Journalist/Broadcaster/Author
There are two beginnings to this Britney Spears experience, and they are both salutary. The first arrived from an unexpected place. One of rock music’s most famous photographers, Pennie Smith, a sincere, respectful and grounded person who has captured the images of countless famous musicians and singers over the course of the past 30 … Read more Interview: Britney Spears
She’s been known to moan about her lot in the record music industry, but Aimee Mann is, possibly more than most, justified in making her continual barbed statements: fact is, she has been well and truly shafted. Since her days in US pop/rock band ‘Til Tuesday in the late 1980s, Mann has released solo … Read more Interview: Aimee Mann
“If one hopes to live a long life then one can look back and think that so many years have passed, but I’ve done so much in the past 40 years. I’ve produced work, produced children, I keep working, I keep trying to live in the present, and staying healthy. I look to the … Read more Interview: Patti Smith
Of any Irish band of the past five years you can think of it is only Villagers that have managed to tick all the boxes. Slinky and sinuous? That’d be bass player Danny Snow and the way his body movement oozes Sylverin-like signatures. Songs so smart and surreal they stop you in your tracks? … Read more Interview: Villagers
She is, let there be no shilly-shallying about it, one of the most adventurous musicians that Ireland has ever produced. We’re not just talking about Julie Feeney the performer and the way she might wear an outlandish hat; or Julie Feeney the singer and the way she might quiver a quaver in your general direction. … Read more Interview: Julie Feeney
Not that it matters, but if one were to apply the ‘granny’ rule, then Ed Sheeran is undoubtedly the biggest star to emerge from Ireland in quite some time. “Both of my grandparents are from Ireland – my granddad is from the North, and my grandmother is from the south, and I have family in … Read more Interview: Ed Sheeran
Matt Bellamy’s dressing room backstage. It is hotter than a very hot summer’s day, and the petite, voluble singer of Muse is sitting on a sofa, beside which resides a piano. Bellamy likes to have some time before a concert to go through some practice runs; he is a self-taught musician (he also plays improbably … Read more Interview: Muse
What a guy; you ask Iggy Pop a question about the main turning points in his life and he takes pretty much the entire length of the interview time answering it. In normal circumstances, this would be – in the words of Beavis and Butthead, two badly drawn Iggy boys down with the Popman – … Read more Interview: Iggy Pop