The Second World War was finally over and Britain, despite being the victor, was in ruins. Fifty years later, my Nanny would sit me at her feet in her small living room – dominated by a wooden shelf heaving with books (she liked John Grisham and true-crime) and DVDs (Gone With the Wind; South Pacific; To Sir, With Love; Titanic, because she thought Leo was charming) in one corner, a brown leather sofa in the other, with a fire blazing in the hearth even as the air grew sticky in summer – in her small house just a few miles from where she was born, and she would tell me about those harder days. The ration-overhang dinners consisting of scraps of offal and stale bread; marching to school in the depths of winter wearing a thin coat and the same uncomfortable shoes from last year, now slightly too small; itching to get in the tin bath first, before her sister could hop in and make the water, which had to be reused by all four of the family, go cold.

But it was stories about her teenage years that I loved most – and I loved stories about the music she had listened to most of all. The Beatles and the Stones, the Yardbirds and the Beach Boys. Then there were her country favourites: Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Bobbie Gentry. And Dolly, always Dolly.

It didn’t matter, she’d tell me, that these grizzled men and beautiful women with their bouffants and flowing dresses lived thousands of miles away from us. It didn’t matter that they were singing about dilapidated homes just outside of Nashville, or that the bars they drank in were in New Orleans and Jackson rather than Birmingham or Dudley, or that they sang about topics that were alien to us: guns, tractors, the Rocky Mountains.

We were just as poor as them, she’d laugh, except we were lucky enough to have a free dentist (thank you, NHS) and unlucky enough not to have the Grand Ole Opry on our doorstep. Our houses could be just as bitingly cold in the winter when the bills hadn’t been paid on time. The men in our lives were just as untrustworthy, as brutish, as inclined to cheat and lie and steal and bruise. And our connection to what we conceived as the “outside world” could feel just as distant in those pre-widespread-internet days as it did for Dolly, singing in My Tennessee Mountain Home about that little shack in Locust Ridge housing 12 kids, armed with their battered patchwork coats and big dreams.

As I sat there, she would softly sing to me, her reading glasses slipping down her nose as she leaned forwards, her voice husky from years of chain-smoking cheap tobacco, kept in a burnished silver tin next to her prized possession, her radio, atop the enamel kitchen counter. She would sing Coat of Many Colors, mostly, supplementing Dolly’s verses with her own, made up on the spot – they could be scolding in tone, if I’d been particularly bratty that day and demanded a new toy or book on our trip to town, or they could be loving, reminding me that I had all I needed, right here. There would be I Will Always Love You, precursed with a rant filled with plenty of F-words (despite constantly swearing herself that she never swore) about how much she hated Whitney Houston’s cover; Here You Come Again if she was in the mood for a trip down memory lane, also known as remembering those bad days when she was still married to my granddad; and her favourite songs from the Trio albums with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, two other women she loved and admired.

It’s been five years since my Nanny died. She was at home with my mum, her greatest friend, and after months of barely speaking – dementia robbed her of many things she loved: talking, reading books about American serial killers in bed by lamplight, doing the crossword, walking to the shops unaided and scouring the aisles for good chocolate, gardening – she spent those final days humming the tune to Chris de Burgh’s Lady in Red. Music was the one thing that had not escaped her.

So it was my Nanny Gill I thought of when I found out, mid-way through an overheated, overstimulating bus journey home from work today, that Dolly had died, aged 80. I thought about what my Nanny would say: how her deep, deep voice (if you’ve never met a woman with an old-school, strong Black Country accent: YouTube it) would express astonishment that Dolly was gone. A world without Dolly would’ve been as unimaginable to her as a world without two print newspaper deliveries a day, or a world where a pint of lager in a pub cost you more than a £5 note – not to mention a world where most shops wouldn’t accept that £5 note at all, the cashier silently handing you a contactless card machine with a grimace instead. All of those things are now reality.

What is most real to me, however, is the joy I felt remembering my Nanny, singing those Dolly songs to me all those years ago. One of the things I’m asked most at work – as a 30-year-old living in London who mostly obsesses over new pop stars and internet trends – is why I love country music. It makes no sense to people that I should find solace in those tales of downtrodden cowboys and late night honky tonks; that I should consider country music, the music of a land far, far away from my own, my own. But then I remember what my Nanny would say whenever Dolly came on the radio: “Poppie! It’s our Dolly!” Dolly was ours, because the generosity of her music, and her spirit, allowed her to be. No number of miles can get in the way of that.

When you dare to not like an album – especially one by an artist beloved of critics, with a loyal fandom willing to go into battle for them – you are suddenly framed as a comic-book villain with nefarious intentions. I’m writing this a few hours after the reviews for Charli XCX’s new album, Music, Fashion, Film, went live. I knew that my two-star rating – you can read the review here – would result in some blowback; that I’d spend most of the day scanning past hateful posts on X and blocking death threats in my Instagram DMs; that I’d do the classic critic thing of waking up, checking other publications’ reviews and thinking to myself, “Oh, god, have I got this really fucking wrong?”

But that’s all part of the job. Music criticism is subjective and the fact that five people love an album doesn’t automatically mean I’ll love it too. What I do take umbrage with is toxic fans’ insistence that a) if you like an artist then you can never criticise them (not to sound like a chip-on-the-shoulder boomer, but I first saw Charli live FIFTEEN years ago. I gave Brat five out of five stars! And Wuthering Heights four!), b) if you dislike an album you must have listened to it only once (I got a stream on Wednesday, and I must’ve listened to it eight times in full before writing my review) and c) being a fan of other artists is some sort of moral compromise.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the so-called sleuths who discovered from my Telegraph author page that I was a long-term Swiftie, and thus must have disliked Charli’s album out of a high-school level of loyalty. Guys: I do not know Taylor Swift personally! She is not my friend! (And I’ve spent the past three years slagging off most of her new records, too.) I disliked elements of the production on Charli’s album and found the lyrics infantile and disappointing – that’s why I gave it a negative review. The fact I started listening to Taylor Swift two decades ago – only slightly before I started listening to Charli – doesn’t come into it at all.

Music, Fashion, Film is an album of disjointed highs and lows for me. I adored Camera and SS26; I think Persona automatically deserves a place on any list of her 20 best songs. But the vacuity of much of it, the empty noise and grating dissonance between soul-baring lyrics and ugly production (and yes, I mean the overuse of auto-tune, despite the fact Charli fans think this is as integral to her being as blood), spoiled the listening experience. I found Card Declined and I’m Afraid jarring and diminutive; the latter sounded less like a Charli song than a collection of existing songs – Olivia Rodrigo’s Drop Dead, Alphaville’s Forever Young, the Smashing Pumpkins’ Disarm – thrust into a blender, poured out into a sickly concoction that sticks in the throat.

And my overriding issue with it as a concept, as a body of work, is how I can’t shake the sense Charli has become too obsessed with her own lore; her Substacks, her tweets and interview quotes, all hint at someone wrapped up in what the world thinks of her, all the while pretending not to be.

As any woman writing about music knows, the backlash against us is always more toxic, more personal, than it is against the legacy male critics afforded a degree of free rein by their age, title and experience. It feels futile to wish that fact could change: social media hates women more than ever; fandoms relish in insults and takedowns, refusing to acknowledge that pop music IS NEVER THAT DEEP. (I find it particularly funny/depressing that even a fandom like Charli’s, which is populated by 30+ year-olds rather than the teenyboppers you find amongst the Livvies or the BLINKS, still has this mentally abusive wing. Is it not time to grow out of social media beef with strangers?)

It is depressing, yes, that when I take on a review like this I have to debate whether I can be arsed with the inevitable death threats and the personal attacks; whether I might get doxxed; whether I want the concerned messages from my friends or co-workers asking if I’m okay. But I love writing about music – and I get paid to do it! Maybe next time I get a death threat as a result of a pop review, I need to just strike it down as: “Contribution to next month’s rent: received.”

