Table of contents for October/November 2025 in Rolling Stone UK

James Vickery South London singer James Vickery is already a well-known face to followers of his beloved Crystal Palace, after performing for fans just hours before the club’s maiden FA Cup win earlier this year. But now, his own material will plot on the wider map too. The swooning ‘Right Side’ shows off Vickery’s R&B flair and was inspired by his journey with hearing loss, after becoming deaf in one ear at the age of eight. “I love the idea of something being disguised as a love song, so this was inspired by the fact that I always have to be on the left side of someone due to my deafness,” he explains. It’s a special song from an artist who, just like Palace, seems to be firmly on the…

In some ways, Reneé Rapp was burnt out before she even got started. The singer-song-writer-actor’s 2023 debut album, Snow Angel, preceded a major tour, a starring role in the blockbuster movie musical adaptation of Mean Girls, and the end of her run on the HBO series The Sex Lives of College Girls. After all of that, Rapp, 25, took some time for herself while making her fun, bratty, propulsive new record, Bite Me, out now. Now that she’s on the hamster wheel of pop stardom again, she’s still not sure how she feels about it. “I make music for myself, but I don’t put out music for myself,” she says. “I don’t promote things for myself. If I was just going to do [it all] for myself, I wouldn’t put…

‘Do you think women of a certain age can become invisible?” asks Beth Thornton, one of the lead characters in Sally Wainwright’s forthcoming BBC series Riot Women. In the series’ opening scene, Beth (played by The Thick of It’s Joanna Scanlan), a teacher “of a certain age”, has, frankly, had enough. Between a failed marriage, draining job, a dependent mother, and an adopted son that has no time for her, she’s been pushed quite literally to the edge. She pours herself a large G+T, steps onto a stool, and lifts a rope over her head, prepared to step away from it all with permanent consequence. That is, until a phone call from her friend Jess (Lorraine Ashbourne) presents her with another option: “Do you want to be in my rock…

There are days that test a vehicle’s limits and then there are days that test your soul. Driving the new Land Rover Defender Octa through the Cheviot Hills – an overlooked swell of border country wilderness between England and Scotland – proved to be a bit of both. This trip was one-part press junket, one-part personal pilgrimage and one-part weather roulette. Spring sunshine, summer haze, autumn drizzle and a full-on winter tantrum – served à la carte, sometimes simultaneously. But we’d come prepared. The Defender flagship, Octa, is Land Rover’s newest attempt to convince you that yes, you can be both a rugged outdoors person and someone who alphabetises their spice rack at home in the Cotswolds. Lest you should wonder, the name ‘Octa’ refers to the octahedral geometry of…

‘Vi carage Rehearsal space for bands, no heavy rock.” Joan Murray’s advert in The Times was brief and to the point – mainly because in 1975 and preinternet, classified ads were priced by the word and, living in a small village in rural Herefordshire, money was tight, very tight. “Mum was a fantastic cook and had tried everything to make some cash – that advert was a desperate last attempt to keep the wolf from the door,” recalls her daughter Tiffany Murray. “Norton Canon is a tiny village in the back end of nowhere but fortunately her ad was spotted by someone in the music industry. That moment changed our lives.” Queen was one of the first bands to arrive at the vicarage. Horslips and Black Sabbath would also visit…

One word keeps coming up when you interview Louis Tomlinson: resilient. He doesn’t exactly wear it as a badge of honour, but he seems content for it to settle into Louis lore. “I would say it’s a word that people associate with me – and more [so] since some of the darkness I’ve had in my life,” he says. “But truthfully, it predates that, and it’s kind of helped me to deal with those things.” ● Understandably, Tomlinson is keener to shake off that other word – “darkness” – which he uses as a euphemism for the devastating loss of people he loved: his mother, his sister and his bandmate Liam Payne, who passed away last October. He describes his upcoming third solo album, How Did I Get Here?, which…

‘Let Biffy be Biffy.” That was the mantra Scottish trio Biffy Clyro repeated to themselves while making their 10th studio album, Futique. For the preceding few years, the band – frontman Simon Neil and brothers Ben and James Johnston – had found it a little harder to just, well… be Biffy. Being ‘Biffy’ has meant many different things since the band formed in Kilmarnock in the mid-1990s. The band spent their first decade together making intriguingly weird yet powerful music that attracted a fiercely dedicated cult fanbase that still exists to this day. It was with 2007’s Puzzle that the band hit the mainstream, turning some of their sharper and more obscure edges into enormous pop choruses destined for arenas and festival main stages (Simon calls that time “a turning…

The future of Latin music is wide open. Here’s a look at the unexpected trends, stars and scenes taking things to exciting new heights Latin Mafia just stepped offstage at Lollapalooza, and even though they’re taking a break, it’s hard to turn that live-wire adrenaline off; they spent the entire set crowd-surfing over screaming fans and inciting mosh pits as they blasted out hyped-up songs from their genre-smashing album, Todos Los Días Todo el Día. “We’re a part of a generation that’s maybe not used to mosh pits and crowd-surfing at concerts, so for us, it’s about reviving those types of moments in our shows,” Emilio de la Rosa says. His twin, Milton, chimes in, “Our shows are very energetic to the point that they become physical. It’s like a concert…

Shawn James, the self-described 39-year-old “underdog” troubadour from Chicago’s South Side, had been trying to carve out a path in the US the hard way: self-released records, DIY tours and a following that first found him in dive bars and basements. Then came a break: in 2016, his song ‘Through the Valley’ was featured in the trailer for The Last of Us Part II video game, and resurfaced in HBO’s hit adaptation earlier this year. That exposure brought James an unlikely audience. Fans across Latin America latched onto his music, excavated his catalogue, and flooded his comment sections for years with messages like “Come to Brazil!” Ultimately, that led to James stepping onto the stage in São Paulo’s Carioca Club last October as a headliner, facing down his largest crowd…

