Billboard UK
Page: 4
Coldplay have teamed up with Laura Mvula to cover The Proclaimers’ classic track, “Sunshine On Leith.” Watch the performance in full below. The band delivered an emotive rendition of the Scottish act’s 1988 single during a pared-back performance for BBC Radio 2’s Piano Room Month series on Monday night (Feb. 3). Birmingham-raised songwriter Mvula assisted […]
The Great Escape festival in Brighton, England has announced hundreds of new names for their lineup including The Libertines’ Peter Doherty, Jordan Adetunji, Lynks, The K’s and more.
The festival is also expanding its programme to run for an extra day, and will take place in the city on May 14-17. First held in 2006, the annual gathering showcases emerging talent across the city at a number of independent venues; previous performers at the festival include Charli XCX, Fontaines D.C., Sam Fender, Japanese Breakfast and more.
On May 14, The Libertines’ Peter Doherty will perform at a special Spotlight Show curated by his record label, Strap Originals. It will feature acts such as Warmduscher and Trampolene at the Deep End venue on Brighton’s beachfront. Tickets for the festival are on sale now.
Trending on Billboard
Further additions to the festival’s bill include: Armlock Silver, Black Fondu, Bold Love, Donny Benét, Gore, Lemfreck, Man/Woman/Chainsaw, Moonlandingz, Namesbliss, Rabbitfoot, Real Farmer, Shortstraw, Sunday (1994), The Pill, Westside Cowboy and more.
The festival has also announced further details about the accompanying conference programme and a raft of speakers and curators for the event. Industry bodies The Council of Music Makers (MMF, MPG, FAC, Ivors Academy and the MU), Night Time Industries Association (NTIA), BBC Introducing LIVE and Youth Music all return as collaborators, alongside The Association of Independent Music (AIM).
Themes across the panels will include the role of government policy in creative spaces, community building for artists and labels and more. See the full rundown at the festival’s official website.
The Great Escape has also shared news that warmup event, The Road To Great Escape, will take place in the preceding week, and returns to key cities Glasgow (May 9-10) and Dublin (May 12-13). The showcases will see a number of acts from the lineup performing live in their home cities before making the trip to England’s south coast.
Focus Wales has shared the next wave of its lineup for 2025, with an additional 104 acts added to the bill.
The festival, which takes place across multiple venues in Wrexham, north Wales, will return in May (8-10) with support from the Arts Council of Wales, the Welsh Government and PRS Foundation’s Talent Development Network.
The event will bring together talent from the U.K., Europe, Asia, Australia and North America.
Among the new names announced include French synth-pop band eat-girls, Seoul’s Hynopsis Therapy and Brussels jazz collective Tukan. View the lineup in full below.
In partnership with APRA and the British Council NZ, meanwhile, three New Zealand artists will be featured in a special Māori reception and showcase: Jordyn With a Why, MĀ and MOHI.
Trending on Billboard
The additions join previously announced acts like Irish rockers Sprints, the Mercury Prize-nominated Nova Twins, Welsh songwriter Gruff Rhys and rapper Lemfreck, the recipient of the 2024 Welsh Music Prize.
Tickets for Focus Wales 2025 are on sale now. Festival passes begin at £80 ($99), or those working in the music industry can acquire delegate passes for £160 ($198). Day tickets are also available for purchase.
Earlier this month, Focus Wales held a showcase at ESNS in Groningen, the Netherlands, featuring Welsh bands CVC and The Family Battenburg. Speaking to Billboard UK, Focus Wales co-founder and booker Andy Jones explained that the festival’s presence at ESNS “ensures that Focus Wales and, more broadly, Wales as a music market, is part of the wider conversation with the European music community.”
In 2024, Focus Wales played host to performances from Spiritualized, The Mysterines and Antony Szmierek, among others. For more information, visit the festival’s official website.