Consequently, I’ve been listening to lots of downright depressing music – last week, I caught myself searching for A Day to Remember’s If It Means A Lot to You on Spotify, getting to that bridge before reprimanding myself: I am a grown woman who was never even a proper emo! I only liked Paramore! This is not the time to go down that path! Elsewhere, there’s been a hefty amount of La Dispute and Frightened Rabbit – there’s always a fair bit of the latter on rotation, because Frabbit are one of my all-time favourite bands, except I usually refrain from listening to certain songs (Keep Yourself Warm, The Modern Leper in particular) too much out of fear of requiring admission to an asylum.

I saw Hayley Williams in London which was incredible, but again, hardly jolly; other gigs have included Kraftwerk (fun!), Shania Twain in a battered east London pub (life-affirming!) and Harry Styles x2. I wrote about the first of those Styles shows, his intimate Meltdown performance with the Jules Buckley Orchestra, for the Telegraph here, and reflected on how his cover of Bridge Over Troubled Water only brought the limits of his discography into starker focus. He has two brilliant songs – Sign of the Times and As It Was – and the rest are merely nice songs. Is that enough? Perhaps: when I saw him a few days later at Wembley Stadium, it was apparent that he remains much more comfortable – and convincing – in a shiny, big-budget environment. (And for anyone – i.e. the Harries who were sending me death threats all last week – who tries to say I’m a Harry-hater: I saw One Direction’s first ever gig while they were still on X Factor, bitch. And yes, it was outside Wolverhampton KFC.)

Otherwise it’s been a so-so month, music-wise: like everyone else on Substack/the internet/in the music industry, I love the new Phoebe Bridgers; I was baffled by Gracie Abrams’ new haircut, again, while watching her on Popcast; and I’ve been reminded of one of the greatest albums ever made, Pearl Jam’s Vs, so I’ve had that on loop. It really does feel like I’m 15 all over again, lying on my bedroom floor posting Plath quotes to Tumblr and swearing at my mum through the door. Even Olivia Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields announcement had me feeling nostalgic, despite the fact a) it’s new and b) I never went to Lilith Fair because I’m British and too young. While editing a piece about Gregg Allman at work, I got thinking of that line in Midnight Rider, “Well, I’ve got to run to keep from hidin’ / And I’m bound to keep on ridin’”. I’ve never had a driving lesson, so I can’t literally drive anywhere. But maybe I just need a change, both in terms of sonic consumption and, you know, life?

In more cheerful news, I’m seeing Bad Bunny on Sunday night and I CANNOT WAIT. Only issue: my wardrobe now consists entirely of Mormon-esque dresses and midi skirts. Thanks a lot Ballerina Farm. I have the music taste of a 15-year-old Bikini Kill groupie yet none of the cool slutty clothes. Disaster.

In the years before I had an adult job that required me to turn up at an office five (or six) days a week in some semblance of respectable clothing, my routine was largely the same – the biggest change from my late teens and early twenties was mostly just the cost of the drinks I was buying. An adult salary had, praise be, permitted me to stop punishing my perpetually-bloated body with endless pints; on a good week, I could stretch to a Marg, or wine, or spritzes. It was exactly the vision of adulthood that I, a disciple of the Sex and the City-school of professional journalist propaganda, had been sold as the dream.

In other words, I have spent the past 15 years of my life having one priority: to have, and be, fun. I love going out. I still love going out as much as I did at 15, when late nights consisted of dodgy bongs in my friend’s dad’s garage, or drinking in a field; or at 19, when I was yet to realise the gravity of my future £60,000 worth of student debt and spent five nights a week in the club, so consistently paralytic that I could hardly ever summon the strength to attend lectures or even go outside in the daytime. After graduating at 22 (a year older than usual, a result of my having to give up on a Russian degree after one year – because those aforementioned nights out had made me fail all my exams – and change course) I fell even more in love with it. I loved pubs. I loved sports bars and cocktail bars. I loved the clinical, white-lights-blazing look of a shitty hotel bar at 2am. I loved clubs: proper techno clubs; dreadful indie nights where I could always rely on knowing the words to All My Friends to land me a date; smalltown tragic clubs that had disco dancefloors and two for £5 drinks deals.

In the years that followed, I never really stopped loving it, either. Perhaps I started doing more daytime bottomless brunches, but I still stayed out late after. Festivals still filled my summer calendar. If I wasn’t in the basement of some sticky-floored club, or burrowed in the corner of a flat-roof pub, I was at a gig, meaning I’d still be drinking and still getting home past midnight.

Looking back now, it’s obvious that my affinity for Never Being Home was tied to my living situation. Like every other embattled Gen Z and millennial who has had to contend with the London housing market, Spareroom was my God and I its not-so-willing subject; weird or downright creepy flatmates abounded and rainy days meant water flooding through the ceiling. It was much easier to ignore the rats in the kitchen or the 6 foot tall psychopathic man living downstairs if I was out for most of the evening, returning home a bit buzzed. I never wanted to cook because the kitchens were minefields of awkward encounters; I could never relax in my room, really, whether it be because of the size (tiny), black mould (toxic) or paper-thin walls (dodgy landlord approved).

But that situation changed a few years ago when I moved in with my boyfriend – I was 28 – after just six months of dating. It never felt high-pressure or difficult: we just slotted into life together, like jigsaw puzzle pieces who had finally been saved from having to hide their crisps and loo roll in their bedroom out of fear of someone stealing it.

The surprising thing is that, despite suddenly feeling safe, and comfortable, and happy, at home – feelings I had never been afforded when I was living with strangers – I still couldn’t resist the urge to Go Out. I’ve always thought it strange that some people who pay to live in London, particularly, don’t want to spend every free evening making the most of what this beautiful, chaotic, infuriating city has to offer: yes, it will bleed you dry, and yes, there’s always a risk you may sit on a piss-soaked seat on the tube, but it’s always fun. There are pubs and clubs and galleries and gig venues and bars and restaurants and parks to hang out in with friends, or partners, or alone. You can never be bored here, unless you want to be.

And that’s what I started thinking about as I was fed yet another Instagram reel about relocating to the suburbs in order to buy a 3-bed house with a postage stamp-sized garden this week. My algorithm has shifted since I turned 30 – my own fault, I guess, for posting about my birthday, for giving the bots information about my Impending Old Age – with videos that used to consist of ‘night out guides’ and best new bar picks replaced with, well, what we’ll call Instructions for the Woman Who Should Really Shut Up and Settle the Fuck Down.

People my age buying houses (the two years spent indoors with only a monthly Chinese takeaway to look forward to so they could save, or the parents who gifted them 50 grand, never shown). People my age having babies. People my age posting wellness and fitness tips to revitalise your body now it has reached this terrifying older, creakier state: wine strictly off-limits, a la Steven Bartlett, and replaced with matcha; Pilates over boozy brunches or day festivals. Marathons: so. Many. fucking. Marathons. (Of course, I’m not saying people who do any of those things don’t do OTHER things too. I just wish I saw more of both sides! Thanks a lot Instagram.)

It’s a very strange feeling to start experiencing the shift that older women tell you will one day happen, seemingly overnight: when other people’s expectations about what you should be doing, rather than what you want to be doing, change. It’s like all those people who sweetly smiled and uttered empty yet encouraging platitudes about “take your time! Tick off milestones at your own pace!” wake up one morning and look at you differently, seeing your lack of a) a mortgage, b) babies or c) both as damning proof of failure. It’s a judgement you can hear in people’s voices every time you mention an upcoming night out: “Oh, are you not TIRED? I could NEVER go out on a week night anymore! Haha, I have to be in bed by 10! Give me The Thursday Murder Club and a cup of green tea! Haha!!!!!”

Not everyone means to be negative, I’m sure. Some people probably do just love cosy crime and making the most of their fancy new cotton bedsheets. But I refuse to be cowed by the people who do mean to be negative, and snarky, and judgemental. I reckon I’ve got at least another 50 years of going out in me yet – maybe, at 80, I’ll have had enough. Until then, pass me a credit card, a shot and a double tequila tonic. I’ll deal with it in the morning.

Over the past month, it’s felt like my brain is whirring into fight-or-flight mode, a desperate attempt to shut down the misogyny I’m seeing in every corner of popular culture. I’m drowning in it – and I’m not even the person at the receiving end. That would be the pop stars and actresses and fictional characters who are up against men consumed by hatred.

