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Today:
Talk is of newlywed Taylor Swift taking a break from music. Did I take a nap and wake up in the 1950s? | Laura Snapes
NEWS | 03 July 2026
No speculation is too harebrained when it comes to Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding. This strikes me as potentially true: even the world’s biggest pop star will glad-hand when needed, as it usually is in the always-traditional Nashville industry. So much of the discussion around the couple’s wedding is focused on what it will mean for Swift’s job. In a more manufactured pop era, marriage was the point at which labels might condemn a female pop star to the dumper. Swift and Kelce’s queen bee/football star dynamic is some kind of antidote that millions evidently want to believe in.

Top Stories:
Who’s been invited? Will they need to sign an NDA? Seven things you need to know about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding
NEWS | 03 July 2026
View image in fullscreen Swift and Stevie Nicks at the Grammies, 2010. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesPage Six has claimed that Stevie Nicks and Tim McGraw will be performing at the wedding. View image in fullscreen She wears it well … Swift in a custom Vivienne Westwood dress during her Eras tour. View image in fullscreen Alana Haim, Taylor Swift and Este Haim in ‘Stevie Knicks’ T-shirts at the 2026 NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden. We know Swift loves to leave a trail of clues behind her.

World:
It’s a love story – or is it? The surprising conflict and chaos in Taylor Swift’s songs about commitment
NEWS | 03 July 2026
In Love Story, Swift sang: “This love is difficult / But it is real.” That real and difficult love remained her ideal across most of her 12 albums. Love you chase, love you let go; love that heals you and breaks you; love the false god, love the king of your heart; love as freedom, love as prison; but never, never, easy love. Photograph: L Busacca/Getty Images for Songwriters Hall Of FameEven in Swift’s sweetest love songs, there’s an unmistakable trace of doom. If real love feels easy, maintaining that sense of uncomplicated joy in music is not. But, for Swift, marriage has always been about the beginning of another story.

Current Events:
2K88, Lauren Duffus, Rainy Miller & Bianca Scout: Everything Always Changes, for We’re Truly Here review – UK-Poland clan create murky beauty
NEWS | 03 July 2026
Polish producer 2K88 makes dark, glitching tracks that honour his country’s rap history and UK bass music. So when Poland’s Unsound festival asked him to team up with a group of British musicians, it made sense that he was drawn to Lauren Duffus, Rainy Miller and Bianca Scout, all of whom craft murky, genre-agnostic sounds best suited to after hours. View image in fullscreen Artwork for Everything Always Changes, for We’re Truly Here. Poetic Fallacy by 2k88, Lauren Duffus, Rainy Miller & Bianca ScoutAt points the breathy, amorphous production feels bland and interstitial rather than atmospheric. Created almost entirely on her own, Shadows, the new album from Los Angeles musician Cate Kennan, is a truly DIY project (Kranky).

News Flash:
Sienna Spiro: Visitor review – will she be the ‘new Adele’? Not with this merely competent debut
NEWS | 03 July 2026
Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ 2024 megahit has nearly 4bn streams on Spotify alone: the people crave traditionalist AM radio ballads. Enter Sienna Spiro, a young soul singer whose ultra-traditionalist sound is backed up by posh pedigree: her father, Glenn Spiro, is a famed Hatton Garden jeweller; her mother, Arabella, is a high society figure who reportedly mixed with royalty. After breaking through on TikTok, Spiro first hit the UK singles chart in 2024 and has since had three US Hot 100 hits. Her much-anticipated debut album is merely competent pastiche, largely comprising Whitney-style piano ballads sung with a grittier and less agile voice. Spiro specialises in lyrical stubbornness: the image she paints of herself is that of a charming fighter, refusing to let an ex get away.

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SPONSORED | 03 July 2026
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Latest:
‘I’m not a quitter!’ Rubén Blades, the salsa supremo who acted with Jack Nicholson, inspired Bad Bunny – and served as Panama’s tourism minister
NEWS | 03 July 2026
Blades has moved between music, law, politics and film as if they were all part of the same conversation. “A manager would go crazy,” he laughs, his grey eyes crinkling on a video call from his home in New York City, ahead of a gig he’s playing in London. In the 1970s, when salsa leaned heavily on love songs, Blades was writing about crime, violence, the street. He traces this back to his childhood in San Felipe, the then-neglected heart of Panama City, where he was the son of a Colombian-born detective and a Cuban-born actress and singer. “42nd Street was rough,” he says, filled with thieves, pimps and sex workers – the same archetypes he’d seen growing up in Panama City: “A port city, admitting people, things, ideas, in and out.

Breaking:
Quincy Jones emailed saying, ‘Hey man, I need to have a word’: how Jacob Collier made In My Room
NEWS | 03 July 2026
Jacob Collier, vocals, instruments, engineering, productionI grew up as one of the YouTube generation, with the idea that you could create your own fanbase by making videos. When I uploaded these videos, somehow one found its way to Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson’s producer, who sent an email: “Hey man, what’s going on with these chords? I need to have a word with you.” I was absolutely amazed, but we started talking on Skype and having incredible conversations. Stevie Wonder and Prince had played all the instruments on their albums in recording studios, but there wasn’t an instruction manual for doing it all at home. Jacob had so many ideas and knew what he wanted: it was just about finding a way to capture the spirit of his room.