Central Cee has secured this week’s No. 1 on the U.K.’s Official Albums Chart with his debut LP Can’t Rush Greatness (Jan. 31). The west London rapper outsold the rest of the top five combined to reach the summit; this album gives him his second chart-topper following 2023’s mixtape 23. There’s been a flurry of […]
Lola Young has bagged a second week at No. 1 on the U.K. Singles Chart with her breakout hit “Messy” (Jan. 31). The song first hit the top spot last week after dethroning Gracie Abrams’ “That’s So True,” which reigned for eight non-consecutive weeks. The London-based musician’s star continues to rise with the song hitting […]
The BRIT Awards has announced the first slate of live performers for its 2025 ceremony. JADE, Myles Smith, Shaboozey, Teddy Swims and The Last Dinner Party will all perform live during the event at London’s O2 Arena on March 1. All of the performers are nominated in a number of categories. Myles Smith has already […]

Few people have had a better start to 2025 than Imogen Heap. Over the past few weeks, the pioneering producer and songwriter has scored her first-ever chart hit with “Headlock” – lifted from 2005’s spellbinding LP, Speak For Yourself – and has found herself receiving “dozens upon dozens” of collaboration requests, she tells Billboard UK over the phone.
A combination of TikTok and a feature on viral psychological horror game Mouthwashing may be helping “Headlock” scale the charts – it currently stands at No. 98 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has cracked the top 40 in the U.K. – but it’s a newfound appreciation for Heap’s groundbreaking approach to pop music that has summoned an increasingly feverish Gen Z audience.
Trending on Billboard
Across social media, younger listeners have recently become enamored with Heap’s theatrically layered vocals and expressive production style, as well how she popularized the use of the vocoder. They are also coming to gauge the extent of her influence on global superstars such as Ariana Grande, FKA Twigs and Billie Eilish. “Imogen Heap was lowkey mother to every 2010s pop girl,” reads a comment on a decade-old clip of Grande performing with Heap’s ingenious wearable instrument, the MiMu gloves.
In 2010, Heap became the first woman to win a Grammy for engineering, while her music has since been sampled extensively by Grande (“Goodnight N Go,” “Eternal Sunshine”), as well as rappers including A$AP Rocky and the late Mac Miller. Following the release of 2014 album Sparks, however, she has aligned her output with developing technological initiatives in order to make the industry more accessible, she says. Recently, there’s been the launch of data solution Auracles, while Heap has also spent the past few years working on Mogen, an AI assistant that she hopes will deepen her creative process in the studio.
Her journey hasn’t all been art and reverence. Heap contended with a plethora of major label battles during her time in electronic duo Frou Frou, and a currently oversaturated streaming market, she says, has occasionally discouraged her from releasing new music. Since she spent time enjoying “solo jam sessions” during lockdown, however, she has slowly begun to emerge renewed: “I realized how much I needed to be back at the piano. I started to feel more free and open,” she says.
This sense of levity has been amplified by the slow-burn success of “Headlock,” an achievement that has coincided with the song’s rights reverting back to Heap, after a 20-year license to Sony. In the coming months, she is planning to start collaborating with fans via livestream, alongside deepening her unique sound world and learning more about herself. It’s a time of rejuvenation and opportunity – with Heap preparing to set out on a more experimental path than ever before.
Below, Heap talks with Billboard about her recent “Headlock” success, working on Auracles and Mogen, being an influence on younger artists and much more.
When did you first notice that “Headlock” had started taking on a life of its own?
There’s a new type of energy this time. For so long, [my career] has been about sharing ideas like Auracles and hoping to kickstart something new for the music industry. This [virality] feels like a nice balance that’s happening in return, and I’m excited about the opportunities it’s giving me. I love taking a wildcard and running with it.
I don’t have TikTok and I don’t really understand it. I’ve never really gone into this world of hyper-fast, collaborative music but I do think that it’s amazing. I’ve instead become obsessed with blockchain, and more recently, AI, while keeping my head down for the past 10 years. I haven’t wanted to add to the problems of the music industry, and contribute to things that make sense for me.
How does it feel to look back at your earlier music, revisiting those thoughts and emotions with the perspective you have now?
I’m just really, really happy. I love that record [Speak for Yourself]. It changed the course of my independence: I was able to be free of any debts or labels; I remortgaged my flat at the time. I came off Island Records with Frou Frou and it wasn’t so great. They did an absolutely terrible job of marketing our records, as they decided that the Sugababes were worth all their money or something, meaning our record [2002’s Details] got no love. It’s really sad, you know — they just couldn’t be bothered.