Yet I’m finding it impossible to look away. Being a woman who engages with culture in 2026 now feels akin to self-flagellation.

First up, there was the depressingly predictable reception to CMAT’s (by the looks of, superb) performance at Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Sunderland last weekend. When the festival’s social team posted clips from the Irish singer’s performance, praise from fans in the comment section was quickly drowned out by vitriol aimed at how her body looked in her stage outfit. Her songs ceased to matter; her body became the story – and not for the first time. The BBC’s social team had to turn off comments because they were so heinous; they did the same last year, after the same event, when the same vultures started to circle to criticise how she looked.

Writing on Instagram, CMAT expressed the “deep sadness” she felt over having to centre discussions of her weight ahead of her art. And she pointed out, “to some very well-meaning people, that I am not being defiant. I am not choosing to look like this or weigh this much as some kind of punk rock act of liberty. I simply have a body”. Unlike other, skinnier women artists at the festival – Olivia Dean, Zara Larsson – who were being appraised solely on the basis of their music, CMAT was facing trial-by-dickhead for daring to live freely in her own body.

I’ve been thinking about her all week, about her brilliant, brave (I hate using that word when talking about women sticking up for themselves, because ‘brave’ gives away the inherent threat of violence, the knowledge that self-defence could result in harm, but so it does) response to those idiots with the audacity to ruin a successful woman’s day by opting for the oldest weapon on offer: the dig at appearance. Misogynists seek to belittle women who dare to be confident or successful; in Ciara’s case, they sought to strip away her artistry by reducing her to nothing more than a Body. It is not a new thing for men to be intimidated by successful women, but the internet – increasingly toxic and violent, and inescapable – amplifying their reaction is. What would have consisted of a smattering of boos 20 years ago now manifests in incessant, pervasive hatred, pouring out of a smart phone like nuclear gunk, ready to burn your fingers off and plant a tumour in your gut.

And it’s all women, of all sizes, working in countless different industries, who find themselves under attack. Any Londoner will have seen the posts on Instagram and X this past week ripping into women Arsenal fans, for being “plastics” or “try-hards” with no apparent knowledge of football or prior interest in the game. Anybody who decided to read the comments underneath Dua Lipa’s wedding post on Instagram – or the Reddit forums dedicated to decimating her Service95 recommendations for cool restaurants, bars or bookshops – will have been met with a wall of vitriol, from men who deemed her unfeminine, or pretentious, or surely lying about having the capacity to a) read a book or b) marry a man when she’s had public relationships with other men in the past.

Add in the news that Sabrina Carpenter has been forced to apply for a restraining order against an alleged stalker, and you have a battery ram of woman-hating, a plague that is seeping into pop-culture (a space predominately dominated by women, particularly in pop music) with such aggression that it threatens to destroy the entire eco-system – and the possibility of enjoyable consumption.

Olivia Rodrigo, meanwhile, has been forced to defend herself after choosing to – how dare she! – wear a babydoll dress on stage. Speaking on the New York Times’ Popcast, she asked why her formerly revealing outfits were deemed acceptable – “I’ve been on stage in like a sparkly bra and little shorts, which is my right. That’s fun… that wasn’t inappropriate” – but an innocent (short, yes, but floral and cute and something I’d have worn to church as a teenager at Catholic school without a second doubt) babydoll dress had become a lightning-rod for ‘peadophile-gaze’ criticism. (I wrote about Rodrigo on here recently and considered the criticism of her aesthetic, which largely comes down to: she dresses like Courtney Love, but doesn’t swear as much.)

It has felt like we are sliding into a degree of puritanism and conservatism where women are viewed as nothing more than pretty concubines for a few years now: online, teenage girls are told they must remain virgins to be attractive to men, while being simultaneously asked to send boob pictures on Snapchat or face social-exclusion.

It’s why even the ‘good’ girls – the meek, devout, obedient – can’t win. I always think of the TikToker Brooke Monk, who built her platform on being pretty/pure/Christian/the all-American girl-next-door, etc, only to be torn apart by her (mostly male) audience when she eventually got a boyfriend and started to post the odd photograph in a bikini. Her comment section is honestly like a window into another world – whenever I find myself furtively looking, eyes slightly closed as if I’m preparing to be blasted by flames, Cyclops-style, I’m still shocked by how much of a cesspit it is.

I was reminded of Monk recently while reading Hayden Panettiere’s grim but gripping memoir, This is Me: A Reckoning. I grew up idolising Panettiere thanks to her roles in Bring It On/Heroes, because she seemed like the girl Everyone Wanted to Be. She was blonde, she was pretty, she was fun and flirty, successful. Then she disappeared from public view, and, for years, I didn’t think much of her (aside from when watching Nashville). I sensed my jaw literally dropping while reading much of the book, in which she recounts her exploitative childhood in the acting world, being harassed and propositioned by creepy A-listers, and abused by her ex-husband.

But it wasn’t just those graphic, horrifying details that stayed with me – it was Panettiere’s frank discussion of how, when she was still one of Hollywood’s most bankable teen stars with assorted lucrative advertising deals, she felt under constant pressure to be a Good Girl. Good girls, you see, don’t get hurt. They don’t drink, they certainly don’t smoke, and as a result, they don’t get abused. Until, of course, they do.

Because as we all know, even being a good girl isn’t enough: when you’re old enough, men will start to see you differently; you will stop being a person, an equal, and become a piece of meat, a vessel to be explored then conquered. I could feel my eyes filling with tears as I read how Panettiere, then just 19 years-old and on top of the world thanks to Heroes, was humiliated and violated by the nameless Oscar-winning actor and director who thought he had the right to show her his dick. My stomach dropped, because I can imagine exactly how she felt, because I’ve been in similar situations (is there a statistic quite so mind-numbingly terrible as this: 1 in 3 women worldwide will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime?)

Perhaps I’m to blame for my succession of grim cultural choices recently, because when not reading Panettiere’s book, I was reading Yesteryear – rape! Crazy ladies! Slapping husbands and religious subservience! Pregnancy as punishment! – or watching season three of Euphoria (baby-play. Enough said). What I found interesting about those two, however, was how they centre on women who pander to the male gaze – the idealised vision of femininity that red-pill-swallowing men obsess over – but still break them down, slowly, resigning them to eventual ruin. In Yesteryear, the perfect woman is ‘online Natalie’, churning out kids like a Reformation-knitwear-clad battery hen and choosing to conveniently ignore a) the fact her brain got her into Harvard or b) the fact she hates her useless, adultering, not-actually-that-good-looking (but rich, yes, rich) husband. When her perfect exterior starts to crack, allowing her ugly, CUNT and BASTARD and BITCH-shouting side to break through, she’s punished with a breakdown – informing all of us readers that this is what happens to women who don’t play the game properly.

That game is the same one played by the beautiful, doomed women in Euphoria, and they also lose. The third and final instalment snatched any semblance of freedom – or respect – away from Sydney Sweeney and Alexa Demie’s characters, who became mere pawns in Sam Levinson’s deranged tirade against sex worker-culture and women in general. Enough has been written on here about Sweeney’s position as the patron saint of the right-leaning “that would never happen to me, because they like me” crowd, so I won’t get into it too much, but I’ll say this: watching her being routinely humiliated on-screen left me feeling physically dirty; like I had a giant Post-It note on my forehead reading “BAD FEMINIST! ATTACK!”

So that was my month in culture. Women-hating, women-baiting, women-suffering. Is it my own fault for not looking away? For not refusing to stop consuming? Or are our TV shows, books and music fandoms just turning into a reflection of the real world: a place where women, lulled into a false sense of security after decades of growth, aren’t safe.

There’s the ones named for years – 2012 through to 2018 pop up prominently in summer, because those are the years when I was a PRIMETIME TEENAGER who could binge drink and dance to Rae Sremmurd or Fetty Wap six nights a week and miraculously escape hangovers – and my ones categorised by event, or mood: chilled BBQ, pre-festival, depressed about having to go to work, happy about a new outfit or fun plans, rich on payday versus helplessly skint and in thrall to my credit card just a week later.

