My guitar was mangled

I’m grateful to Taylor Swift, and others who have covered it, for introducing the song to a new generation. Three billion streams on Spotify is astonishing!

‘Do what you really want to do while you’re still alive’: Masayoshi Takanaka, the Japanese guitar hero surfing a second wave in his 70s

Playing a surfboard-shaped axe, Takanaka was a stadium-level artist at home but little known in the west – until YouTube brought him a huge new audience

How Courtney Barnett Made Her New Album By Retreating to the Desert: ‘It Nearly Drove Me Mad’

After closing her scene-making record label and moving to the US, Barnett decamped to Joshua Tree – where she learned to slow down and make noise again

‘I never had those deep chats in the smoking area’: Arlo Parks on embracing late night life with her hedonistic new album

In her teens, the Mercury prize-winning musician was stuck on tour buses when she should have been on the dancefloor. Now she is throwing herself into club culture – and living on her own terms

‘By 18 I was having sex to the music of Brian Eno’: Tim Booth’s honest playlist

The James frontman fell for Leonard Cohen as a child and would do Val Doonican at karaoke. But which singer taught him that ‘music could be medicine’?

From Amarillo to Stockport: 15 of Neil Sedaka’s greatest songs, and their extraordinary stories

From being a writer for hire in the 1950s to his solo pop stardom and emphatic 1970s comeback, the late musician’s catalogue is stuffed with stunning, surprising songcraft

Hard work, romance and bell hooks: how Olivia Dean became British pop’s newest megastar

After a Grammy and a global breakthrough, the 26-year-old singer could sweep the board at next week’s Brits. Her closest collaborators explain her massive appeal

‘The kinetic energy is palpable’: Manchester embraces its first Brit awards

Event’s first venture outside London aims to recognise geographical diversity of UK’s music talent

From the archives: Neil Sedaka on writing a hit song

Neil Sedaka, the singer and songwriter behind such hits as "Breaking Up is Hard to Do," "Calendar Girl," and "Love Will Keep Us Together," died on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026 at age 86. In this 2020 "Sunday Morning" story, David Pogue talked with Sedaka – as well as Valerie Simpson (of Ashford & Simpson), author John Seabrook, and producer Oak Felder – about the elements that go into writing a hit song.

Bruno Mars: The Romantic review

(Atlantic)Harking back to Oye Como Va, Move On Up and other 20th-century classics, Mars’s homages are beautifully performed but bereft of new ideas

Add to playlist: the cliche-correcting medieval music of Idrîsî Ensemble and the week’s best new tracks

The group reimagines Corsica’s ancient music for modern female voices with fresh spiky arrangements that remain heavy with the pain of the past

‘It’s good music, not a guilty pleasure’: how Bruno Mars embraced cheese to become pop’s most popular star

He gets more streams than Taylor Swift or Bad Bunny, thanks to a shamelessly corny and cannily timeless style. Close collaborators and industry experts explain his secret