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Billie Eilish, Sex Pistols and Beethoven’s skull: music to listen out for in 2025
From stadium gigs by Linkin Park and Lana Del Rey to Central Cee’s long-awaited debut album, there’s plenty to look out for from pop’s A-list – while in classical, there’s a Festen opera and more
The charts aren’t exactly over-burdened with unashamedly political, working-class and Geordie-accented social-realist stadium rock: his biggest single, the triple-platinum title track of 2021’s Seventeen Going Under, was a vfestival-rousing anthem about toxic masculinity, violence, mental illness and his unwell, debt-ridden mother’s failure to access benefits from the DWP. The slow but steady commercial rise of Steven Wilson’s career – from frontman of 90s prog rock outliers Porcupine Tree to a string of Top 5 solo albums over the last 10 years – is fascinating: his music is complex and unashamedly cerebral, balancing electronics and post-punk influences with an audible love of Pink Floyd and Yes. Whether one thinks their pivot towards Max Martin-produced pop is a pragmatic response to shifts in musical climate or a faintly desperate attempt to court a younger audience, their live shows have become increasingly incredible: eye-popping, hit-stuffed exercises in relentless visual maximalism that’s both infectiously euphoric and a little overwhelming.
Or read this on The Guardian