Hazy, lazy summer days call for music that makes you feel stoned without having to light up (I’ve accepted that I’ll never be a smoker), such as Best Coast, Wavves or Caroline Polachek’s Desire, I Want to Turn into You. Pre-drinks/pre-festivals call for prime Drake (Thank Me Later through to Views, no later), Mo Bamba or Popcaan’s Silence on repeat or, at the other end of the spectrum, irresistibly hype hard rock, from Kiss’s Rock and Roll All Nite (forever a Summer Song in my mind thanks to Dazed and Confused) to Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song, which is essentially a shot of tequila in sonic form.

(I’m writing this in a happy mood, having somehow not burnt my shoulders or scalp after sitting outside for sub-30 minutes for the first time ever, so I won’t dwell on the sad stuff – but, for those curious about the ‘suddenly destitute’ post-payday playlists, just know there’s a lot of Frightened Rabbit, Death Cab and The Broken Family Band on there.)

When it comes to albums, I’ve had a few standout records on repeat this past month. I didn’t really understand the “She’s finally back!!!” rhetoric around Kacey Musgrave’s Middle of Nowhere, because to me she hasn’t really dropped off in terms of quality since the early days. I think Golden Hour’s success has just overshadowed what came after it; but I loved Deeper Well, and still believe Kacey operates in pretty much her own lane in modern country. Here, she’s on resplendent form: hilariously horny on Dry Spell; whipsmart and reverential on Uncertain, TX; in-tune to the internet’s incessant desire for drama and female redemption arcs on Horses and Divorces with former-nemesis Miranda Lambert in tow.

Elsewhere, I loved Lip Critic’s Theft World, MUNA’s Dancing on the Wall and Aldous Harding’s Train on the Island. Zara Larsson’s remix version of Midnight Sun got me very excited to finally see her live this summer, and I spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about Suitable Sex Songs after listening to Harry Styles hark on about losing his virginity to Talk Show Host by Radiohead at the Ivor Novello awards last week (spoiler: Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On is NOT suitable, despite what an alarming number of horny Spotify playlists may tell you.) I won’t pretend to have got through the Drake Trifecta, because I didn’t – I listened to five minutes of Iceman then thought, you know what, let’s just bask in the glory of the good ‘ole days of Over and Nice for What, and pretend he stopped making music years ago.

There’s also been old gems that I’d neglected for a while. After reading the sad news that Lucinda Williams had pulled out of the End of the Road festival, I put Car Wheels on a Gravel Road on and reminded myself – for the 1000000th time – just how brilliant she is; she should be held up as Neil Young’s equal in every respect. I go through a Beatles-obsessive phase every six months or so, when I listen to nothing but Revolver and Abbey Road 24 hours a day, seven days a week before coming up for air and remembering that songwriters who aren’t Lennon or McCartney exist. I did so (again) this month after seeing Macca on wonderfully reflective form at Abbey Road, playing songs from the new album The Boys of Dungeon Lane and chatting all things Ringo, John and George. Paul Simon was on similarly pensive form at the Royal Albert Hall, singing his meditation on religion, Seven Psalms, in full before powering through some of the greatest songs ever written: Graceland, Homeward Bound, The Boxer. I mean, gosh. I could listen to JUST those three songs every day for the rest of my life and never get bored.

And finally, after powering through Clem Burke’s terrific posthumous memoir (you can read my review here), I’ve had Blondie on repeat. Just listen to his drum solo at the beginning of Dreaming. Not much else compares, does it?

I got thinking about Warhol’s advice after reading a (quite simply deranged) tweet describing Rock Music as “reminiscent of Warhol/Velvet Underground days. Beautiful work.” Now, I love a bit of hyperbole as much as the next music writer, but there has to be limits. Rock Music features the lyrics “Me and my friends / We go out / We take pictures and make stuff together,” sung in a tone dripping in half-arsed cynicism that’s obviously meant to appeal to the girls who post “Give me a lobotomy!!!” and pictures of A Little Life and The Bell Jar with love heart emoji-captions on Instagram. The Velvet Underground are responsible for some of the most beautiful music ever created by humans: Pale Blue Eyes, After Hours, I’ll Be Your Mirror. Meanwhile Rock Music sounds like a good Charli song thrust through a combine harvester; deafening synths and bashful, processed guitars pair with lyrics that merely scratch the surface of her finest introspective songwriting (on Sympathy is a Knife especially) before succumbing to internet-ready soundbites.

When I got talking with a friend (fellow music journo, fellow longtime Charli fan) about how dreadful the song was, they suggested it was purposeful - that she’d made something she knew people would criticise to shed a load of her new, post-Brat fans, retaining only the most strident of loyalists. Elsewhere, I read posts labelling anyone who dared to say the song was bad ignorant or even misogynistic; here, apparently, was a woman brave enough to make her art, her way, and nobody should tear her down. Other fans said the strength of Charli’s old music was reason enough to admire this new direction - she’d earned her stripes, and could now afford to mess around. 

But I take real umbrage with the idea that some artists are untouchable and beyond critical reproach: if a Charli XCX song is bad, it is bad. It doesn’t matter how brilliant Brat was. She should, and can, do better! (As for the shedding of the influx of new fans she gained after Brat; a proper artist shouldn’t want to suddenly be Shit just because she finds A-list fame annoying.) It’s why, while reading the succession of glowing reviews declaring the song the latest sign of Charli’s genius, I felt like I was in a grimy kitchen at 5.30am, exhausted and veering increasingly into derision if not downright insanity: is this REALLY happening? Am I hearing a different song entirely?

What made me feel most grim was a sinking reminder of how much people now love bad, bad art. The song’s positive reception – and excuses for its awfulness – are emblematic of a wider problem strangling arts and culture: the public triumph of “bad”, “slop”, or “brainrot” entertainment. Making ourselves stupider by consumption of rubbish, masquerading as good ole’ fashioned entertainment, has become desirable. 

For years I was on that side of the fence, and happily argued that all art has value, and we shouldn’t be snobby about even the bad, or ‘trashiest’, offerings. Real Housewives, Love Island, Instagram poets and TikTok comedians, Emily Henry books and ‘faery porn’, pop music that prides itself on being unimaginative, badly-sung, badly-written, badly-produced. Why watch classic Hollywood films when you can watch Molly-Mae’s YouTube vlogs? Why listen to Joan Baez or Emmylou Harris sing about the horrors of war or tragedies of love when you can block out all the devastation occurring in the real world on a daily basis with vacuous “noise pop”? Why read a stuffy, canonical novel when you can scroll through social media for picks of the latest book abiding to what I call the pink cover, green font rule: tedious woman protagonist, usually privileged but pretending not to be (ditto the author, most of the time), probably academic, beautiful, but unlucky in love nonetheless, blah, blah, blah.

Perhaps I sound too cynical here, and, yes, snobbish. But I’ve spent the past six months grappling with the really quite scary realisation that I was willingly making myself dumber. Despite reading newspapers and magazines all day at work, I barely made time for quality fiction or non-fiction; my evenings were spent scrolling, endlessly, through inane 45-second cooking videos of pasta dishes I’d learned to make when I was a student; and I justified all of it with tiredness, with needing immediate gratification and respite from the grind of modern life. Most evenings I would get home at 8pm, spend 30 minutes cooking dinner then the next hour scrolling through my phone; followed by two hours of shit TV; then try to sleep, my brain still whirring and buzzing and over-stimulated until I finally managed to drop off. A song like Rock Music would usually provide the perfect soundtrack to that 7.30pm journey home: vacuous and empty, loud enough to drown out any anxieties while unchallenging enough to wash over me like a cheap glass of supermarket bottom-shelf Chardonnay.

My/our descent into stupidity hit home even more this week after I read the Guardian’s countdown of the 100 Best Books of All Time. There was a clever tool to tick off the ones you’d read, and I managed 51/100 in total. But before I could feel too smug (or punch myself for NEVER HAVING READ WAR AND PEACE) I realised I read upwards of 90 per cent of those 51 books before I was 21. (I promise I don’t mean this in a insufferable upper-middle-class American literature graduate posts about being a ‘Gifted and Talented Kid Underperforming in Adulthood’ way, more of a ‘Did I reach the peak of my intellectual curiosity before I was old enough to get a credit card?! Fucking HELL’ way.)

