Hit Singles

Hit Singles

Send us your questions for Dionne Warwick!

Our next Audience With candidate surely needs no introduction. Dionne Warwick is simply one of the greatest singers of all-time, the elegant yet emotionally powerful voice of many of Bacharach and David’s greatest songs. With more than 50 hit singles to her name, Warwick is the winner of every award and accolade going, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. She is also, of course, the Queen Of Twitter – and her willingness to engage with the world has led to interesting latter-day collaborations with the likes of Chance The Rapper. Now, to mark the release of a new 12-CD boxset entitled Make It Easy On Yourself: The Scepter Recordings 1962-1971, she’s kindly agreed to undergo a gentle grilling from you, the Uncut readers. So what do you want to ask an actual living legend? Send your questions to audiencewith@uncut.co.uk by Tuesday (November 4) and Dionne will answer the best ones in a future issue of Uncut.

Hit Singles

Queens Of The Stone Age unplugged: unsettling and sublime

After fulfilling a dream by playing a gig in one of the weirdest and most original locations it’s possible to imagine, what comes next? That was the question facing Josh Homme after Queens Of The Stone Age’s landmark show in the deathly depths of the Paris Catacombs, captured on the Alive In The Catacombs short film. While that setlist was specifically conceived for its unique subterranean location with a focus on QOTSA’s quieter, more intense cuts, Homme felt it was worth bringing the show to a wider and more warm-blooded audience than the bones and skulls of millions of ex-Parisiens. The resulting Catacombs Tour feels more like a theatrical event than a rock show, retaining a sense of intimacy even within the vast dome of the Royal Albert Hall. It’s divided into three acts, each distinguished by different lighting to match the shift in vibes. Advertisement The opening act sees Homme and the band on acoustic instruments bathed in cool blue lights at the front of the stage. They are joined by two violins and a cello, with Homme acting as a slightly psychotic jazzy bandleader, crooning his way through choice cuts from the QOTSA catalogue, interacting with audience and… Read More →

Hit Singles

Emmylou Harris interviewed: “I was faced with a conundrum”

With a new, expanded edition of her Spyboy live album due, Emmylou Harris talks to Uncut about the album, her collaborations with Daniel Lanois and Buddy Miller, covering Tom Petty, co-writing with Kate and Anna McGarrigle and what’s next… “It was a powerhouse band” UNCUT: Why is Spyboy so important to you?HARRIS: After I did Wrecking Ball [1995], I was faced with a conundrum. It was very different for me in terms of instrumentation and rhythms. So I thought, ‘How am I going to tour this record?’ Of course, Dan [Lanois, producer of Wrecking Ball] stepped up. He brought in Daryl Johnson [bass], and Brady Blade [drums], who I think he’d played with five years earlier or something. So we put the band Spyboy together and hit the road. But Dan was a temporary thing, he was really just sort of showing me the way. Even when we were recording Wrecking Ball, I was thinking about Buddy Miller. I’d met him when I had my band, The Nash Ramblers, and Buddy had been playing with Jim Lauderdale, who was opening for us. I knew that Buddy and his wife, Julie, had moved to Nashville. So I sort of thought, in… Read More →

Hit Singles

Listen to Simon Armitage’s new poem, Dear Pink Floyd

Simon Armitage, the poet laureate, has written a poem celebrating the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. You can listen to Armitage read the poem below. Advertisement [embedded content] “I was thinking about the album and their noise, and what effect that has had on people right across the globe,” says Armitage. “I didn’t know whether I could put into words what that music sounded like. I only get involved with projects if I think I can’t do them, so this was a natural invitation. “I wanted to write something that was album-shaped, that would fit onto the side of an LP and bleed right to the margins of a square. I was trying to mimic the noise of Wish You Were Here – there are no gaps in it. Like a wall of warm sound. I wanted the text to be a physical manifestation of that. “The bigger voice in the piece is all fans in the world trying to say something. I was the generation that caught the tail end of punk – a sort of a musical resetting of the clock, for me. That’s how I wanted everything at that time. Then eventually you… Read More →

