The UK album chart is awash with soundtracks in a way that hasn’t been seen since the 1960s. The cast recording of the Abba movie sequel Mamma Mia!: Here We Go Again is at number one, mirroring its position in…

A judge ruled last week that the BBC had infringed the singer’s privacy in its reporting of a South Yorkshire Police raid on his home in 2014, and awarded him £210,000 in damages. Sir Cliff was never arrested or charged…

These are terms used loosely, however. People are often ‘going to a symphony’ and pop songs have ‘symphony’ in their titles, but these are such casual usages that they’re almost without meaning. What, exactly, is a symphony and its function?…

In 1913, Lili Boulanger became the first woman to win the coveted Prix de Rome, a composition prize previously won by the likes of Claude Debussy and Hector Berlioz. She died five years later at age twenty-four. Although her compositional…

The story of Satan’s Rats begins in Evesham, Worcs, U.K. with four guys and some very average 1977 demos that sound like muffled, Saints-tinted classic rock. But What A Bunch of Rodents tacks these recordings of historical interest onto the…

Mention Buenos Aires and most will associate it with football and its gods, Evita Peron and Weber’s sketchy musical, and the stirring vision of 2 lone figures dancing tango. Very few would associate Buenos Aires as thriving with a national…

Writing a manual on songwriting is like writing a manual on love. The conflict between artistic passion and rational instructions is paradoxical; nobody can become a great songwriter by relying on a do-it-yourself guide. Indeed, some artists’ styles are such…

A new release is coming from Kanye West. The track is titled “Lift Yourself” and the rapper shared it with fans on Twitter. It sounded like a new music, but actually looked like a joke track. The shared song starts…

Italy has been famous for its great classical music since the Renaissance period of the sixteenth century. It is interesting to know that Italian folk music influenced classical pieces and classical pieces have influenced Italian folk music. The opera house…

By the time the 1990s came around it had been quite a ride for Alice Cooper. He had started in the 1960s as the lead singer of a band called “Alice Cooper.” That group became stars and then he became…