Just read the Ciao Bella piece, and as someone who used to work around the corner and also holds it in great affection too, as soon as I read they'd been sat downstairs there was only one way that review was going to go, never take a downstairs table there!
Nerve, Songer & D Double E - TONKZ (UK / Australia, 2024)
First of three UK rap tunes, all coming from different styles of an ever growing scene. This one combines OG grime legend D Double E with a new generation, and the old man steals the show here
Woah! So Labour's position really is, 'telling us off for breaching human rights undermines the case for human rights'? Proper Trumpian stuff from Labour's answer to Suella Braverman.
If you’d told 10-year-old me that I’d vote for Phyllis Nelson ahead of Deniece Williams in a pop poll 40+ years in the future, I’d probably have said “as if” but that’s what I happily did here
Also - one of the best ways to get from B1 to B2 and on to further fluency....is to get a job and interact with native speakers every day! Making the bar higher won't make people better at English but worse.
Also another opportunity for a side-by-side comparison with a cover just a year later and Robert Palmer acquits himself well, aided by Bernard Edwards doing something quite different with the production
Yes most other contenders have had bandmembers change (which applies to Simply Red), Sade have been the same four throughout and all share songwriting / production duties too
I Didn't Mean to Turn You On is fantastic, but we'll have another chance to vote for Cherrelle. Instead I'm going to be a BV (a basic voter) and vote for Klymaxx which is a camp fun delight
Jungle Love is The Time at their most novelty, from the worst of their three albums, so again this Prince fan is going elsewhere, for the smooth delights of Sade
The other three members of Sade must be contenders for the least famous or high profile members of a big, global, long-term band, who else comes close?
Her set at Glastonbury was the highlight of the festival this year - but criminally under-attended, a tiny crowd watching a superstar. Album of the year so far.