Hit Singles

Jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette has died aged 83

The great jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette has died aged 83, according to a statement released by his representatives. DeJohnette worked with Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Sonny Rollins and Charles Lloyd among others. Born in Chicago in 1942, DeJohnette began playing piano at the Chicago Conservatory of Music, before picking up drums in his early teens. After early spells in doo-wop and rock’n’roll, his interests shifted into jazz, and from the late 1950s had his own trio. Among DeJohnette’s many career highs, in 1968, he joined Davis’s band in time to play on Bitches Brew. During his time with Davis, DeJohnette also appeared on Live-Evil and A Tribute To Jack Johnson. In parallel to his career as a sideman and collaborator, in 1968 DeJohnette recorded his debut as a bandleader, The DeJohnette Complex; his last album was 2017’s Hudson.

Hit Singles

The Damned honour Brian James with new covers album

The Damned have announced a new album, Not Like Everybody Else, dedicated to the memory of Brian James, the band’s founding guitarist and chief song-writer, who died on March 6, 2025. Recorded in five days at Revolver Studio, Los Angeles, the album features Dave Vanian on vocals, Captain Sensible on guitar, Rat Scabies on drums, Paul Gray on bass and joined by longtime keyboardist Monty Oxymoron. Advertisement The sessions marked the first time in 40 years that Scabies has returned to the studio with the band. Say the band, “each tune has been chosen because they were by artists that had an impact on Brian’s guitar playing and in turn his songwriting and in turn the Damned as a band.” The first track released is R Dean Taylor’s “There’s A Ghost In My House”, which arrived on October 30. Advertisement Among the tracks, the band’s cover of “The Last Time” by The Rolling Stones, featuring James himself, taken from his final London performances with The Damned, at Hammersmith Odeon, in October 2022. The album coincides with The Damned’s 50th anniversary celebrations, which begin with a one-off covers show at Albert Hall, Manchester on January 28, 2026. The Damned will also play a special 50th anniversary show at OVO Arena Wembley on Saturday, April 11 2026. Tracklisting… Read More →

Hit Singles

Courtney Marie Andrews announces new album, Valentine

Courtney Marie Andrews has announced details of a new studio album, Valentine. The new record is released on January 16 via Thirty Tigers. Advertisement You can hear “Keeper” from the new album below. [embedded content] “Keeper” follows on from “Cons & Clowns“, which she released last month. Valentine was recorded to tape at Valentine Recording Studios in Los Angeles and co-produced by Jerry Bernhardt. The album also features drummer Chris Bear of Grizzly Bear. Advertisement The complete tracklist for Valentine is: Pendulum SwingKeeperCons & ClownsMagic TouchLittle Picture of a ButterflyOutsiderEveryone Wants to Feel Like You DoOnly the Best for BabyBest friend Hangman You can pre-order the album here. Andrews will also play a series of full band in support of the album during February: February 20 2026 – Brudenell Social Club, LeedsFebruary 21 – Whelan’s, DublinFebruary 22 – Gorilla, ManchesterFebruary 23 – Saint Luke’s, GlasgowFebruary 25 – Hare & Hounds, BirminghamFebruary 26 – Islington Assembly Hall, LondonFebruary 27 – The Lantern, BristolFebruary 28 – Chalk, BrightonMarch 2 – Boule Noire, ParisMarch 3 – TivoliVredenburg, UtrechtMarch 4 – Cactus Café, BrugesMarch 4 – AB Club, BrusselsMarch 6 – Metropool, HengeloMarch 8 – Lido, BerlinMarch 9 – Nochtspeicher, HamburgMarch 11 – Pustervik, GothenburgMarch 12 –… Read More →

