The american dream

The accessibility, affordability and portability of synthesizers in the late 70s had a profound effect on popular music, particularly in the UK, where the likes of Ultravox!, Gary Numan and OMD reshap

hen Soft Cell were art students at Leeds Polytechnic, Marc Almond wrote a song in the vein of Ziggy Stardust about a fictional band breaking up. Four years later, when Soft Cell had been informed by t

A few years ago, Charlie Burchill and Jim Kerr were interviewed for a BBC documentary about music’s messiest break-ups. Which may seem like an odd booking, given the pair’s famously adamantine bond. B

The onset of 1985 found Eurythmics in a commercial sweet spot as they rode a wave of successive hits on the global stage. It was barely two-and-a-bit years since Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) in Jan

No one notices Bruce Springsteen. He makes no effort to hide—black T-shirt, blue jeans, Wayfarer sunglasses, honky-tonk cowboy boots—but for a few minutes, the most famous son of the Jersey Shore achi

Wilco dynamo’s fifth solo LP is a wildly eclectic triple that celebrates collective creativity and freedom.