Their real life was about to slip into fantasy, which was pretty much the plan. At the tail end of the 1960s, Roger Taylor and Freddie Bulsara would lie on the floor together, head to head, getting lost in Electric Ladyland, talking about their future. Maybe they’d share a bottle of wine, nothing stronger. “Fred and I were no good at smoking weed,” Taylor says, more than five decades later,. “I used to think my head was on fire at the back. It never did agree.” Even before Bulsara joined the band that became Queen and renamed himself Freddie Mercury, he and Taylor shared a velvet-heavy fashion sense, a passion for Jimi Hendrix, and some fat-bottomed ambitions. “We wanted to be the best,” says Taylor. “We both really wanted success.”…

TWO 15-YEAR-OLD MUSLIM girls head off on a secret trip in this compelling British drama. At first, it seems as if Doe and Muna are heading off on a giddy girls’ holiday – but their final destination is Syria, and they are set to meet a mysterious man at Istanbul airport. There’s no mention of ISIS, but the film’s title suggests they have been recruited like real-life cases such as Shamima Begum, the London teen who ran away to become an ISIS bride. The girls have been lured by promises of a sisterhood they are lacking at home in the UK. The irony is that real sisterhood is right in front of them, in their profound and joyful friendship. Brides is a first feature for its director, writer and one…

When Perrie Edwards was enjoying her Christmas break last year, she had a realisation. The material she had been working on for her debut solo album after Little Mix, wasn’t truly the avenue she wanted to go down. When combined with a degree of impostor syndrome about her songwriting abilities, she realised it was time to reset the dial on her solo career. The excellent results can be seen on her self-titled debut record, which arrives at the end of September. The album is inspired by Edwards’ “rock’n’roll-influenced childhood, Motown, disco, country, 80s and, of course, bright, bold pop”, and that’s only too clear on its latest single ‘If He Wanted To He Would’, which speeds off in that aforementioned country direction with wild abandon. “I’m really proud of the…

MADE IN AFRICA In the summer of 2024, protests in Kenya against an unpopular tax-raising proposal led to at least 60 deaths, mostly at the hands of police, according to a local watchdog group. Undeterred, scores of people took to the streets again this summer to mark the one-year anniversary of the initial mobilisation and decry persistent police brutality, corruption and a prolonged cost-of-living crisis. Just as this recent wave of protests was receding, leaving behind deep concern and uncertainty, one of the country’s most beloved bands – Just a Band – was staging a reunion at a party celebrating analytical webzine Africa Is a Country’s first print anthology. Fittingly, that issue is all about the past 15 years of protest on the continent. Blending dance, hip-hop, funk and more,…

The blockbuster music video for Knucks’ recent single ‘Goldtooth’ sums up the vision behind the north-west London rapper’s second studio album, A Fine African Man, due for release on 31 October. Flashing with gold jewellery, decadent club scenes, glamorous women and high-speed chases – brought to life by esteemed Nigerian filmmaker Director K – the highly cinematic Bond-themed film focuses on “showing Nigeria is a beautiful place”, according to Ashley Afamefuna Nwachukwu (aka Knucks). After being sent away from London by his parents due to bad behaviour, the rapper spent a year living with extended family members in Enugu, Nigeria, between the ages of 11 and 12. Since then, the give-and-take relationship between Knucks, now 30 years old, and his ancestral home has continued to develop. In the past, he’s…

It’s a daunting job broaching the subject of a 25-year milestone with two creatives who prefer not to “get into that world of nostalgia for too long”, as Gorillaz co-founder and visual artist Jamie Hewlett puts it. But even those most resistant to the past can’t help but get a little misty-eyed. “Not to quote myself, but modern life is rubbish,” says Damon Albarn, referencing the title of Blur’s 1993 second album as he discusses the lie of the land for new artists today and the challenges which perhaps didn’t exist 40 years ago, from lack of small venues and demands to produce content, to the big industry behemoths that suck up resources without giving back. “I’m getting nostalgic now,” he admits. “It was truly a wonderful time, the 80s,…

In Havana, reparto is playing in every taxi, every café lining La Habana Vieja, on Saturday mornings at Mio y Tuyo. A homemade mix of reggaeton and traditional Cuban rhythms, it’s the preeminent soundtrack of Cuba today – and it’s continued surging from the island’s barrios. In Spanish, “reparto” means different things; usually, the word can mean “allocating” or “dividing and sharing”. However, in Cuba, it’s also a slang term that describes workingclass neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Havana – residential communities marked by hardship, crumbling buildings and constant shortages. And it’s in these districts, through artists like Wampi and Wildey, that reparto finds new meaning. Reparto is rooted in timba, a classic Cuban sound that exploded in the 90s and fuses Cuban son, salsa, funk, Afro-Cuban folkloric music and…

Three decades after luxury motor car brand Rolls-Royce was founded, its cars were the preferred transport of leading lights of the music and entertainment world. Artists including Duke Ellington, Fred Astaire, Count Basie, Ravi Shankar, Edith Piaf and Sam Cooke all travelled by Rolls-Royce, recognising the brand as the definitive symbol of success and artistry. But it is its flagship, the Rolls-Royce Phantom – now celebrating its centenary (which was marked with a Keith Moon-inspired stunt – see p. 15) – that has most captured the imagination of music icons across the generations, from Elvis Presley to 50 Cent. Rolls-Royce CEO Chris Brownridge tells us: “From the Golden Age of Hollywood to the rise of hip-hop, over the last 100 years, music artists have used Phantom to project their identity…