Hit Singles

Tortoise’s Touch reviewed: welcome return for Chicago’s post-rock pioneers

It’s been nine years since Tortoise released their last album… It’s only been nine years since Tortoise released their last album, but it feels a lot longer. The quintet were closely associated with the Chicago post-rock scene of the late 1990s and early 2000s, and when that scene ran its course, they suddenly seemed unmoored from their original context and anchored to something in the past. On 2016’s The Catastrophist they sounded like a band out of time, an impression bolstered by the fact that the album has been commissioned by the City of Chicago to highlight the scene that had birthed the band nearly 20 years prior. But they kept the subject matter at arm’s length, which made the music sound slick and cursory. Now, in 2025, Tortoise have an all-new context. They are back in time, so to speak: their hometown has experienced a revival in its jazz and improvisational music scene, as a new generation of artists that includes Makaya McCraven, Angel Bat Dawid, Daniel Villareal, Macie Stewart and many others have brought a forceful new voice to venues around town. In some cases they’ve even performed and recorded with members of Tortoise, guitarist Jeff Parker in… Read More →

Hit Singles

Brandi Carlile – My Life In Music

ELTON JOHNGoodbye Yellow Brick RoadDJM/MCA, 1973This is the first album I ever felt any individual ownership over. I got it on cassette for Christmas when I was 12 years old, after my obsession with Elton John had taken hold. The songs were alive! Each one was like a movie full of colour, drama, and humour. I had a Walkman and I would listen to it around the clock. I memorised the liner notes and lyrics, and the artwork was almost as important to me as the songs. Some mean boys noticed my fixation on it one day and brought a magnet to school to ruin my tape. Even though it wouldn’t play any more, I continued to carry that tape everywhere with me until I was grown enough to buy it again. I think this is why physical albums are so important to me. INDIGO GIRLSSwamp OpheliaEPIC, 1994I first heard the Indigo Girls in the movie Philadelphia. I was mesmerised by their voices and I absolutely had to understand who they were and why they sang the way they did. They had a genderlessness about them that I found really beautiful. It’s amazing when you think about how many contemporary… Read More →

Hit Singles

Introducing The Ultimate Music Guide…Pavement!

Unharness your hopes! As you’ll read in his excellent afterword to this new magazine, Pavement’s Bob Nastanovich has an extremely solid take on the fortunes of the band in which he has played percussion for the last 30 years. Advertisement Things, he notes, have changed. Where once Pavement were part of a US guitar music underground – all 7” singles in limited numbers, fanzine interviews, a shared headline with Polvo – that scene has changed. Whereas this music had the quality of a secret handshake, now Bob notes, it’s become a family affair – as mums and dads have helped their now teenage children see the crooked Pavement light. Then of course, there’s “Harness Your Hopes”. It’s true, not all of us would pick it over “My First Mine” in a battle of Pavement deep cuts, but this algorithmic quirk and its many TikTok transformations has also helped turned the band from a historic, 1000-pressing limited edition concern into thriving and much-expanded contemporary cultural phenomenon. Most recently that has manifested itself in the most Pavement reunion tour (leading merch item: “Dad hat”, £23 (sold out)), which began in 2022 and has a date next week at the Hipnosis festival in… Read More →

Hit Singles

Marc Almond pays tribute to his Soft Cell bandmate Dave Ball, who has died aged 66

Dave Ball, one half of pioneering synth-pop duo Soft Cell, has died at the age 66. He passed away peacefully in his sleep at his London home on Wednesday (October 22). Advertisement Ball’s combined love of electronica and Northern Soul fed into his creative relationship with Marc Almond, a fellow art student at Leeds Polytechnic, when they began performing as Soft Cell in the late 1970s. As their million-selling cover of Gloria Jones’ “Tainted Love” topped the UK charts in 1981, the duo seemed to complement one another perfectly: Ball the taciturn background presence, Almond the showy, kohl-eyed frontman. Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, the first of five studio albums together, set a blueprint for ’80s synth-pop that was soon followed by Yazoo, Eurythmics, Pet Shop Boys and Erasure. When Soft Cell first split in 1984, Ball passed through a couple of short-lived bands before collaborating with Psychic TV, where he met Richard Norris. The pair formed electro-house act The Grid, issuing a series of albums and scoring a major hit with 1994’s delirious “Swamp Thing”. Ball’s other work as producer and remixer involved projects for The Virgin Prunes, Kylie Minogue and David Bowie. Most recently he’d completed work on a new… Read More →

