Faith and courage

MARGO PRICE ’ s harrowing life story was the stuff of country legend, but in the decade since her debut she’s slowly reinvented herself as a psychedelic free spirit. Now, with a new album, she’s taken stock, returned to Nashville, and is out to reclaim her outlaw roots. “I wanted to make a defiant record,” she confides to Stephen Troussé

Fifty years ago, WILLIE NELSON up-ended the tyranny of the Nashville Sound with a record like nothing before or, perhaps, since. The road to Red Headed Stranger was long and uphill: strewn with broken marriages, record label wrangles and acts of God, but it transformed his fortunes, and his image. "It got to be a cool thing to like Willie," discovers SYLVIE SIMMONS.

The month’s best guitar music – a hand-picked selection of the finest fretwork on wax

Podcasts: from Alan Partridge to Gary Oldman

The newly reconfigured band throw open the doors on an expansive sixth album. By Victoria Segal. Illustration by Quinton Winter.

Forty years ago this September, Kate Bush released Hounds Of Love . Her fifth studio record reinstated her position as one of the most innovative and creative artists of all time and yielded the (future) chart-topper Running Up That Hill . But its creation wasn’t always smooth. Here’s the story behind one of Bush’s best-loved albums.