No. I once again realised it is suddenly cool to be stupid. Books, while once again in fashion and the perennial tube accessory, are meant to be easy, and informative, and ‘useful’, whatever that means (forget fiction: the Steven Bartlett vein of ‘Why am I not a millionaire: let’s ignore class, gender and circumstance’ socioeconomic non-fiction reigns supreme). Music is supposed to wash over you like a sea of nothingness, provoking zero thought and certainly sparking zero debate. Bad films and bad TV that make your IQ deplete 30 seconds in are merely camp, or funny, or time-wasting tools to offset the real world.

But how long do we get to block out the ‘real world’ until it ruins us; until it renders us all stupid and reliant, pawns in a game of chess that has no positive end. It may sound snobbish, but I’d rather not use art like Rock Music as a balm anymore, as a lazy replacement to having to Think. This wee human brain is a powerful thing, and it deserves to be challenged.

But back to that aforementioned *dickhead married man. Having welcomed singer Lola Young to the stage for a mock confessional, Rosalia pried and prodded, eventually getting Young to talk about a man she dated who turned out to be married. Oh well: this isn’t my time to go all “I was conditioned by 16 years of Catholic education” and hark on about the evils of adultery. What struck me about the interaction was that, for the first time in a long time, I was enjoying a manufactured “moment” at a live gig.

Think of the Eras tour; Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet; Role Model, Olivia Rodrigo or – deep breath – Alex Warren. Any modern pop show worth its salt must now have an especially ‘filmable’ element, i.e. a special guest, secret song, or funny fleck of audience involvement. Of course it’s not a new thing for a pop or rock star to rope a pal into coming out on stage – McCartney, Springsteen, Elton John and more have been doing it for literal decades – but the intention behind the quest for ‘special’ has changed. It’s no longer catching up with a famous pal who just so happens to be on the same festival bill, or on a brief layover in the same city; it’s not even necessarily promotion for a new song or album. No, as with everything these days, it’s dictated by social media – and a desire to cash in on the “FOMO economy”, where people who have coughed up more than £100 for a ticket spend the days after a show wishing they were at a different one, because their guests weren’t as good, or they didn’t get different costumes, or favoured secret songs.

Taylor Swift has been onto the magic of the “FOMO economy” for years now; ever the shrewd businesswoman, always one step ahead. (I should know: I’ve probably spent upwards of £3,000 on attending Swift shows over the years.) I was lucky enough to go to the Eras tour three times, in three different cities, twice for work (thus: ticket price = free)... yet most of my conversations about those shows revolved around what I didn’t get. When Jack Antonoff and Florence Welch appeared on the final night at Wembley, a thrill went through me that had nothing to do with the songs they were about to perform (Getaway Car, good; Florida, bad) but everything to do with the fact I knew my friends would message the day after, envy oozing from my WhatsApp screen like Robin Williams’ Flubber manifest in tech form. When she played This Is What You Came For as a secret song in Liverpool, my first thought might have been “eh?”, before I remembered she co-wrote it, but my second was definitely “quick, must record!” The only ‘special’ element of that show that didn’t seem to be catered to people like me – sad, tragic Instagram addicts, in perpetual thrall to that dastardly “FOMO economy” – was giving out the 22 hat. But had that hat not gone primarily to children, often children brought to Swift’s team’s attention through charities and the like, would it have been so wholesome? Nope. It would have become merely another attention-grabbing gimmick in that never ending line of gimmicks.

A pop show is now judged entirely on viral moments. It does, admittedly, apply more often to shows in big cities – if living in London didn’t make me insufferably smug enough, the abundance of live music and SPECIAL MOMENTS does the trick – with artists under increasing pressure to pull out the big guns to secure a good review, or a word-of-mouth recommendation. Rosalia was extraordinary, but I still found myself turning to the person next to me when it became clear Bjork was not present to sing on Berghain, disappointment painted across both of our faces.

My vitriol is mostly reserved for pointless moments, and bad faith-interactions. Give me an A-list guest, fine, go ahead: I screeched along with everyone else when Olivia Rodrigo brought Robert Smith out at Glastonbury, or Bruce Springsteen brought out Paul McCartney at Hyde Park, or Dua Lipa brought out Charli XCX at Wembley, or, for slightly lower stakes, Waxahatchee sang with MJ Lenderman at Primavera. I can still remember being 14 at the Isle of Wight festival, so shocked to be watching Kanye West get dragged out by Jay Z to sing Run This Town that I immediately vomited on my return to my tent (and I was sober!)

So guests can stay. It’s the photo/video opp moments that irritate: Charli’s Apple dance, Sabrina’s celebrity arrests, Alex Warren’s inane fucking “celebrity confetti pusher”. I’m lumping Role Model in here, too, because a guest is only a good guest if they SING: flouncing across the stage looking pretty isn’t enough – that merely tells us the only intention was to be filmed, to eventually go viral and make some record executives’ job a bit easier for a week or two. The fans unlucky enough to be present at the shit show, the one with the shit surprise, will simply buy another ticket if they can; problem solved, money made.

Even albums can’t escape the scourge. I won’t lie and pretend my jaw didn’t drop when I first heard Kacey Musgraves and Miranda Lambert had buried the hatchet to have a good ‘ole party on Horses and Divorces – and I won’t lie and pretend that song hasn’t been stuck in my head for a week. But I don’t buy that it was a genuine love-in, either. They’re both smart, and knew what the reaction would be: fans like me rushing to stream the song and post it on socials. You’d have to be very stupid indeed to work in the music industry and have seen what Girl, so Confusing did for Charli and Lorde (the think pieces! The streams! The merch!) and not want a piece of that pie. Arguments sell, so it makes sense that – now we’re all meant to Be Kind, and all – resolutions do too.

Perhaps my main issue with the onslaught of the Concert Gimmick is how much attention it requires; you can’t risk nipping to the bar, or the toilet, if Stevie Nicks might start singing Landslide with Harry Styles at any moment. You can’t get too rowdy or dance too much. You need to be poised, phone held aloft, ready for the exact moment the special something arrives, so you can trade on the social capital and brag about it afterwards. It all feeds into a rot creeping into live music, where the spontaneity, the fun, is being replaced by something egregious: potential ‘content’. It’s why kids queue for 12 hours before a show now, then wind up so dehydrated they pass out as soon as their all-time favourite singer walks onto stage. It’s why rich fans travel around the world to see their favourite singer on the same tour, dreaming of that rare show where something special will, eventually, occur, only to be inevitably disappointed when every single show is basically the same.

It all misses the point. I may remember all of those special guests I mentioned above, and I may have filmed their entrance just like the other people in the crowd. But what do I remember most from a lifetime of gigs? Friends; dancing; vomiting on the bus home; the way a song makes you feel, deep down, when performed by an artist you love. None of that requires a manufactured moment to feel special. It just is.

Two recent things at work sparked this internal debate: first, a really fun conversation with Patrick Leonard, the songwriter/producer behind many of Madonna’s biggest hits (he’s also worked with Leonard Cohen, Pink Floyd, Elton John – you name it). While discussing Like a Prayer, we went back and forth on why the song has endured all these years. Was it the tantalising pull of controversy, I asked? Perhaps it was that X-rated video that first made Sabrina Carpenter fall in love with the song, inspiring her to invite Madonna on stage at Coachella two weeks ago. But Leonard thought that underplayed the song’s brilliance, telling me: “For years and years and years, I said, ‘Look, if you have a really good stereo, and you sit in front of those speakers and you put Like a Prayer on – try to find something better. Good luck!” He’s right. It is still perfect, and sounds as fresh today as I imagine it did for those lucky enough to have heard it when it came out in 1989.

The second thing that got me reflecting on the Perfect Song was the death of outlaw country pioneer David Allan Coe, announced earlier today. While researching his wild, wild life for an obituary, I listened to his music for the first time in a long while: The Ride, Willie, Waylon and Me, and, of course, You Never Even Called Me by My Name. The latter is a self-declared Perfect Song (literally: he sings that it’s “the perfect country and Western song,” just after those immortal few lines “But the only time I know / I’ll hear ‘David Allen Coe’ / Is when Jesus has his final judgement day”).