Hit Singles

Soft Cell: “I suppose you could say it was a strange career path. But there were some amusing moments…”

The Art Of Falling Apart The Soft Cell story is one of wild, hedonistic success. Here, Marc Almond and Dave Ball confess all – about controversial performance art, New York’s depraved club scene, the perils of having hit records and their own eventual downfall. One bystander claims: “It was sex, drugs and electronic rock’n’roll!” Originally published in Uncut 257 (October 2018). Advertisement “There was always a darkness around Soft Cell,” says Marc Almond, warming to the story of his band’s relentlessly perverse progress through the 1980s. “And that fuelled Dave’s darkness, and it fuelled my darknesses… Our whole career, really, the whole Soft Cell story, was just a miasma of darkness!” But not today. It’s been quite a year for the man christened Peter Mark Sinclair Almond in Southport, 1957, and on this sunny midsummer morning in Mayfair he’s positively beaming. First, he was made one of the great unlikely OBEs of modern times in the New Year’s honours. Then, one of the badgers on Springwatch was named after him (“Of course, that’s the thing I’m proudest of,” he smiles), confirming his status as national treasure. And now, 40 years after he first met Dave Ball at Leeds Poly, Soft… Read More →

Hit Singles

Making Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere – “Let’s not shy away from the truth”

Read our review of Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere Director Scott Cooper talks to Uncut about the “the trauma and ghosts” haunting his biopic, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere Advertisement “It was about honouring that particular moment” UNCUT: What was the genesis of this project?SCOTT COOPER: I was introduced to Warren Zane’s book Deliver Me From Nowhere. It struck me as deeply intimate and honest, and highlighted Bruce’s internal struggles in ways that I could relate to. It stood out to me as incredibly cinematic, though I knew it would be challenging, but I felt like I had to adapt it. Bruce Springsteen had said no to every overture since 1986 to make a film of his life. I flew to New Jersey, Warren and I met Bruce and Jon [Landau] one afternoon, and spent the whole day with them. And I left New Jersey with their blessing to tell this story. You show flashbacks to Bruce’s childhood in ‘57, and then him hunkering down writing Nebraska in Colts Neck, New Jersey. Do those two periods encapsulate the heart of him?I think so, yes. I told Bruce I saw it as something quiet and interior, about this very specific and… Read More →

Hit Singles

Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series Volume 18: Through The Open Window, 1956-1963 reviewed: documenting the dawn of a legend

Photo: Sandy Speiser/Sony Music Archives The young Dylan, hollering his head off The first time we hear Bob Dylan on this fabulous 8CD, 168-track boxset, it’s Christmas Eve 1956. Dylan’s high school trio, The Jokers – Bob Zimmerman (vocals and piano), Larry Keegan and Howard Rutman (vocals) – are whomping through Shirley And Lee’s “Let The Good Times Roll” in a version recorded on a 78rpm acetate at the Terlinde Music Store in St Paul, a bus ride from the 15-year-old Dylan’s home in Hibbing, Minnesota. It’s barely a minute long, not much more than a gloriously raucous din, but there distinctly is the young Bob, hollering his head off. The last time we hear him, it’s October 1963, at the end of his first headlining show at a sold-out Carnegie Hall, Dylan in full command of 3,000 hip New Yorkers who’ve just been profoundly wowed by a set full of era-defining songs, all of them written in the two and a bit years since Dylan blew into Greenwich Village from Minneapolis in January 1961. Advertisement Dylan’s remarkable transformation from cocky young Woody Guthrie disciple into a seemingly unstoppable songwriting force, moving at speed without caution or brakes, is the… Read More →

