Editors' Picks

For a band who have continually reinvented themselves over the years, from the young androgynous punk upstarts who gave us Generation Terrorists, to the virtiolic The Holy Bible era, and the Britpop conquering albums Everything Must Go and This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, the Manic Street Preachers 14th studio LP The Ultra Vivid Lament still carries with it a big surprise.

London’s own Oscar Lang had an alarmingly busy 2020. Despite the Coronavirus pandemic torpedoing live music, Lang saw his stock rise considerably, releasing not one, not two, but three EPs – Overthunk came first, then Hand Over Your Head, before Antidote To Being Bored rounded out an incredibly, and surprisingly, productive year.

American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and photographer Faye Webster got what was, by any definition of the phrase, a big break when, at the end of last year, none other than former President of the United States of America Barack Obama picked her track Better Distractions for his end of year ‘best of’ list. 

Having carved his name into the list of the last decade’s biggest indie troubadours with his smash hit Another Love (520 million plays on Spotify and counting), a song that will play long into the night at weddings up and down the land for years to come, Chichester singer-songwriter Tom Odell could have ridden off into the sunset, his future and legacy secure, safe in the knowledge his music is loved by many.

Twenty-two-year-old singer songwriter Claire Cottrill – known better as Clairo – began posting her music online around six years ago, quickly winning fans with her unflinchingly honest and real stories. 2017’s lo-fi track Pretty Girl, and it’s accompanying homemade video, proved to be something of a breakthrough, wracking up close to 80 million views on YouTube to date, and leading to her penning a deal with Fader Label, who dropped her debut album Infinity in 2019 to widespread critical acclaim.

If you were looking for a measure of quite how successful The Killers have been in the UK, how completely we’ve taken the Las Vegas outfit to our hearts, then the fact that Mr Brightside, their defining, signature hit, recently passed 280 weeks in the UK top 100 is it. By that metric, it is the most successful song ever released here, and it’s not even close – Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol, itself a chart behemoth, is it’s nearest rival with a paltry (by comparison) 166 weeks in the top 100.

For now, Jake Bugg arguably remains Nottingham’s biggest recent star, but he should be wary because hot on his heels in Chloe Rodgers, the latest breakthrough act to emerge from the city’s burgeoning underground scene.

Northumberland-born singer Jade Bird’s self-titled debut album was chock full of gorgeous acoustic guitar and Americana-influenced vocals and songwriting. It reached the top ten of the UK albums chart, and topped the UK Americana chart, making Bird a rising star in the field of contemporary country music. And so, when she decamped to New York and Nashville to work on a followup, it seemed likely that Bird would continue in a similar vein. After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. 

Finneas’ newest single, The 90s, is a harmonious lament with plenty of production tricks and polish expected in a Finneas track.

When the then seventeen-year-old Jake Bugg burst out of the Nottingham suburb of Clifton and onto the Glastonbury stage a decade ago, with his tales of teenage life told in his distinctive and entrancing drawl, he was an almost instant sensation. As the hype built and his songs filled the airwaves, he seemed to be on the verge of becoming the UK’s defining indie star of the decade, a new Gallagher brother for the Snapchat generation. 

In one of the most ambitious and unexpected collaborations of all time, Earth Wind & Fire, Lucky Daye, and Babyface put their talents together to rework and modernize the first’s classic song “Can’t Hide Love” under the new name “You Want My Love”.

RINI’s newest single, Red Lights, not only serves as a wonderful neo-soul song, but might be one of the artist’s greatest song.

The progressive rock gods are back with their first single, “The Alien”, from their upcoming album “A View from the Top of the World”, with a new heavier edge and clear progression from their latest effort “Distance Over Time”. 

In a new fun twist to pop punk, We Are Scientists did a wonderful job bringing new life to the genre in their newest single, “Handshake Agreement”.

A bit of pop, a bit of folk, a bit of rock, and a whole lotta Finneas, the young artist’s newest single, “A Concert Six Months From Now” is a beautiful journey that takes you through just about every emotion one might face in the midst of a pandemic-induced confinement.

All good artists evolve, and The Weeknd has shown in the last couple years that the sky truly is the limit when it comes to his musicality. In a continuation of the 80s inspired sound from After Hours, his newest single “Take My Breath” is a deeper exploration into the sounds that brought an entire generation to the dance floor every weekend.

Sounding like a true and proper progression of “Ouch”, Matt Watson, shows his improvements in both his songwriting and production in his newest single, “Bored”, released with his first music video as a solo artist.

In a surprise new single, Motionless in White returns to their roots with “Timebomb”, a true metalcore masterpiece through and through.

Three years after her last album with a whole new sound, MARO is back stronger than ever, alongside musician NASAYA, with I SEE IT COMING, a poppier song, all the while maintaining the elegance she’s exercised consistently in her career.

