Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2025 i Classic Pop

Classic Pop’s latest cover stars Spandau Ballet have released a ‘lost’ track from the days of the band’s earlier incarnation. The song Eyes was recorded at Halligan’s rehearsal studio while the band were still known as Gentry. It was there that the future journalist Robert Elms suggested the name Spandau Ballet. Although Eyes didn’t make it onto Spandau’s debut album, it has now been dusted off and features on the demos disc of Everything Is Now – Volume 1: 1978-1982, a definitive early-years boxset released on 12 September through Parlophone. Gary Kemp said: “Eyes, which we demoed at Halligan’s, was one of the early songs that I wrote with the synthesizer. It’s kind of gothic post-punk. It suits what was going on at the time with Joy Division, Siouxsie and Magazine.…

“I hope it’s not too sad,” ventures Tanita Tikaram as she mulls over Classic Pop’s praise for her first album in a decade. After a moment, though, she concedes. “It is quite sad, isn’t it? We’re in a sad place at the moment.” Nonetheless, sadness won’t be unfamiliar to anyone who’s followed Tikaram since 1988’s multi-platinum debut, released when she was 19 and inspired by a sense that she didn’t ‘belong’. Indeed Ancient Heart was so successful that Basingstoke’s second most famous daughter – “Jane Austen,” Tikaram laughs, “is the figure it really wants to hold on to” – was once even parodied by Dawn French. Sadly (again), LIAR’s roots lie in her increasing conviction that, aged 56, she doesn’t ‘belong’ any more today than she did back then. In…

Depeche Mode have finalised details for the release of their feature-length live film Depeche Mode: M. Coming to cinemas and IMAX worldwide for a limited theatrical event from 28 October, the concert film is expected to screen in more than 2,500 cinemas across 60 countries. Conceived and directed by award winning filmmaker Fernando Frias, it features footage from the band’s three sold-out Mexico City shows on the 2023-24 Memento Mori Tour. “At its core, our new film ‘M’ is about the deep connection between music, culture, and people – and Fernando did a beautiful job telling that story through the lens of Mexican culture and our shows in Mexico City,” explains frontman Dave Gahan. Frias is best known for his award-winning film I’m No Longer Here, which won Best Picture…

Split Enz, the first New Zealand band to achieve major success beyond the Southern Hemisphere, celebrate the 50th anniversary of their debut album Mental Notes with the opening instalment of the archival project Enzyclopedia Volumes One & Two. Crowded House frontman Neil Finn said of the cult band co-founded by his older brother Tim: “I was absolutely enchanted and inspired by Mental Notes as a 17-year-old. It made me believe anything was possible. Fifty years later, it sounds as unique and timeless as it did then.” Housed in a deluxe 5CD boxset (also available as a 3LP set), the release has been curated in close collaboration with the band. CD1 features a 2025 remaster of Mental Notes by Phil Kinrade. Disc Two includes a new Eddie Rayner remix of the…

Indie rockers Gene have extended their comeback tour with five new dates in 2026. In addition to the group’s previously announced sold-out shows in Leeds, Sheffield and London this autumn, the band will now play gigs at Rock City in Nottingham, Barrowlands in Glasgow, the Beacon in Bristol, the 3Olympia Theatre in Dublin, and Manchester’s Albert Hall next March. “We are putting all our energy into making this musically spectacular,” said frontman Martin Rossiter. “Yes, we’re going to be earning some reasonably decent money, but it isn’t yachts-inthe-Adriatic money, and the main thing that convinced me to do this again was the dynamic between the four of us.” The band’s much-loved debut album Olympian was released in March 1995, and while its 30th birthday adds a great sense of occasion…

“We had to be in a hurry, before some other fucker got there first.” Right there in Gary Kemp’s statement is the ethos for why Spandau Ballet were the first group to help define the 80s, becoming the house band at Blitz and the archetypal New Romantics. True and Parade might have made Spandau Ballet more refined pop sensations, but for futurism and inventiveness the quintet’s first two albums Journeys To Glory and Diamond – celebrated in the new boxset Everything Is Now – show why a gang of North London working-class teenagers became impossible to ignore. Blitz, the Soho club at the epicentre of the New Romantic movement, and its role in Spandau’s journey to glory has been much celebrated itself, of course. But it’s worth reaffirming that it…

David Bowie’s first album of the 1980s was a milestone record for many reasons. It was his last to be co-produced with collaborator Tony Visconti for more than 20 years, his swansong for RCA and for many acolytes, the final time that the star could be hailed as a true musical visionary. Released just a year after wrapping up the Berlin trilogy that had seen him drift further towards the avant-garde, Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) brought Bowie back to the mainstream, topping the UK charts and spawning only his second ever No.1 single. With its self-mythologising nods to Space Oddity’s Major Tom, Ashes To Ashes certainly owes a thematic debt to his first hit single. But sonically it sounded poles apart, its chunky funk basslines and springy synths essentially shaping…