You can’t really get two songs more different than Like a Prayer and You Never Even Called Me by My Name when it comes to composition and delivery, even if the two artists responsible for them shared a fuck you attitude from the get-go that has long rubbed bores and traditionalists up the wrong way.

But, yes, they’re both perfect. I think for a pop or rock song to be top-tier, it has to be both joyous and desperately melancholy; you must be able to dance and cry to it; you must find it impossible to sing along to it without screeching; there’s no space here for sitting on the fence. One song that has always fit that bill for me is This Will Be Our Year by the Zombies – a song I play every single New Year’s Eve without fail, wherever I am, regardless of how drunk, in whichever mood. It makes me feel like life can go in any direction I want it to… almost. I could be the happiest person in the world while listening to it or downright miserable, and neither opposing mood would change my opinion of its virtues. And that, I think, is what makes it special.

Here’s a quick, off-the-cuff list of 22 other songs I consider to be perfect (that I will undoubtedly sleep on and wake up hating):

Just Like Heaven by the Cure

Across the Universe by the Beatles

Something by the Beatles

Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin

Talking Shit About A Pretty Sunset by Modest Mouse

Atoms by Emmy the Great

Loaded by Primal Scream

Dancing On My Own by Robyn

Green Light by Lorde

As It Was by Harry Styles

Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel

England by the National

Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over by the Charlatans

Only Ones Who Know by Arctic Monkeys

Highwayman by the Highwaymen

Strawberry Blond by Mitski

Black by Pearl Jam

You Get What You Give by New Radicals

Digital Love by Daft Punk

Not Ready to Make Nice by the Chicks

We’re Going to Be Friends by the White Stripes

Call It What You Want by Taylor Swift

Just this morning, after waking up with a groggy, cheap wine-induced headache to Common People blaring from the record player in the next room – thanks, boyfriend – I went down a Britpop hole, soundtracking a lovely sunny walk with two of my all-time favourite albums, Primal Scream’s Screamadelica and Suede’s Dog Man Star. I dare you to try and feel miserable while listening to Movin’ On Up or Loaded or Introducing the Band or New Generation. It’s impossible.

There have been some new gems to dig into throughout April, too. There were three records I enjoyed much more than I thought I would: first up, Ringo Starr’s sweet homage to country greats on Long Long Road (which once again had me asking: why wasn’t he in the Travelling Wilburys?! I know George had beef with any semblance of a Beatles reunion, but gosh – Ringo deserved to be on those albums). It’s by no means an earth-shattering, agenda-setting album, but it’s heartfelt, and makes for a great early morning listen when your eyes are still filled with gunk and anything too loud risks initiating a meltdown.

I’m a huge Ringo fan and a country nut, so I guess my liking Long Long Road wasn’t that surprising; but more surprising was the fact I enjoyed Noah Kahan’s new one, The Great Divide, and Foo Fighters’ return on Your Favorite Toy. Kahan’s music has always felt slightly too Ed Sheeran-esque for me to buy into the hype fully, but I’ve seen him live a few times – including at a launch for this album a few weeks back, in a tiny garage in Dalston, of all places – and you can’t help but get swept up in the collective joy of his adoring crowds. He’s funny, he’s self-deprecating, charming – all things we could use more of in pop! He has a lovely voice, too, I just wish he’d move away from the paint-by-numbers lyrics, sometimes. Then there’s Foos, who I’ve also never been a huge fan girl of asides from in a live setting – perfect for karaoke, but I’d never put one of their albums on at home. Perhaps it’s growing up with a music snob step-dad who pretended Grohl never moved on from Nirvana. But all of that is to say Your Favorite Toy is great fun when cranked up loud and enjoyed as a schlocky summer soundtrack; as someone who has literally never had one driving lesson, I imagine it would be perfect to blast out of a car stereo. (Talking of car stereos. I think my favourite musical moment of this past week came when, shortly after consuming aforementioned cheap wine, I took it upon myself to start an impromptu Justin Bieber singalong in a kebab shop after hearing a passing car blasting Beauty and a Beat.)

Back on the country beat, I’ve joined the rest of the world in digging into Ella Langley’s Dandelion. I like her voice a lot, I like her hair and lace dresses even more, and have followed her career for a few years now, but I do feel like the record slightly exists in the shadow of its chart-topping lead single, Choosin’ Texas. She needs more hits to secure the momentum she’s building right now, and who knows, the “next Taylor Swift” headlines might just come to fruition. If you’re looking for country/Americana with a little more bite, in the vein of Wednesday or Waxahatchee, Mikaela Davis’s Graceland Way also has some lovely songs on it.

I’m also obsessed – again, like much of the internet – with Slayyyter’s Worst Girl in America. The crazed-ness of it is a tonic to all the sanitised, boring pop (I won’t mention Jessie Ware’s new one in any detail, but…) we’re being fed these days; I can’t wait for her London show in November. (It says something about how electrifying a talent Slayyyter is that even crowds at Coachella, that shrine to pretension and enemy of fun people everywhere, looked to be going wild in the clips from her set.)

And finally, another upbeat banger: Come Closer by Tomora, the electronic super-duo consisting of the Chemical Brothers’ Tom Rowland and Norwegian singer Aurora, has arrived just in time for this jolt of sunny London weather. RING THE ALARM might just be the 2026 summer anthem.

I could bake bubblegum pink Lambeth cakes and sell them on Instagram for £100 apiece, if only I had a bigger fridge, better oven and a butter yellow KitchenAid. I could spend every weekend rummaging through chichi North London charity shops and resell ugly jumpers and maxi skirts under the moniker “Y2k style” on Vinted for profit. Maybe I could even stop going out, and find contentment in watching TV every night, as in love with Race Across the World as I’ve ever been with overpriced pints.

But the Ideal Side Hustle I come back to, time and time again, is one that every young-ish journalist – don’t deny it – has internally debated. To TikTok, or not to TikTok? To succumb to the allure of the micro-influencer, in the hope of being sent a free perfume, or ticket, or the odd small payment in exchange for a video bigging up the merits of a bar, book or restaurant – journalistic and ethical boundaries blurred, of course; or to not, and continue to glumly watch on as your ex-peers post their new “gifted” amber velvet Loaf sofa on their Instagram story.

Some may blame the decaying media landscape; the ubiquity of video content; or decreasing attention spans. But the scourge of the Hot Journalist, the writer-cum-content-creator, is the real culprit.

A decade ago, millennial writers were pushed to self-promote, to mouth off on Twitter everyday and, eventually, turn their own lives into a brand. Now it is video content on TikTok and Reels that reigns supreme. The biggest – most irritating – difference between the two comes down to an earthly reality most of us spend our lives pretending isn’t real: beautiful people do better.

Now, this isn’t an invitation to a tragic pity party. I wouldn’t mind making the odd video at work to accompany my written articles, so long as I’d been warned in advance and had time to a) wash my hair, b) drink some Lucozade if nursing a painful hangover, c) plan an outfit that doesn’t include a jumper with holes in or a yellowing, unironed t-shirt, or d) do all of those things. I like my hair when it’s clean. I know which colour clothing looks better on camera. And I could, I guess, simply refrain from drinking too much on work nights.

But do I really want to pull out my phone each morning on my boring commute, and press “record” as the Victoria line train pulls into the station – thus beginning my “Day in the Life as a Journalist” content.

That same day’s video could include a flash of the book I’m reading (literary but not too literary; pretension is a tightrope), the office’s escalator, the newspaper’s masthead, a few flashes of Trello boards and messy notepads and – maybe! – a sneak peak of an outfit in the loo’s full-length mirror. Maybe, if it had been a particularly interesting day, I could speak to camera, gushing about an article I’d just written, an idea I’d magically thought up or a snappy soundbite on the day’s big story. For the real fans, the ones watching along on stories for the play-by-play action, there might be a picture of a lunchtime salad or a glass-walled meeting room. Perhaps an iced coffee break! But god. I don’t want to record myself doing any of that. I certainly don’t want to spend two hours combining all those mundane little clips into a mundane little video, preparing to battle with CapCut as a zillennial with awful editing skills. (Disclaimer: I made two videos just like this earlier this year during one of my Side Hustle Meltdowns, but we’re back off that wagon now, mostly because I’m lazy and, as previously mentioned, rubbish at using CapCut.)

