Much like the music of the man it’s based on, Love & Mercy is beautiful, complex, somewhat melancholy, and thought-provoking. It also teaches us some things about creative genius, innovation, and art.
Our lives are often shaped and made meaningful by the stars and celebrities who enter them.
EPA/Stephanie Pilick
When Bowie sang of aliens, cross-dressed, or emptied himself of colour and light, he demonstrated the power that music, fashion and performance can have in creating a landscape of endless possibility.
Tim McCallum’s performance on The Voice wowed viewers, and offers an opportunity advance social understandings of disability.
Channel 9
Back in 2012, Amanda Palmer was the first person to break US$1,000,000 in crowdfunding on Kickstarter. In doing so, and since, she’s answered the question: what is the internet for?
At its best, opera can, indeed, be a powerful form of allegorical theatre.
EPA/Gian Ehrenzeller (Image from Verdi's I due Foscari)
A gang-rape scene in a new London staging of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell was greeted with audience booing, and has sparked ongoing controversy. Are opera directors at risk of miscomprehending the medium?
Fifty years ago, in the first half of 1965, the British invasion was officially under way – at least, in music. It seemed like all the biggest hits on the American pop charts came from British bands. Ever…
Angus Young is still touring the “Australian Sound” with AC/DC.
EPA/Sara Johannessen
Blood + Thunder offers an entertaining insight into the development of the “Australian Sound” – but why do the producers fail to acknowledge the influence on the blues on that sound?
When the President of the United States burst into song on the weekend, music amplified the emotional force of his words.
EPA/Richard Ellis
Only a hard heart could fail to respond on some emotional level when Barack Obama, eulogising at one of the most emotionally and racially charged funerals in US history, started singing Amazing Grace.
The unauthorised use of Neil Young’s Rockin’ in the Free World at Donald Trump’s presidential campaign launch raises several questions – and gives us something beautiful to ponder.
Antony and the Johnsons fit perfectly within the world of Dark Mofo.
Images courtesy of Dark Mofo
Transgender artist Antony Hegarty has successfully used her notoriety to publicly address issues close to her, including transgender politics, ecological consciousness and indigenous spirituality.
Global recording companies are casting their eye to the continent as music’s digital revolution continues.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko
Not all children move through the same range of processes when they compose music – but those processes, in themselves, nurture important human qualities.
Stanley Donwood, Pacific Coast, 2003, was used as the cover art for Radiohead’s Hail To The Thief, 2008.
Image courtesy of the artist
Stanley Donwood has been designing Radiohead’s artwork since 1994. Ahead of his retrospective at Sydney’s Carriageworks this month, we consider the role of art in creating a band’s visual identity.
‘And was Jerusalem builded here…“
Kirsty Wigglesworth/PA
For all the harm that austerity may have done, it looks to have galvanised music from the margins
Description: 2014 Eurovision Song Contest winner Conchita Wurst poses for a photograph in Sydney, Thursday, April 30, 2015. The Austrian performer and pop artist is in Australia to perform at the Logie Awards. () NO ARCHIVING.
AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts
Eurovision is popularly heralded as the song that unites Europe, but recent controversies about gender, social justice and human rights paint a different picture.