, about her beginnings in music. She started playing at age 10, on her brother's guitar, secretly, so nobody would know, and now at age 20-something […]
“I’m not necessarily the most educated on how to do things, but I definitely have the ideas to execute” - young, self-made artist Clairo says to the NME in their "Big Read". The English believe the lo-fi American is the next big thing, and they're most probably quite right. They put her in space where […]
"I never would have thought I'd be in this heavy of a musical situation. But what I continue to be drawn to is high drama, I'm interested in the process of creating high drama with music" - the former Faith No More keyboardist Roddy Bottum tells in an interview with All Music about his new […]
American DJ Seth Troxler first arrived in Ibiza 10 years ago and since then the Spanish party island has "changed drastically", he says in Billboard interview. "The tourist board here in Ibiza has made a conscious decision to change the image of the island and shift the demographic towards families and holistic living... Ibiza before was […]
Catchy, smart, delicious, anthemic country gold - big words from Rolling Stone about The Highwomen's first single 'Redesigning Women' (watch below). It's an all-female country supergroup - Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, Amanda Shires, and Natalie Hemby - that is ready to challenge Nashville and country radio’s gender barriers with their self-titled debut LP, Rolling Stone […]
"I feel like an elephant mama. An elephant gestation period is around 18 months—I feel like I’ve been carrying this baby for a long time" - rapper Olu from Atlanta duo EarthGang tells Pitchfork in an interview about their first major label album 'Mirrorland', out later this year. They have released several independent records and […]
"Part of what makes the score work the way it does is the sharp contrast it has with the pop music" - composer Ben Frost tells the Quietus about the soundtrack he wrote for the German series 'Dark'. "Part of the reason the series is so effective in its handling of a narrative that could […]
"It was my body and mind telling me I shouldn’t go anywhere, that I couldn’t do anything. It was telling me to just wait, so I literally just sat and waited. I was agoraphobic from around 2006 to 2009. Those years were just spent wearing a cashmere kaftan, eating Kettle Chips, growing a beard and […]
"Music should reflect the pain and happiness of your culture", the aim is to be “authentic and original" - Turkish psych-folk-rock singer and songwriter Gaye Su Akyol tells in the Guardian interview, as she takes London's journalist through the streets of Istanbul. Her music image may be pop, but the music veers from dark, brooding […]
"Gay culture isn’t just one sliver of humanity – it’s a huge cross-section of people" - british singer kd Lang tells the Guardian about her influence on others to live openly who they really are. “I grew up with the adage that there is a wealth of purpose in being mysterious. And I feel like […]
“I wasn’t into the things girls were into, but I hated sports, or playing with GI Joe. I always identified with the word kid more than girl or boy” - pop performer Dorian Electra says in Guardian interview (liberal London paper call Electra "they"). Electra was born as a girl (Dorian Electra are real names, […]
American singer and poet Lydia Lunch has a new book So Real It Hurts, about everything from violent feminist revenge fantasies to diatribes on pollution and politics. The anthology “was rejected by 26 American publishers – and I’m quite happy to say that. I wanted that stamped on the front cover, actually”, she told Guardian. When […]
Malian musician Oumou Sangaré, the "Songbird of Wassoulou music" made a list of her 13 favourite albums for the Quietus. It's a list made mostly of relatively unknown African music, and interesting, worth checking out, and some well known names. It goes from Miriam Makeba ("exemplary, a woman fighting to change things that were unjust […]
"I have a girlfriend, our singer I actually met through my best friend, they were dating at the time. My co-producer, he's a coder in his day job. Our guitar player's a teacher" - Emo of the Californian band Emotional Oranges tells BBC about their hidden identities. It's not like their faces are hidden, like […]
"If critics were harder on the musicians that they love, there would be better songs. But as they grow older and they lose their talent, critics refuse to let them know that and protect them" David Berman says in a rare interview with Aquarium Drunkard. "It must be very strange to live in the world […]
“The therapy of ‘I don’t want to write a bunch of songs. I want to just make noise’ was great and I found myself immersing myself in old musique concrète and all this anti-music and it was great. I loved it” - Thom Yorke says in a new interview on Apple Music’s Beats 1 about […]
'Yesterday' is a Beatles movie without the Beatles, with Beatles songs that aren't theirs. It's directed by Danny Boyle ('Trainspotting', 'Slumdog Millionaire') and co-written by Richard Curtis ('Four Weddings and a Funeral', 'Love Actually', 'Notting Hill', and 'Bridget Jones’s Diary'), and the basic plot is about a struggling singer who finds fame singing Beatles songs […]
"Let it burn and let it all fall" - Sudanese musician MaMan says about his new song, made after the Khartoum massacre when military put a violent end to month lond protests in Sudan. Demonstrations have subsided since and the authorities shut down the internet to stop protesters mobilising. The BBC talked to MaMan about […]
Matthew Murphy of the Wombats gathered a new collective, Love Fame Tragedy, with his famous friends - Joey Santiago of the Pixies, Pearl Jam drummer Matt Chamberlain, and Gus Unger-Hamilton of Alt-J - and made an EP 'I Don't Want to Play the Victim, But I'm Really Good at It', last year. This year they […]
"Some of my fans don't want me to discuss politics in my songs, which makes me want to discuss politics in my songs even more" - Americana singer-songwriter Eilen Jewell says in a PopMatters interview. She has a new single, 'Crawl' (listen to it below), and a new album 'Gypsy', which were heavily influenced by […]
American country singer Maren Morris says women in her genre are offered two paths - "You've either got to be this religious, virginal conservative, or the wronged woman burning the house down", as she tells BBC. What did she do about it? She made an album 'Girl' where she is "confident and sexy and sexual", […]
"I don’t think the next few generations of women are fucking about. They’re much more switched on than my generation were. They’re not going to take this sitting down” - Garbage's Shirley Manson says in an interview with the NME about changes in abortion law in USA. But she's optimistic: "I believe wholeheartedly in evolution. […]
“We’re trying to pick some ones we haven’t done in recent years, stuff we haven’t done before Most of the time people don’t want too much unusual. People like a little bit unusual" Mick Jagger says in his first interview after the heart surgery. The Rolling Stones had to postpone their summer tour (kicks of June 21 […]
"Imagine making a David Bowie biopic and stopping before 'Space Oddity', and it's just his early hippie stuff. That's exactly what we did in this one" - screenwriter Michael Idov tells All Music about his new movie biopic 'Leto' ("summer" in Russian) about Viktor Tsoi, charismatic leader of Russian 1980s rock band Kino. The movie, Idov […]
"David Berman became a cult hero singer-songwriter largely because he never said much, making his public expiation all the more startling. Silver Jews did not tour. He did not grant interviews. He didn't even let his record label take out ads to promote Silver Jews albums. It was as a lyricist that Berman attained his […]
Tal Wilkenfeld is a bassist and singer/songwriter who has performed with Jeff Beck, Prince, Eric Clapton, Herbie Hancock, Mick Jagger and Leonard Cohen for more than a decade, and this year she published her vocal debut album. Playing with all these musicians learned her to "just stick with your own instincts and intuition", she tells […]
Swedish singer Jonna Lee thought she was gonna lose her voice, due to medical issues, so she was hastily making her album, and asked fans to crowdfund her tour. They funded it in five days (she expected it would last a month), and when she returned from the tour she was inspired to write a […]