Hit Singles

Roger Eno – “I thrive on atmosphere”

EMMYLOU HARRIS“Wrecking Ball” (from Wrecking Ball)ELEKTRA, 1995All my choices are about atmospheres. That’s what I thrive on. If something gives me a feeling, it doesn’t have to be a narrative, it just has to be something that presses the atmosphere button. When Danny (Lanois) produces, he puts this whole hinterland into a song. The first few times you hear it, you’re listening to Emmylou’s voice, which isn’t exactly shoddy, but subsequently what you hear is this beautiful tonal landscape supporting it. He gives you somewhere else to live for a few minutes. When Cecilie (Eno, Roger’s daughter) and I were touring The skies, they shift like chords, I gave Danny a ring and he played with us in Los Angeles, where he lives. He’s a genius lap steel player. JOAN BLONDELL & ETTA MOTENRemember My Forgotten Man (from Gold Diggers Of 1933 OST)DIR. MERVYN LEROY, 1933This film is an amazing piece of work with some really good songs, but right at the end, out of the blue, it hits you with this. It’s 1933, so it’s the Depression, and there are all these veterans that were, I wouldn’t say willing to die for their country, but expected to, and now… Read More →

Hit Singles

Millie Jackson: “I’m doing it for you!”

[embedded content] How did you get started in music?There was a club in Harlem that everybody used to hang out in. Somebody dared me to go on stage and sing. Somebody saw me, liked me, and I ended up with a contract. I didn’t quit my day gig until my second album. I sang on the weekend and worked at Schraftt’s, the candy people. I was the first black waitress at 61 Fifth Avenue. You kept working, even though you had a record contract?Yeah, cos I knew it wasn’t going to last. I ain’t had no training or nothing. I just got this accidental record deal, so I’m gonna keep working. I had my first gold record before I quit my day gig. That was many a moon ago. Now, I’m always listening to country music. There was this song called “Buy Dirt” [by Jordan Davis]. Every time I got a cheque I bought dirt. I don’t have to sing. I got dirt. And guess what? When I bought my first dirt, it was 29 acres, and I said to myself, it’s supposed to be 40 acres and a mule. I kept adding to my dirt. Advertisement Did you ever… Read More →

Hit Singles

Buzzcocks and The Stranglers live in Leeds: punk veterans in fine fettle

“Are you ready to rock, Leeds?” yells Steve Diggle, somewhere in Buzzzcocks’ 45-minute sonic blitzkrieg. The silver-haired guitarist turned 70 this year, but his schoolboy grins and excitable demeanour have been unchanged for decades, and he retains the curious mannerism of breaking off mid-solo to point at (a possibly imaginary) someone in the crowd. Following lead singer/main songwriter Pete Shelley’s death in 2018, Diggle is now the sole remaining founder member of the Manchester punks whose stellar singles and albums lit up the charts in the late ’70s, influencing the likes of REM, The Smiths and Nirvana. Accordingly, he makes sure his guitar-playing is centre-stage: delivered at ear-tingling volume with wails of feedback. Advertisement “What Do I Get?” and “I Don’t Mind” survive with distinctly ragged glory, although a slower “Orgasm Addict” is barely recognisable without Shelley’s inimitable nasal whine. Diggle’s voice is closer to Francis Rossi’s than his late bandmate’s, but although “Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t Have?)” still sounds wonderful, these current Buzzcocks fare best when not judged against superior earlier versions. The jangling “Manchester Rain” is the best song Diggle’s penned in decades, and a hurtling, slightly overly-extended “Harmony In My Head” reminds everyone… Read More →

Hit Singles

50th anniversary edition of Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night to include six bonus tracks