Breaking big at the peak of Britpop, Neil Hannon has been one of our smartest and most playful lyricists for over 30 years. Winsome songs about pollen counts, fading socialites, eccentric aristocrats and public transport invited comparisons to Noël Coward and Alan Bennett. Irony, whimsicality and theatrical flair were common adjectives flung his way, as were references to his heroes Burt Bacharach, Charles Aznavour and Walker Brothers-era Scott Walker. “If the Neil Hannon from 30 years ago heard what I was doing now,” the singer-songwriter theorises from his farm in Ireland, “he would like it, but he’d think, gosh, it’s so serious. It’d be like, ‘Oh, you really are going all Scott Walker and dark.’” If all you know of The Divine Comedy (which initially started out as a group,…

It’s 16 January 1980 and, mere days into the new decade, Paul McCartney’s fortunes are about to take a sharp turn for the worse. This will have nothing to do with McCartney II, still not a pipedream, though its release in five months will elicit a scornful critical drubbing. Instead, that period will seem peaceful compared to the torrid days awaiting him as, on the eve of a tour with his band Wings, he lands at Tokyo Airport. Thanks to dalliances with drugs and the demands of visas, these will be McCartney’s first Japanese shows since 1966. In 1972, he’d been fined in Sweden for cannabis possession and for its cultivation a year later in Scotland, while a 1975 case in LA was only dismissed because wife Linda took responsibility.…

What is it? We all remember the dance, if you can call it that. Almost an antitoxin to the blissed out hand waving of acid house dancing, the obligatory movement to a shoegazing number was exactly that, stare at your shoes – which must remain fixed to the ground, natch – with the most passionless face you can muster as you sway your body, putting as little effort into the whole thing as possible. If acid house, then, was the sound of chemically-assisted exuberance, shoegaze was its shyer, more introverted cousin. Characterised by distorted guitars, droning riffs and woozy vocals, this was The Velvet Underground meets Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. Its frontline artists, from Ride to My Bloody Valentine to Slowdive, weren’t exactly known for their elaborate stagecraft –…

CASANOVA LEVERT Family heritage dictated that vocal group Levert should become leading lights of the growing new jack swing boom of the late 80s, but ultimately their contribution amounted to just one very catchy hit. Gerald and Sean Levert, sons of O’Jays founder Eddie, along with bandmate Marc Gordon, had been R&B mainstays in the States over the course of two albums but had yet to cross into the mainstream until Casanova was issued in 1987. The entire song, written by producer Reggie Calloway to ape Club Nouveau’s Lean On Me, is quite radically stripped back, reliant almost wholly on the high-calibre singing under a smart, insistent beat, with only occasional keyboard and guitar motifs beneath. Gerald’s lead vocals on the verses are smooth and warm while the experience of…

Having already played to enormous crowds while opening for Oasis on their much-anticipated comeback stadium shows, Cast still have plenty to look forward to in the remainder of 2025. Before the year is out, they’ll be embarking on an extensive UK tour to celebrate 30 years of their debut LP All Change and headline the Shiiine On Weekender. The band continue that momentum into 2026, too, with the release of their brand new album, Yeah Yeah Yeah, on 30 January. CP wonders what frontman John Power makes of it all… “This year has been momentous,” says the singer. “We are experiencing an amazing renaissance. “First up, we made our new album, back in February. We weren’t even scheduled to record until next year but we took a leap of faith…

Following the release of Lateral and Luminal earlier this year, Beatie Wolfe and Brian Eno have announced a third instalment titled Liminal. With Luminal described as ‘dream music’ and Lateral as ‘space music’, Liminal is tagged as ‘dark matter music’. In Brian and Beatie’s words: “Liminal stands at the point of convergence between Lateral and Luminal. If Lateral is a kind of landscape painting – a sonic place – Luminal is a dream-like awakening, a feeling space. Liminal, the newest addition, is a hybrid of the two, a strange new land with a human living and feeling its way through its mysterious spaces. It is set in the borderlands between song and non-song (or ‘nong,’ as we call it), where the listener explores an intimate and unfamiliar sonic world – unclaimed, ambiguous,…