When I was growing up, dreaming of being a writer who, you know, wrote words for a living, I imagined journalists to all look like Redford’s Woodward and Hoffman’s Bernstein in All the President’s Men; the women ones, in Ugly Betty or The Devil Wears Prada, were beautiful, but they worked in fashion magazines, which I thought would be different. It turns out 90 per cent (a conservative estimate) of writers these days don’t drink, certainly don’t smoke, love running marathons and microdosing Mounjaro, so everyone looks good, a lot of the time.

Which is why lots of those very good-looking people now find themselves on TikTok and Instagram, living parallel lives as influencer first, writer second; selling a shiny, unrealistic image of journalism to an audience looking to fulfil their How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days fantasy.

So while I continue to be rubbish at remembering to film mundane parts of my day to turn into “content”, I suppose I better accept a Loaf sofa isn’t being delivered anytime soon. At least I don’t have to blow dry my hair.

Gen Z’s edgy pop princess had long been trying to pull a High Fidelity and prove the depth of her music-knowledge: wearing battered indie band t-shirts, inviting the Breeders on tour, gushing in interviews about how much she loved Fiona Apple, the White Stripes and the Smashing Pumpkins. It all made the appearance of the Cure’s lovably morose frontman, who duly duetted with Rodrigo on Friday I’m in Love and Just Like Heaven, an inter-generational match made in heaven. Here was a Disney princess whose grit was starting to escape from under the crown; a ‘main pop girlie’ who wanted to bridge the worlds of rock and pop, introducing the magic of the former to her loyal procession of twinkling tween fans watching the TikTok live streams at home.

Her sure pivot to a rockier, more raw sound seemed only more certain when, earlier this year, she featured as the most high profile artist on War Child’s excellent charity record, Help 2, alongside the likes of Fontaines D.C., Cameron Winter and Pulp. We’d all seen those video clips of Rodrigo singing along to Common People in the crowd at the Pyramid, just 24 hours before she walked onto that same stage in her chunky boots and fishnet tights, ready to convince the stuffy British music establishment that she belonged there (it worked: every review was glowing). Here was the new Cool Girl of pop, less elusive and unknowing than Lana Del Rey; an artist who, somehow, had become a megastar as a teenager yet managed to stay grounded. Rodrigo became the pop star you wanted to go to the pub with, and the pop star whom everyone suspected wouldn’t be solely a pop star for long.

Then, last week, arrived Drop Dead, another stellar pop song in the vein of Rodrigo’s many stellar pop songs. On it, she sings of a lover (presumably her ex-boyfriend Louis Partridge, if the mention of his star sign – Gemini – is anything to go by) who knows “all the words to Just Like Heaven” and has her swooning in the Palace of Versailles. It’s a hazy, dreamlike ode to romance and girlhood infatuation, with a video by Tumblr’s photographer-du-jour Petra Collins and an aesthetic obviously indebted to Sofia Coppola’s cake-munching, Converse-wearing Marie Antoinette. (If anything, the video reminded me that the peak of my own teenage years, between 2010-2014, were now so long ago they can be considered a vintage aesthetic. Who knew that Tumblr would one day be discussed like it was a holy relic?)

But all of the recent career moves that had hinted at a rockier, edgier, more grown-up Rodrigo were replaced with more of the same; her old sound, that is, with digestible flicky guitar riffs and lyrics still catered to tweens falling in and out of love. Rodrigo is only 23, and evidently spikier and more business-savvy than many of her peers (choosing to sign with Geffen, rather than Disney, after the success of her starring role in (take a deep breath) High School Musical: the Musical: the Series remains a masterstroke) – but I’m beginning to wonder when she’s going to step out of her box. Hopefully her forthcoming third album, You Seem Pretty Sad For a Girl So in Love, packs a bigger punch, and a few more surprises, than Drop Dead (admittedly a Good Pop Song, but not a great one) managed to.

Rodrigo’s one-time mentor Taylor Swift offers a warning. Swift’s success at maintaining and monetising a core audience – girls who grew up with her guaranteed to attend shows forevermore, alongside tweens and their doting mothers – has become her biggest curse. She now makes boring music because she knows her fans (I’m guilty too!) will buy and stream it anyway; desire for nostalgia outweighs any semblance of taste or judgement. Rodrigo should be careful of succumbing to that same curse; of relying on that same safety net.

When I dared to give Rodrigo’s second album, Guts, a three-out-of-five star review back in 2023, her fans pounced – I think the funniest insult I’ve still ever received as a journalist was “You look like salt and pepper are too spicy for you”. The middling review didn’t mean I wasn’t a fan; I’d begged the Telegraph to let me review Rodrigo’s first ever UK tour in 2022 because I was obsessed with Driver’s Licence. No – the middling review was because Guts sounded exactly the same as Sour, her record-breaking, agenda-setting, chart-topping debut – and I considered that a missed opportunity. Some pop stars are destined to just be okay artists, but I always (and still do) believed that Rodrigo had something extra, something better. You only have to listen to All I Want, written when she was just 16, to know that this Disney-dropout had something special from the start.

In that same review of Guts, I argued that Rodrigo’s love for Nineties and Noughties grunge, pop punk and riot grrrl aesthetics threatened to drag her music into pastiche; she wanted to be Fiona Apple, but she sounded more like Avril Lavigne. It’s a criticism that is swirling again now, with social media users criticising the ‘Little Baby’, Lolita-esque outfit she’s swanning around the Palace of Versailles in in the video for Drop Dead. Unlike Courtney Love or Kat Bjelland, who paired similar clothes back in the Nineties with a snarl, a stroke of messy eyeliner and a sense that their lives were filled with adult anxieties and problems (and thus pulled them off), Rodrigo still seems too perfect – the princess who hasn’t yet managed to escape the tower. She’s trying too hard to mix two worlds, instead of being brave enough to enter a new one.

Is it money holding her back? I guess it is always money, to an extent. Rodrigo has a huge fanbase who expect a certain type of song; her label want her to satisfy that fanbase. If she were to pivot to rock completely, who’s to say her future shows (stadiums, surely) would still sell out? Who would buy the glittery microphones and crop tops and iPhone cases from the merch stand then? Would a different sound lend itself quite as readily to short and snappy viral TikTok videos? And would Rodrigo, however much she appears unbothered by her peak position in the ‘pop girlies’ pantheon, actually be okay with fading from view, replaced by one of the dozens of artists waiting in the wings to take her place? Fame is a double-edged sword, and Rodrigo is still frightened of its blade.

Wired’s piece outlines how the digital marketing company Chaotic Good Projects helped to propel Geese – a Brooklyn four-piece who had been wiling away in relative obscurity before the release of 2025’s Getting Killed, their fourth record – to the big leagues. Note: in this context, the big leagues mean positive reviews, sold-out tours of medium-sized venues and vinyl waiting lists rather than Number 1 spots in the charts; the band’s frontman Cameron Winter, simultaneously riding a wave of critical acclaim for his debut solo record Heavy Metal, featured on the cover of New York magazine in December alongside the bleach blonde-bard of downtown Manhattan, Debbie Harry. Suddenly, Geese were everywhere, replacing the likes of Wet Leg, The Last Dinner Party and English Teacher as the band apparently sent along by God to save rock and roll.

The co-founders of Chaotic Good Projects, Andrew Spelman and Jesse Coren, revealed their business model on a Billboard podcast last month. Their company uses ‘networks’ of social media pages, mostly on TikTok, to boost an artist’s music on the platform, promoting it in the murky virtual algorithm. Songs start to soundtrack more videos; fake accounts and comments can be fabricated to increase discourse, making it seem like everyone is talking about an artist when, in reality, not many people are at all. It’s a tactic that has become common in our social media-obsessed world, snaking through the worlds of politics (remember Brexit?), news and culture.

It’s also a tactic that will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever suffered through a bad first date with a digital marketing executive, four overpriced Shoreditch pints failing to quash the horror of hearing their ‘lit strategy’ for the ‘exciting year ahead, man’. We know that the internet is populated by infinite malevolent forces trying to dictate what we think, buy, feel or believe; we are also aware that the music industry, no longer able to rely on traditional advertising, physical sales or the music press to turn artists into profit, will do whatever it takes to control the algorithm – even if that leaves artists privy to that most horrifying and dangerous of accusations, the ‘industry plant’.

