Music was an all-consuming escape. Now, every song he writes is a love song At 16, I was just starting to take writing seriously. I became obsessed with lyricism and writing lines and my heroes were a

It begins more like a sermon than a pop concert. Through billowing dry ice, at the back of the dimly lit stage, a line of barely visible figures emerge, dressed in black and white nun-like garb. Break

Welcome to the second of our special Review Of The Year joint interviews. Here, indie provocateur BAXTER DURY and Sleaford Mods’ splenetic frontman JASON WILLIAMSON turn their attentions to the landscape, musical or otherwise, of 2025. Stand by for a bleak, brash, honest and often humorous assessment of the year just gone. Their conclusions? “We’re just flogging this dead horse, aren’t we?” they tell Mark Beaumont

SARAH DITUM

Melanie Blake is being hailed as the new “queen of the bonkbuster” – and she couldn’t be more delighted at the accolade, particularly as it originally belonged to one of her idols, the late great Jill

The highs and shocking lows of some of the biggest girlbands of the 1990s are revealed in a documentary that lays bare body-shaming, abortions and other secrets. BBC Two’s two-parter Girlbands Forever