Cloudbusting, the celebrated tribute to the music of Kate Bush, will be joined by more than 40 members of the West London Sinfonia for three special concerts this November. With a career-spanning programme of material from the iconic singer-songwriter’s back catalogue to draw from, these select shows will incorporate original arrangements by such luminaries as Michael Kamen, Michael Nyman and Andrew Powell. The BAFTA- and Ivor Novelloaward-winning film and television composer Rob Lane will create the orchestrations, while Philip Hesketh will conduct, with violinist Iwona Boesche leading the Sinfonia. Formed in 2012 and fronted by Mandy Watson, Cloudbusting have forged a world-renowned reputation for staging ambitious live productions and demand for these shows has been great, with the opening date at London’s Cadogan Hall on 8 November already sold out.…

Shiiine On Weekender is pulling out all the stops for its 10th anniversary – and you could be there to experience it all. This year’s stellar line-up features some of the most iconic bands of their era. The legendary The Jesus And Mary Chain will make their Shiiine On debut, headlining the Saturday night, while Ash return to top the bill on Friday. Closing out the weekend in style will be the ever-popular Cast. The main stage will also host an impressive array of talent including Inspiral Carpets, Sleeper, Reef, The Bluetones, The Undertones and Jesus Jones. Beyond the main stage, you can catch The Soup Dragons, Space, Miles Hunt, Icicle Works, Kyle Falconer, Cud, Senser, My Life Story and Northside as well as James Walsh, Dave Gedge Duo, The…

LIVING ON THE CEILING Filmed in Egypt to the backdrop of the Pyramids of Giza, it’s a slightly incongruous choice of location to represent the exotic Eastern influences of the music. When they spoke with Classic Pop in 2017, the duo explained the reasoning. According to Neil Arthur: “The record company were really excited and put in a bit of money to make a video. They said you can either go to Camber Sands or Cairo. We chose Cairo.” A fair decision given the choice. Stephen Luscombe added: “It was completely geographically inept as tablas and sitars are nowhere near Egypt.” Arthur continued: “But they couldn’t afford to get us to India! So, we went to Cairo, shot that video, and it seemed to work.” WAVES Following the tradition that…

“I know this is it,” Sophie Ellis-Bextor told The Guardian newspaper in September 2023. “There’s no next rung coming.” As an artist who’d experienced both the dizzy highs and crushing lows of life on the pop rollercoaster, Sophie wasn’t taking the surprise success of her Kitchen Discos – those impromptu lockdown karaoke sessions she’d since spun out into an album, a live tour, a weekly Radio 2 show and even a cookbook – for granted. But she was also resigned to the fact she’d probably used up all of her nine pop lives by now. And then, six weeks after that Guardian interview, film director Emerald Fennell unleashed Saltburn – and Barry Keoghan, dancing naked around a stately home to the sound of Murder On The Dancefloor – onto an unsuspecting…

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE 50% When you subscribe to Classic Pop today, you’ll save an incredible 50% off the cover price, paying just £41.99 for your first 12 months/issues. Every month, you’ll have access to the biggest exclusive interviews and in-depth features on your favourite artists as well as must-read reviews on all the latest new albums and reissues, plus much more. 3 REASONS TO SUBSCRIBE • Receive every issue direct to your door for half the price • Digital access to every single past issue • Expert content that you can trust Join us today – we look forward to welcoming you to the Classic Pop community To join us today visit classicpopmag.com/subscribe or scan the QR code Terms and conditions 50% saving is calculated from the UK cover price,…

Midge Ure has rescheduled his live shows planned from September onwards, due to an undisclosed health problem. In a statement released on social media and his website on 6 August, Ure expressed his regret at the postponement: “During a recent routine check-up, doctors discovered a health issue that requires urgent treatment and a period of recovery. I know many of you travel great distances, often across borders, to attend the shows and I never take that support for granted. I’m truly sorry for any inconvenience or disruption this causes to your plans. I’m aiming to be back on the road again as soon as possible. Thank you, as always, for your understanding, patience, and unwavering support. It truly means a great deal.” The 71-year-old former Ultravox frontman, however, was keen…

The Pretenders’ frontwoman Chrissie Hynde has revealed details of a brand new album, Duets Special. Released as ‘Chrissie Hynde & Pals’, the LP consists of 13 duets with some A-list collaborators. Among the artists performing intimate arrangements of well-known songs with Chrissie are k.d. lang, Dave Gahan, the late Mark Lanegan, Cat Power, Brandon Flowers, Debbie Harry, Shirley Manson and more. Due for release on 17 October via Parlophone, the record’s origins date back to 2023. Hynde explained: “I never thought about doing a duets album before. I was talking to Jörn, Rufus Wainwright’s husband, on the phone, and I think we were recommending novels to each other. For some reason, I said, ‘Hey, maybe Rufus and I should do something,’ and quickly scribbled out 10 songs off the top…