It’s a title with which Geese has long contended, despite half a decade spent releasing music and playing live gigs. The band’s apparent ‘overnight’ success – five years in the making – has simply been held up as proof that this bunch of middle-class New Yorkers must have some family members in high places, some industry suits with millions riding on their success. (Disclaimer: I understand this cynicism. Of the dozens of new singles I’m sent to listen to each week, a hefty number come courtesy of some old rocker’s daughter or aristocrat’s distant relation; their surname often, hilariously, changed to avoid identification. Music has always been a cool hobby for rich kids, and when ordinary people increasingly can’t afford eggs or petrol, let alone guitars and cross-country travel between gigs, that’s not going to change.)

My main issue with the knee-jerk, pseudo-horrified response to the article, with “fans” posting on X and TikTok that Geese’s music is now ruined for them, is this: if you believe you only enjoyed a song or an album because nefarious marketing and creepy bots told you to, then you are discrediting and devaluing your very ability as a human being – tastemaker, critic, basic music fan – to conclude whether art is worthwhile; to confidently assess whether what you are tuning into on Spotify – the original search maybe sparked by hearing Taxes in a TikTok video – is any good or not. That is much more depressing to me than an internet marketing company pushing a client. Back in 2012, when I was still at school and Psy’s Gangnam Style ruled the charts – it was all over Twitter and Instagram; every radio station played it on repeat – the marketing push was what made me aware of it. But did that same marketing ever convince me it was good? Of course not.

Perhaps I have skin in the game. Last month, I reviewed Geese’s sold-out show at the Hammersmith Apollo. I’ve seen them live before, own Getting Killed on vinyl and have a t-shirt in the drawer, so I was, by all intents and purposes, already a fan. I’ve also watched my fair share of TikTok videos and Instagram Reels soundtracked by Winter’s nasally vocals; I’ve read the profiles declaring them the new Strokes, and Winter the Gen Z heir to Neil Young.

But, without sounding insufferably conceited, I don’t consider myself a product of successful marketing. I listened to Geese; I liked Geese’s sound; I continued to listen. There had been a niggling thought at the back of my mind before the Hammersmith gig that, maybe, I should go into it with a negative outlook, prepared to decry the excessive hype and how it failed to live up to expectations. (Every music critic working in today’s internet landscape will know that a bad review often performs better than a positive one; negativity is the secret to a fantastic headline.) I was prepared to file my review with the admission that, once again, the critics were wrong, this gig had been just fine, and Geese were probably a band who would one day be consigned to the rubbish heap of “almost was” rising stars.

Then the gig started, and it was brilliant – I ended up giving it five out of five stars. Looking back now, after reading all these posts from fans who say the “psyop” reveal has made them realise Geese’s music is not actually good, I’m only more certain that the gig deserved the glowing verdict. Even the world’s most advanced algorithm or overpaid marketing executive can’t manufacture human feeling – I should know, having suffered through countless, soulless performances from ‘label priorities’ and rising stars with one viral TikTok hit – and emotion was in plentiful supply that night in West London.

So that’s all to say: if you listen to music and think it is good, back yourself. Be confident in your judgement. Personal opinion and taste are, after all, our strongest defenders against the blandness that is beginning to creep into every crevice of our culture thanks to AI. And when someone catches you listening to Geese and liking it, and smugly asks whether you’ve fallen for the hype, just nod, and say “yes. Who cares?”

I took the lead from my whiplash-random Spotify searches – more on that later – and spent a few months yapping about albums I’d loved, TV shows I’d binged, festivals I’d drunk too much at, films I’d been floored by. Then, inevitably, I stopped: pretending work was the sole distraction, when, in reality, the usual evil culprit (my iPhone) was to blame.

Now, four years later, I was reminded of this Substack’s existence when Spotify played that Mystery Jets song at random while I was spending another morning commute drifting off on the Victoria line. With Blaine Harrison rattling through all the musical great loves of his life – Neutral Milk Hotel, The Lemonheads, Wings, Belle & Sebastian, The Fall – whose albums he hopes to one day get back from his greedy, vinyl-stealing ex, I thought: go on, give it another go. I was also reminded of the time I lent a boy my copy of that same Belle & Sebastian album (The Boy With the Arab Strap) and not only did I never get the record back – I didn’t even get a free dinner out of it. So here I am.

I’m hoping/planning/vowing to write about what I’ve been listening to that week, to a) remind me b) hold me accountable and c) have fun writing about music again. There will also be, inevitably, lots of excavating from the personal anecdote mound, because – unlike Mr Harry Styles, below – I never could resist oversharing.

And here’s what I’ve been listening to this week – new and old, very good and if not quite bad, then disappointingly safe; spanning genre and generation and any semblance of human sense or taste (why, on Tuesday, did I spend my entire top-to-bottom trip listening to Here For A Good Time by George Strait on loop? I am 29 years-old! I guess, at least, that Country to Country is rolling into the O2 this weekend, so I’ve got Stetsons on my mind.)

First up, obviously, is Harry Styles’s Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. I agreed with every word of Pitchfork’s scathing review, in that I felt short-changed by being promised a dance album and receiving, well, a CBeebies version of a dance album; how can you centre your entire roll-out on your newfound love of LCD Soundsystem then release songs that feel hollow, stripped of all emotion and honesty? Say what you like about James Murphy and his penchant for infuriating pretension, but if there’s one thing the man is good at, it’s coming through with an emotional gut-punch dressed up as a dancefloor banger. I thought we were getting Harry does All My Friends, instead we got Harry does tedious 1975 karaoke. As an OG Harry stan from his X Factor days, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to square his charisma/looks/stardom with his unknowability: the sense that his music career is secondary to everything else – an accessory to his fame rather than the source of it – and he has no intention in ever diving deeper because these surface-level songs are just good enough. Two highlights are Are You Listening Yet? and American Girls, but there’s nothing at the calibre of As It Was here. The worst part is – does he feel there needs to be?

Much more fulfilling was charity record HELP (2), featuring a mix of original songs and covers from Fontaines D.C., Olivia Rodrigo, Pulp, Anna Calvi and more. Fontaines’s version of Sinéad O’Connor’s Black Boys on Mopeds and Rodrigo’s take on The Book of Love by the Magnetic Fields are standouts; emotional yet understated. Quiet confidence is a gift in music and not many artists get it right, but they both pull it off with ease. Rodrigo sacking off the Main Pop Girlies gang to masquerade as an indie singer is the right choice; her music has never made sense in the industry she found herself forced to inhibit (and dominate). A follow-up to 1995’s The Help Album (Macca, Blur and Radiohead all featured), it’s not just packed with great tunes: it’s also raising money for victims of conflicts around the globe and you can buy it here.

Away from the world’s terrifying descent into ruin… To continue the Strait theme, prep for my 30th birthday party – let’s not dwell on that impending reality – and its Nineties fancy dress edict has culminated in a renewed appreciation for the best country-pop album ever made. I am, of course, talking about Shania Twain’s The Woman in Me (1995), released a mere year before I was born and the reason for my costume-of-choice (hint: there’s lots of leopard print.)

Finally, with spring finally gearing its lovely head, I’ve been on a trip down memory lane – aka the Tumblr heyday of 2008-2011 – soundtracked by lots of delightfully twee mid-Noughties British indie-folk. Think Slow Club, Lightspeed Champion – am I allowed to say I preferred both of those projects to their frontperson’s newer, much more acclaimed/popular stuff? – Allo’ Darlin and Noah and the Whale. The latter’s aptly-titled 2009 album The First Days of Spring is a tonic, albeit one tied up with memories of being an angsty 15 year-old bawling my eyes out because my parents wouldn’t let me miss a GCSE exam to see Arctic Monkeys (they caved, in the end). That scene’s ultimate song for me, though, has to be Emmy the Great’s Atoms, which was annoyingly never released on Spotify. It’s on YouTube here, and is still as capable of sparking existential crises as it was when I first heard it 15 or so years ago.