On November 28, Warner/Reprise will release a new 50th Anniversary Edition of Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night, complete with six bonus tracks – two of those previously unreleased. Included on the new release are versions of “Lookout Joe” and “Walk On”, both recorded during the original 1973 album sessions at S.I.R. in Los Angeles. “Lookout Joe” replaces the version that was recorded at Young’s Broken Arrow Studio and subsequently included on the original release of Tonight’s The Night. Advertisement These versions of “Lookout Joe” and “Tonight’s The Night (Take 3)” have never been released. “Everybody’s Alone”, “Raised On Robbery” (featuring Joni Mitchell) and “Speakin’ Out Jam” appeared on Archives Vol II, while the unreleased version of “Wonderin’’ and “Walk On” from the same sessions has only ever been available to stream on NYA. This is the first time all six bonus tracks from the original sessions have been available on vinyl. Tonight’s The Night 50 will be released on vinyl, CD and digitally, with a clear vinyl version available at the Greedy Hand Store and indie retailers. Check out the full tracklisting below: Tonight’s The Night Speakin’ Out World On A String Borrowed Tune Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown… Read More →

Hit Singles

Thurston Moore to publish new book on free jazz

Thurston Moore is to publish NOW JAZZ NOW: 100 Essential Free Jazz & Improvisation Recordings [1960-80] via his Ecstatic Peace Library imprint. A collaboration between Moore, fellow musicians Mats Gustafsson, Neneh Cherry, Joe McPhee and music writer Byron Coley, the book spans 277-pages of album art, labels, sleeve notes and collector musings on their life-long obsessions of record collecting, with a focus on the recorded history of Free Jazz and Free Improvisation. The book is published on December 5 and is available to pre-order here.

Hit Singles

Listen to “House Of Dead Memories”: Sugar’s first new music for thirty years

Sugar – the band formed by Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould with bassist David Barbe and drummer Malcolm Travis – return with their first new music for thirty years. You can hear their comeback single “House Of Dead Memories” below. Advertisement [embedded content] Says Mould, “Sugar was a meteorite. I spent all of 1991 writing and performing new material at solo shows. David and Malcolm had never met but I was certain we three would work well together. “Sugar was a workhorse. After weeks of rehearsal in early 1992, we spent three months recording Copper Blue and Beaster. By summer 1992, the musical climate was perfect for what we created. “Sugar was a phenomena. No one could have predicted the results. We held onto the wheel and did our best to enjoy the wild ride. Sugar was part of a pivotal era in popular music, and a special time in my life.” Advertisement In addition to the new single, Sugar will perform together for the first time since January 1995, at New York City’s Webster Hall on Saturday, May 2 (tickets here) and Sunday, May 3, 2026 (tickets here) and London’s O2 Forum Kentish Town on Saturday, May 23 and Sunday, May 24, 2026 (tickets here). Next month will also see Sugar 1992 debut album, Copper Blue, commemorated with Copper Blue –… Read More →

Hit Singles

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere – a sentimental take on Bruce’s own private Nebraska

“I’m just trynna find something real in all the noise,” mumbles Jeremy Allen White, all brooding, ursine intensity as Bruce Springsteen at the heart of Scott Cooper’s new biopic. “You find something real,” reassures Jeremy Strong as his manager Jon Landau, “I’ll deal with the noise.” There’s a similar ambition to Deliver Me From Nowhere. Though there are wilder, noisier, more barnstorming chapters in the Springsteen biography, writer-director Cooper asks us to dial down the volume and focus in on the Boss’s quietest, strangest, most revealing episode: the year of 1981-82, when he came off the road in the wake of his first Top 10 hit, rented a shagpile apartment in Colts Neck, New Jersey, and started, in the face of all commercial expectations, to channel eerie, echoplex folk songs about the meanness at the heart of the world. Advertisement It’s a bold gambit (faithfully based on Warren Zanes’ deep-dive book), that cuts to the quick of Springsteen’s career, and to the relationship it was founded on. Because, although there’s a perfunctory romance featuring the rather squandered Odessa Young as Faye, the bottle blonde spirit of the Stone Pony, it’s this oddball bromance, between bruised heartland hero and buttoned-up nerd,… Read More →