Will Howard

Jeff Lynne’s Electric Light Orchestra is often associated with bright, upbeat and highly catchy pop, but Lynne said the band’s music was fundamentally sad because it dealt with loneliness. He identified “Telephone Line,” written after an American tour when a girlfriend stopped answering his calls, as “the saddest of them all,” using an American dialling tone to reinforce the long-distance relationship theme. The piece argues that ELO’s polished, joyful sound often masks substantial emotional depth and that music can be both sonically happy and emotionally melancholy.

Billy Joel’s 1980 song “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” was inspired by his frustration with critics who dismissed his music while embracing newer New Wave acts such as Blondie, The Police and The Cars. The song, released on Glass Houses, responded to claims that Joel was outdated and became a major Billboard hit, helping reshape his image from sensitive balladeer to rock star. Joel argued that fair criticism was valuable but objected to reviewers who simply disliked his music and publicly expressed their prejudices.

Queen’s record label initially resisted releasing “Bohemian Rhapsody” as the lead single from A Night at the Opera because its nearly six-minute length, multi-part structure and operatic heavy-metal style seemed commercially unviable. Freddie Mercury and the band overcame that resistance after Kenny Everett previewed snippets on Capital Radio, generating enough listener demand to secure full release. The song topped the UK chart for nine weeks, became the 1975 Christmas number one, reached No. 9 in the US Billboard Hot 100 and helped establish Queen as one of the world’s biggest bands.

Rick Rubin's enduring admiration for Led Zeppelin centers on “The Rain Song,” a 1973 composition he considers emotionally expansive and resistant to genre classification. The song's blend of blues, psychedelia, detailed guitar work and dramatic percussion helped shape Rubin's belief in combining influences from different musical traditions. The piece also connects Rubin's genre-spanning production career with a broader argument that contemporary artists often borrow genre aesthetics without engaging deeply with their origins, while praising Beyoncé as a notable exception. It acknowledges Led Zeppelin's history of drawing from Black blues musicians and contrasts that legacy with Rubin's stated effort to ensure influential Black artists received credit and royalties.

Yard Act discuss recording their forthcoming album, You're Gonna Need A Little Music, between Leeds and Los Angeles. Frontman James Smith and bassist Ryan Needham say the record combines Los Angeles's optimism with the groundedness and regional identity of Leeds, where the band continues to live and work rather than relocating to London or the United States. The group criticizes the London-centric music industry, the erosion of grassroots music infrastructure, and the increasing pressure on artists to pursue virality. Smith also explains that the new album prioritizes mood and subconscious emotional responses over the overt social commentary of earlier releases, while Yard Act continues to resist audience expectations and support independent artists through its ZEN FC label.

Will Howard highlights five overlooked Haim songs: “Go Slow,” “Let Me Go,” “Nothing’s Wrong,” “You Never Knew” and “All That Ever Mattered.” The piece praises the sisters’ vocal harmonies, dynamic arrangements, guitar work and ability to blend California rock influences—especially Fleetwood Mac—with contemporary pop, synth and hip-hop production. It argues that Haim’s album tracks are as strong as their singles and deserve greater recognition in the band’s live repertoire.

Ian Dury’s 1978 interview with Sounds challenged the expectation that punk and rock should be relentlessly serious. While acknowledging music as a demanding job, Dury argued that it should primarily be fun, exciting and theatrical, praising KISS and Funkadelic for creating a circus-like atmosphere. His enthusiasm was rooted in his teenage discovery of Gene Vincent and the transformative impact of early rock ’n’ roll.

Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry identified Bob Dylan’s 1965 classic “Like a Rolling Stone” as one of his favourite songs, describing it as a song that has stayed with him forever. The piece places Perry’s admiration within Aerosmith’s broader debt to 1960s British blues-rock and Dylan’s influence on rock songwriting, while also highlighting Aerosmith’s 1980s comeback through their collaboration with Run-DMC on “Walk This Way.”

The Rolling Stones began as a live covers band because blues records were difficult to obtain in Britain and the music industry still treated musicians largely as working performers rather than original artists. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards initially had little interest in songwriting, but the band eventually evolved as audiences and industry expectations shifted toward original material. Jagger later criticized the Stones’ cover of Slim Harpo’s “I’m a King Bee,” asking why listeners would choose it when the superior original was available.

Little River Band guitarist Graeham Goble wrote “Reminiscing” in 1978 as an expression of his nostalgia for the romantic American musicals of the 1930s through 1950s. Despite their sharply different musical identities, John Lennon and Frank Sinatra both connected with the song: Lennon repeatedly listened to it during his Lost Weekend with May Pang, while Sinatra reportedly called it the best song of the 1970s. The song is presented as an unusual cultural bridge between the Beatles’ postwar rock generation and Sinatra’s classic Hollywood era.

Manfred Mann’s Earth Band turned Bruce Springsteen’s “Blinded by the Light” into a 1976 number-one hit, but singer Manfred Mann accidentally sang “wrapped up like a douche” instead of “revved up like a deuce.” Mann later attributed the mistake to a faulty tape-head alignment that prevented remixing and feared Springsteen believed the lyric was deliberate. Springsteen reportedly found the error amusing, while the song’s success helped raise his profile and contributed to his emergence as a major stadium-rock figure.

The article argues that Saturday Night Fever's claim to be based on a true story rests on a largely fabricated 1975 New York Magazine piece by Nik Cohn. Cohn later admitted that he had drawn most of the narrative from his upbringing in Derry and from a Shepherd's Bush mod, after only one brief visit to the 2001 Odyssey nightclub in Brooklyn. The account also falsely marginalized Black, Latino and gay communities in the origins of disco and misrepresented the development of Italo disco. Despite these inaccuracies, the story inspired a hugely successful film that made John Travolta and the Bee Gees cultural icons.

Johnny Cash was born with the unusual name JR Cash and adopted the name John R. Cash when he joined the United States Air Force in 1950. While stationed in West Germany as a radio operator, he watched the 1951 film Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison. The film inspired him to write Folsom Prison Blues, including its famous line about shooting someone “just to watch them die.” Released five years later, the song became Cash's breakout single and helped launch his influential career.