Trending:
Madonna: Confessions II review – nostalgic dancefloor trip sparks her most vital album in two decades
NEWS | 03 July 2026
Is it for them?” ponders Madonna during Bring Your Love, a collaboration with Sabrina Carpenter from Confessions II. It’s a question you could ask of her decision to release a follow-up to 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor 21 years on. View image in fullscreen The artwork for Confessions II. Photograph: Warner Records/Boy Toy/APEqually, a more sceptical voice might suggest that Confessions II is for them – namely the fans who’ve bailed on Madonna over the last two decades. There’s doubtless a grain of truth in that – but Confessions II doesn’t feel particularly craven.

This Just In:
Candomblé: Sacred Rhythms in Brazil review – ceremonial drumming remixed for the dancefloor
NEWS | 03 July 2026
Originating in the 19th century among enslaved west Africans, candomblé manifested in music as a ritual practice of drumming circles, where polyrhythms were hammered out to induce possession by spirits. Hazy, unbalanced and full of tape hiss, the 10 ritual compositions pull listeners into the frenetic environment in which they were recorded. View image in fullscreen The artwork for Sacred Rhythms in Brazil. Photograph: FleeThis rhythmic material is manna for the producers who reshape it for the modern dancefloor on side two. Wistful finger-picked bossa nova guitar and delicate vocals combine on Brazilian singer-songwriter Lau Ro’s latest album Lau (Mexican Summer).

Today:
Downtown Boys: Public Luxury review – a joyful blast of bilingual political punk
NEWS | 03 July 2026
Optimism might feel outdated, but Downtown Boys are proud outliers. On Public Luxury, the Rhode Island band’s third and best album, they wear their politics proudly – while bringing new ambiguity, strangeness and shadow to their passionate, sax-blasted bilingual punk. Viva La Rosa kicks off like dive-bar punk, before transforming into something grander, with soaring electric guitar and darkly beautiful lyrics: “Todavía creo en un future / Todavía veo nuestros muertos” (I still believe in a future / I still see our dead). Sirena boils with the heat that Downtown Boys bring to their frenzied live shows, egged on by magnificently throaty vocals from Victoria Marie, sounding as if she’s singing down a megaphone. For all its ferocity, Public Luxury ends on a lightly clubby coda – muted house chords, a whistling melody and a not-very-subliminal message: “Take the fall with me,” they beckon.

Top Stories:
Joe Lovano: Paramount Quartet review – inspired sax maestro bounces from bebop to fertile improv
NEWS | 03 July 2026
The saxophone’s 19th-century inventor, the Belgian Adolphe Sax, imagined hybrid horns that could combine the speed and fluency of woodwinds with the volume and punch of brass. View image in fullscreen The artwork for Paramount Quartet. Photograph: ECM RecordsAnd Lovano’s Paramount Quartet glows with all the saxophone’s pliable eloquence in a master’s hands, alongside comparably free-spirited guitarist Julian Lage, bassist Asante Santi Debriano and sometime Living Colour drummer Will Calhoun. Lovano is a brilliant bebop player, but also an inspired free-improviser, creatively inhabiting the sound worlds of classic jazz, global music and more texture-based European approaches. Yoruba traditions, European chamber music, post-bop and free-improv mingle on this engaging trip across Empirical’s ever-inviting ballpark.

World:
My Chemical Romance review – ​fire! Nuclear war! Killer pierrots! This is stadium rock at its most monumentally madcap
NEWS | 03 July 2026
View image in fullscreen Turned up to 11 … the epic setup for My Chemical Romance’s Anfield show. During Mama, a man with his back on fire runs across the stage. By the time the band reach Famous Last Words, most of the set is consumed by flames. View image in fullscreen Shades of Brian May … My Chemical Romance guitarist Ray Toro. Should the reconstituted My Chemical Romance choose to forge ahead rather than simply looking back, one suspects they’d be overjoyed.

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Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 03 July 2026
SmartSync is a mobile application, compatible with any Android smartphone, that syncs your important data to your email. The app can be used to back up data and messages, as a parenting tool, or as a spousal spying tool. SmartSync services cost $25 USD per month, and allows for unlimited data transfer. The app can be found Here

Current Events:
Bad Bunny review – dynamic Latin superstar hosts thrilling party
NEWS | 03 July 2026
And, for another, if his show proves anything, it’s that you really don’t need to understand the lyrics to grasp why Bad Bunny has become one of the biggest stars in the world. In a sense, this staging is a risk – for lengthy sections, Bad Bunny is hidden from most of the audience, only visible on the venue’s screens, singing as he barges through the revellers – but it works incredibly well. View image in fullscreen High five … Bad Bunny delights fans near the stage barrier. At one point, he heads towards the front row and starts high-fiving and shaking fans’ hands at the crash barrier that’s almost obligatory at a stadium gig. Instead, it has the opposite effect: it feels genuinely moving, rather than performative, another example of Bad Bunny doing things his way, which, it transpires, is exactly the right way.