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Latest music features

<p>Alan Menken: ‘I’ve been in therapy for 50 years’</p>

Disney’s Alan Menken: ‘It was terrifying recording The Little Mermaid’

The mastermind musician behind ‘Aladdin’ and ‘The Little Mermaid’ has more Oscars than anyone alive. As ‘Hercules’ the musical hits the West End, he speaks with Lydia Spencer-Elliott about his late collaborator Howard Ashman, the live-action boom, and difficult directors – ahem, Guy Ritchie

<p>Beyoncé during the first night of her Cowboy Carter tour in London</p>

Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour is a bewildering bombardment of a show

<p>Thom Rylance: ‘I’ll be in a charity shop in Wigan and I’ll get a FaceTime from Chad Kroeger out of Nickelback, and think I’ve got a weird life’</p>

Lottery Winners: ‘Robbie Williams said my biggest talent is bravery’

<p>Pulp’s ‘More’ represents not just the slaking of pent-up thirst for new music but an expansion of the mature Pulp potential – post-struggle, post-breakthrough, post-celebrity and post-drug comedown</p>

On ‘More’, Pulp pick up precisely where their imperial phase left off

Interviews

<p>‘I didn’t want anyone to think that you just grow into a new nose or you just [start] anti-ageing,’ says Montag </p>

Interview

Heidi Montag on The Hills, viral pop stardom and plastic surgery

<p>The five-piece has revolutionised the scene and have picked up some notable fans, but they’re just getting started</p>

interview

Turnstile’s Brendan Yates: ‘We never write to fill a quota of a song’

<p>Twenty One Pilots during the ‘Blurryface’ era </p>

Interview

How Twenty One Pilots became the streaming era’s biggest band

<p>Fractured family: Moon Unit Zappa and her dad Frank</p>

Interview

Moon Unit Zappa on life with Frank: ‘I was primed for subservience’

On Trend

Music Box

<p></p>

Samantha Crain is mesmerising in Music Box performance of ‘Gumshoe’

Watch Sam Ryder’s brilliant pared-back performance of single ‘OH OK’

<p>Annie DiRusso performs during a Music Box session</p>

Watch rising star Annie DiRusso’s electrifying pared-back session

New Sensations

<p>Bea Wheeler’s observational lyricism has earned her a Rising Star nomination at the prestigious songwriting ceremony, the Ivor Novello Awards (up against the already Brit-nominated Lola Young, Liang Lawrence, LULU., and Nia Smith)</p>

New Sensations

Bea and her Business: ‘I would go to label meetings alone aged 16’

<p>Samia: ‘What I’m reaching for is self-certainty’</p>

New Sensations

Singer-songwriter Samia: ‘It’s easier to be an idea than a person’

<p>Chloe Moriondo makes music for mermaids</p>

new sensations

Chloe Moriondo: ‘I’ve been embarrassed by my online past selves’

Reviews

<p>Little Simz channels white-hot rage, as well as acceptance and growth, into her sixth studio album ‘Lotus’</p>

On Lotus, Little Simz turns self-doubt into one of her best albums

<p>Pulp’s ‘More’ represents not just the slaking of pent-up thirst for new music but an expansion of the mature Pulp potential – post-struggle, post-breakthrough, post-celebrity and post-drug comedown</p>

On ‘More’, Pulp pick up precisely where their imperial phase left off

Live music

<p>Jade, Heidi and Kesha: The girls took over Mighty Hoopla 2025</p>

Pop, Pride, and pure chaos: Mighty Hoopla is a truly joyful festival

<p>Robbie Williams Live at Murrayfield Stadium</p>

Robbie Williams’s Britpop Tour is only sporadically great

<p>Kylie’s 69-date Tension tour has already thrilled audiences in Australia, Asia and North America</p>

Kylie Minogue’s Tension tour proves she’s an all-time pop great

<p>Winner of the Eurovision Song Contest JJ from Austria holds up the trophy (Martin Meissner/AP)</p>

At Eurovision, politics once more intrudes upon this former pop lark

Retrospectives

<p>Supergrass: ‘We didn’t want to walk around town wearing Nike track suits. We’d probably rather wear some strange, velour, slightly wizardy outfit because it was just fun to dress up weirdly’</p>

Interview

Supergrass on ‘I Should Coco’ at 30: ‘We got even more psychedelic’

<p>Keyboardist Richard Wright plays on stage in ‘Pink Floyd at Pompeii – MCMLXXII’</p>

Playback

This was Pink Floyd at their experimental zenith

<p>George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley at the Great Wall of China ahead of Wham!’s concert at Beijing's Workers’ Gymnasium in 1985</p>

In Focus

‘The police were scared’: When Wham! took Western pop to China

<p>Better Belieb it: Justin Bieber in concert in Germany in 2009</p>

playback

There’s a simple reason we owe Justin Bieber more respect

News