In a perfect blend of catchy harmonies, groovy rhythms and floating chords, Elko brewed a wonderful late-summer banger with their newest single, “Pretty Little Lies”.

London-based singer-songwriter and guitarist Cat Burns has enjoyed a truly meteoric rise over the last year and a half. When lockdown first hit in the Spring of last year, Burns had just started out posting clips online, mainly through Tik Tok. Within a year she’d amassed well over half a million followers, had been signed by RCA Records, and was the face of a Tik Tok advertising campaign. Not bad work for someone who had been rejected by several labels before embracing the social media platform. 

At the start of this review, it’s only fair that I make a disclosure: Chinatown by Bleachers, featuring none other than Bruce Springsteen, was one of my very favourite tracks of the last year. A real lockdown record, with its haunting vocals and infused with a sense of yearning, it captured the essence of a difficult period. When lead singer and frontman Jack Antonoff and Springsteen crooned “I wanna find tomorrow”, it felt like they were talking to us all and our hope of better times to come.

Though she is probably still most widely known for her work presenting Night Tracks on BBC Radio 3, Hannah Peel is widely recognised as one of the brightest composers around. The Northern Irish artist, composer, producer and broadcaster studied music at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts and has a wide and varied CV. Her work includes collaborating with Paul Weller on his number one album On Sunset and writing and conducting all the orchestral arrangements for his 2018 shows at London’s Royal Festival Hall, to composing and recording the soundtrack for Game of Thrones: The Last Watch, which earned Peel a 2019 Emmy nomination for ‘Outstanding Music Composition For A Documentary Series Or Special (Original Dramatic Score).

Predicting what will come next from Liars has become an almost impossible task over the years. The New York outfit are now ten albums and more than twenty years into a career that still refuses to be easily labelled. Their back catalogue has taken in everything from the punk sound that influenced their early releases to funk, electronica, dance and rock. They’ve been through personnel changes – founding member Aaron Hemphill in 2017, and drummer Julian Gross three years earlier – and yet continually refused to stand still.

Coming straight from his new album, there’s something quite cleverly unique with Anders’ opening track, “Free Myself”, through both its tone and melodies, paired with the lack of clear genre and its uniqueness.

Coloratura is Coldplay in their most epic medium – a ten-minute powerhouse that is nothing but a pure showcase of talent from the British musicians.

Just as the world was still wrapping their heads around the genius of their Silk Sonic’s first single, “Leave the Door Open”, the duo released “Skate”, another absolute masterpiece through and through.

Even if you haven’t heard of Scunthorpe-born singer-songwriter Stephen Fretwell, you will almost certainly have heard his music. That’s because his song Run – taken from his 2004 album Magpie – is the theme tune to the TV smash hit show Gavin & Stacey, and was apparently chosen by the show’s creator and star James Corden as he’s a big fan of Fretwell’s music.

When Willy Mason crashed into the early noughties indie scene as a nineteen-year-old with his rallying cry Oxygen, he was hailed as a Bob Dylan for the post-grunge generation, a folk singer-songwriter who had a political message for millenials everywhere. For a couple of years, around the release of his debut album Where The Humans Eat, it felt like Mason was a bonafide global superstar in the making. 

Here’s something that, if you grew up watching The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air and listening to DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince’s Summertime, is going to make you feel old: Willow Smith, Will Smith’s youngest child, is twenty years old. TWENTY. Seriously, where does the time go?

Irish four-piece The Academic dropped their debut album Tales From The Backseat in 2018 to positive reviews, it’s blend of youthful exuberance and noughties-inspired indie, as well as the band’s reputation for exhilarating live shows, winning them fans both in the UK and at home in Ireland, where it hit number one in the Irish Album Charts. They built on that momentum last year with Acting My Age, a six-track EP recorded with Nick Hodgson of the Kaiser Chiefs that spawned the single of the same title, a mainstay of their live sets.

One Week was the ludicrously catchy track littered with pop culture references that first turned on a whole host of listeners around my age to the Barenaked Ladies in the late 1990s. It remains the band’s calling card and biggest hit, and still serves as the best introduction to their work for anyone who has not yet (somehow) heard them. Though, thanks to the sheer runaway success of the TV show The Big Bang Theory, for which the band created the distinctive theme song, that title is arguably under threat. 

A lot of people claim punk, metal, and rock artists make the best ballads. YUNGBLUD’s new single, Mars, is a testament to that.

Known for his vintage, soulful sound, Leon Bridges steps a foot into a more modern sound with his newest single, Why Don’t You Touch Me.

Before you hear this track for the first time, you read the title and you know this is going to be something epic! Then the track starts with an almost cinematic crescendo, with harps, horns & strings all building anticipation and in the last second of the intro you have no idea what’s about to hit you.