From her humble beginnings in Tennessee, Dolly Parton has used her creative gifts to chronicle the American experience and make a widespread cultural impact...

From ‘a little town with a lot of hard knocks,’ as Dolly put it, came the biggest-selling female country singer the world had ever seen

From Laurel Canyon to Chiswick High Road, from Rancho De La Luna to a warehouse in Tottenham, many of your favourite artists have been hard at work crafting the soundtrack of 2026. Over the next 10 pages, we bring you the inside track on forthcoming albums by STEVIE NICKS , COURTNEY BARNETT , ALABAMA SHAKES , THE ROLLING STONES , BILL CALLAHAN , BUZZCOCKS , LANA DEL REY , SUNN O))) , ROBERT PLANT , IRON & WINE and many more. “It’s a really special time for music…”

In 1976, the revolutionary singer-songwriter LAURA NYRO returned from self-imposed exile. But her comeback confounded expectations, shifting away from the impassioned intimacies of her early albums to embrace more radical perspectives. Fifty years on, Nyro’s collaborators revisit her striking second act. “She was a hip American from the Bronx,” one friend and producer tells Rob Hughes. “But her soul was old.”

From the Sex Pistols to Sinatra, CHRISSIE HYNDE has spent 50 years moving between musical worlds. Now, as she releases a new album of diverse superstar duets, she confides in TOM DOYLE all about Debbie Harry, Kate Bush, Morrissey, forging Beatles signatures, having hysterics at a CSN gig, and how to deal with the most obsessive Pretenders fans... "Go fuck yourselves!"

New year, new albums bonanza: expect records in ...