CATEGORIES

THE RIGHT STUFF

Clothes-swapping with Ian Curtis? Teaching songs to Bob Dylan?? Miming with David Bowie? Getting punched by Mick Jagger? There’s a lot you don’t know about the pre-fame career of Right Said Fred, contends Joel McIver of their “avant-garde” years…

auteurtoauthor

Luke Haines writes the shuk out of rock’n’roll Prolific, moi?

Jerry Lee Lewis 1935-2022

The title of the 2006 duets project that gave Jerry Lee Lewis his biggest-selling album in a career stretching over half a century was both a reverential nod to fallen comrades, and the typically  showman-like brag of a rock’n’roll bad boy nicknamed The Killer.

CORPS AND EFFECTS

Brixton synthpop group, Hard Corps, split prematurely in the 80s, with much of their work coming out posthumously. They tell Ian Shirley how they made their best-loved single, Je Suis Passée

musictovisit

Bob Stanley carries pop’s baggage everywhere Staring down the Middle Of The Road

maconblack

Ian McCann considers soul brothers and sisters, and blues siblings

Magic Man

As guitarist in an early incarnation of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band when they made career-defining albums such as Trout Mask Replica, Jeff Cotton, aka Antennae Jimmy Semens, had a first-hand view of the bizarre and often terrifying and traumatising working methods of the artist formerly known as Don Van Vliet. He lived to tell the tale just and went on to create more heady psychedelia with Mu. He then dropped off the rock'n'roll radar... until now, as Cotton returns with a solo album that draws on many of the ideas and unfinished songs he began work on back in the early 70s. \"I love the guy,\" he tells Mike Barnes about Beefheart. \"But it took years of hindsight to be able to process it.\"

33% minutes with...Don Was

Bassist, producer, and filmmaker Don Was was born Don Edward Fagenson in Detroit in 1952. With school friend David Weiss he enjoyed his first success in Was (Not Was) when they hit the UK  Top 10 with 1987’s Walk The Dinosaur.

davidquanticklikes

...to write a column for Record Collector. Yay Remembering when 60s went 80s

TRANS WRITING BLOSSOMED ON THE BOOK SCENE

In many ways, 2022 felt like the year of the underdog in the book world. Although it lacked blockbusters, fringe fiction flourished and works in translation soared. But which trends will we look back on from our lofty armchairs and think, 'That was so 2022'?

THE YEAR THAT: SEX PARTIES WENT MAINSTREAM

As someone who talks endlessly and openly about sex for a living, I had long wanted to attend a sex party. And this year there was something in the air that made it feel like the perfect time to experience one.

CATHOLICISM MADE A MINI COMEBACK

Catholicism has always lent itself to transgression. Its flamboyant aesthetics and patriarchal power structure have inspired everything from Renaissance art to Nunsploitation films, and the Met Gala to the relationship between Fleabag and her Hot Priest.

Heavy Is the Hand That Holds the Mic

Doechii has a big spotlight on her as record label TDE's first female rapper. She couldn't be more ready

THE YEAR THAT MUSIC BOOKS GOT NOSTALGIC FOR THE 'GOOD OLD DAYS'

The 2010s felt like my lucky years. I read the now-defunct Rookie Magazine run by Tavi Gevinson, a website and annual that used a diverse roster of girls to cover music and pop culture.

FOOTBALL FINALLY CAME HOME

If you tuned into BBC One on the morning of 1 August, you'd have seen a team of young female footballers sporting all the signs of a heroic hangover for the ages.

THE YEAR THAT WE WENT ON STRIKE

While the French strike at the drop of a chapeau and love to kick W aristocratic heads up and down the Champs-Élysées, the English drink cups of tea and get on with things, or so the stereotypes go.

THE YEAR THAT NOTHING IN THE UK WORKED

This year, I realised I needed to learn T how to drive. I'd been made redundant during the pandemic, and a few months later was forced to leave my rental accommodation when my landlord decided to sell the house.

The only way is up

Sam Ryder truly changed the record when he snatched second place for the UK in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest with ‘Space Man’. With a new album on the way, his feet have barely touched the ground since, as he tells Rolling Stone UK.

THE YEAR THAT MISOGYNY WAS BACK IN FASHION

This time last year, very few people thought about Andrew Tate with any regularity if at all. Now, he's inescapable.

TV HAD REMAKES ON REPEAT

In 2022, the era of revamping, and rebooting that has gradually wrapped its fingers around mainstream cinema's throat for the past five years - via sprawling superhero epics, origin stories, remakes and whatever is going on with the Halloween franchise - felt like it finally arrived in the world of TV.

Ones to watch

As 2022 comes to an end, Rolling Stone UK looks at the acts likely to worm their way into your headphones next year.

Time to put our house in order

Housing campaigner Kwajo Tweneboa on why disrepair and poor living conditions in the UK's rental and social housing sectors is an issue that can no longer be ignored

TOP GIRL

Known predominantly for her Mercury Prize-winning and commercially successful music, Little Simz is a force of nature. In a world of content and noise, the semi-mysterious Simbiatu Ajikawo lets her talent speak for her. In this interview, our TV Award-winner talks about how she came to act in British cultural export Top Boy and her experience filming the show

The Podcast Hollywood's Queen of Golden Age

Chasing silver-screen ghosts and Los Angeles' forgotten secrets with Karina Longworth, the brilliant mind behind You Must Remember This BY ALEX MORRIS

THE YEAR OF 2022

Everyone who lived through it will remember the year 2020 for the rest of their lives, I should imagine.

TO LOVE AND TO LOSE

THROUGH THE BEST AND WORST DAYS OF HIS LIFE, RORY RODRIGUEZ HAS CRAFTED SOME OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SONGS OF DAYSEEKER'S CAREER SO FAR. THIS IS HOW HE MANAGED IT...

BREAKING THROUGH

EIGHT BANDS YOU NEED TO HEAR THIS MONTH

HELL ABOVE

FROM THE MOST CHALLENGING TIMES, FIT FOR A KING HAVE CREATED AN ALBUM THAT AS HEART-WRENCHING AS IT IS VITAL. HERE, RYAN KIRBY TALKS US THROUGH HOW HE MADE SENSE OF IT ALL...

PERFECT TEN

10 NEW RELEASES YOU NEED TO HEAR

TREY MILLER

CHERIE AMOUR | TREY WALKS US THROUGH THE TO-DO LIST.