THE PARIS COLLECTION DOLLAR Dollar’s profile as sweetheart hitmakers when the 80s began was high enough for them to have a stab at writing their second album themselves – and for the most part, they were justified. The wind of change in music in 1980 overwhelmed The Paris Collection, named for the city where it was recorded, but there remains today a healthy hoard of breezy pop songs, pleasingly laden with guitars and drizzled with the familiarly compelling innocence of Dollar’s harmonies. David Van Day delivers strong retro rock vocals on the opener Radio and the excellent The Girls Are Out To Get Ya has Thereza Bazar lending her trademark vocal sweetness on the bridge. Van Day is effective as a more broody and menacing narrator on No Man’s Land while…

Who would have thought that, four decades on 1985’s notorious, eardrum-piercing debut album, Jim and William Reid would still be here, waving The Jesus And Mary Chain banner? They’ve weathered riots, drugs, and a sibling rivalry to match the Gallagher brothers’, but they also have eight studio albums behind them. These days they’re older but wiser, perhaps partially thanks to the release last year of their joint autobiography, which forced them to confront their past. Never Understood is a thrilling read that shares the warts and all story of their ascent from an East Kilbride council estate, via nights spent sleeping in the doorway of a Kentish Town health centre, to the madness of their sudden success and the inevitable highs and lows that followed before they regained their rightful…

Suede have announced that they will take their 10th studio album, Antidepressants, on the road for the first time early next year. The run kicks off on 30 January in Folkestone, before visiting Portsmouth, Bristol, Guildford, Edinburgh, Liverpool and York. Further shows are planned for Lincoln, Norwich, Cambridge, Sheffield, Newcastle, Coventry, Bath, Nottingham and Southend, before concluding on 21 February in Brighton. The announcement follows phenomenal demand to experience Suede live, with Suede Takeover – a special programme hosted across London’s Southbank Centre throughout August and September this year – selling out all six dates. Antidepressants, released on 5 September via BMG, was described by Classic Pop as an “intensely energetic return” and by frontman Brett Anderson as the band’s “post-punk record.” The singer said: “It’s about the tensions of…

Deniece Pearson, the free-spirited former lead vocalist of Five Star turned solo artist, is a very practical kind of pop star. Revisiting her Essex roots to record her new solo LP Free Queen See at a friend’s studio, she used the three-hour drive from her home in the Leicestershire village of Market Bosworth as an opportunity to indulge in the student lifestyle she missed out on while Five Star were busy selling millions of records on both sides of the Atlantic. The whole experience ultimately proved to be a liberating homecoming for the singer. “Making this album was like going back to the beginning of the beginning,” says Deniece, reflecting on her return to the county that Five Star are indelibly associated with. “Because I never went to college, I…

It’s 25 years this summer since Sophie lent her voice to Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love) by Spiller. “I know – wow,” she says. “It’s such a long time, I actually find it quite hard to wrap my head around it. “I’d signed a publishing deal with Billy [Reeves], who wrote all the songs for The audience, even though I wasn’t a songwriter then – and that’s how I got sent the instrumental of Groovejet,” she recalls, of what would prove the first of many happy career accidents. “I remember loving the song and thinking, ‘this would be good for me’ – that it would be good to go into a genre completely outside the indie world of The audience. Because everything was so in its lane back then, wasn’t…

A couple of years ago, Hannon found himself composing his first ever movie soundtrack when Paddington director Paul King approached him about writing the songs for his planned Willy Wonka prequel. “He got in touch, saying, ‘I’ve always been a massive Divine Comedy fan, and would love you to write songs for my new film.’ It was like, I knew one day you’d come, it’s like the masterplan had worked. It was great to know that I’d influenced someone in their early stages, and they’ve now gone on to have this high position in the media.” It must have been very odd, we suggest, to see one of the world’s biggest stars – that’d be Timothée Chalamet – singing your words on the big screen? “It was very surreal, but…

HEAVEN 17 THE ROBIN, WOLVERHAMPTON 14 AUGUST TONIGHT ON THE MARTYN AND GLENN SHOW, THERE’S BIG HITS AND ENTERTAINING BANTER AS THE SYNTH-POP FAVOURITES MINE THE YEARS 1979-83 We’re in the throes of another summer heatwave, but as they saunter onto the stage for the opening ‘woo-woo!’ of Crushed By The Wheels Of Industry and frantic funk of Fascist Groove Thang, Heaven 17 look as cool as ever. The electronic handclaps and synth brass of Play To Win keep the momentum going as the five-piece live band continue to focus on highlights from the first two LPs, Penthouse And Pavement and follow-up The Luxury Gap, never straying past 1983. A charismatic, warm presence, Glenn Gregory is in remarkably good voice, although he admits that We Live So Fast has always…