So, I wanted to come out of that deal, and I said, “Please just let me go. I want to do a record independently and I think I can do it.” Back then, we didn’t have Patreon or Kickstarter, so I was left with the question of where to get the money from. I would walk into banks and ask for the loan to make a new record, and they would say, “Yeah, sure, but what’s your job?” I would have to say, “This is my job, here’s the records I have made and here’s how much more money I’d make if I did it independently.”
I would soon learn that if you went independent and did these discussions yourself, and you found your marketing people, everything just opened up. It was just a myth that you needed a label to make something happen.
You have amazing vocal control on “Headlock.” Do you have any rituals as far as keeping it in shape?
I’ve never done any vocal exercises, and the only thing that kept my voice good was the fact that I was using it almost every day. Recently I haven’t been — it’s not as strong at the moment. But as I’m seeing my monthly streams grow and grow, I have started to consciously sing more: When there’s nobody in the house, I’ll sing from my lungs in the shower!
For some time, I didn’t want to sing, as I couldn’t live with putting music out in an industry that doesn’t support its artists. “Headlock” is doing its thing, and for the first time, I’m seeing crazy numbers from streaming income [at 17 million monthly listeners] – that’s never happened to me before. I’m really grateful to be able to put it into Auracles, but generally [the streaming model] doesn’t really work. Instead, I’ve wanted to invest my time in something that did make sense, so then I could relax and make absolutely tons of music and feel like it’s doing something to empower others.
Dozens of artists have covered or sampled your work over the years. In particular, Ariana Grande has repeatedly spoken of your influence on both her career and personal music fandom. Do you feel a kinship with her?
I appreciate Ariana to the point where I get teary even talking about her. She is so f–king busy, right – I thought the [Wicked] film was brilliant – but she remains consistently kind, thoughtful and open. Recently, I reached out to thousands of people ahead of an Auracles launch. When I spoke to Ariana about it, she was like, “Whatever help you need, let me know.” Having that support from someone who is so high-profile and influential made me feel really validated. People say, “Oh God, I am so busy” – but they can’t possibly be as busy as Ariana Grande!
The other day I was walking around and thinking to myself, “I’m going to write a song about her one day.” I really am. I am so grateful she found a connection with my work, and she has been so nice about what it means to her — and in a way, I want to repay that.
No matter how big she gets, or how many things have happened to her – I mean, just look at [the] Manchester [attack] for f–k’s sake – she remains a shining light and is so pure, funny and bright. Ariana is so genuine; there’s not many people you can point to who send such a great message and energy out there.
You’ve been working on Mogen and Auracles for a good while now. Are there any other creative models today that you see now as you did AI two years ago – ideas with potential that musicians are only beginning to scratch the surface of?
Oh God, there’s so many! I find the rate of innovation around AI and visual media to be breathless. Every single day there are these insane developments, it’s blowing my mind. There’s so many things you can do that don’t involve sitting at a computer, typing away. The thing which makes me nervous is the covenants; there’s all this amazing video, art and poetry being generated by AI as well as music, but you know, creators need to be credited and they need to tell us where they’re training [the data] from.
There’s some cultural suspicion around the use of assistive AI in music, but you have always seemed to approach it positively. How has it felt to open up the discussion with those who may hold different views?
I think as long as we get the ground layers right, and we build from a bedrock which is supportive, then we can grow great things off of that together. If we build off a very shaky, unstable, permissionless system, which is currently what it is, then we’re going to create chaos.
But I guess I am positive, because there are lots of things to be positive about. The more worried people are, the more negative energy will go out and come back into these things, it’s just a law of attraction. I think it’s really important to enjoy this kind of unstoppable force of creativity because that’s how humans survive and evolve – through collaboration. We need to find this common ground where we feel that humans are supporting the system consciously, so that it doesn’t create tension.
Do you still believe that music can make a difference in these troubling times?
Yes, undeniably so! Music makes a difference in the world every single second of every single day. When you’re creating music, and even when you’re listening to music, all the structures of how we understand our reality disappear. Those tiny moments of ephemeral, continuous flow and presence offer us the pure sense of being in the moment; not having to think about material practices and money. That’s why music is just so powerful.
What headspace are you hoping to enter your next era in?
I’m in a really good place. I think before, I felt like I had control in my life, which is a complete fantasy. Every single day, things happen and impact your life to the point that you don’t really have control. That’s been the big shift that’s happened for me in the last couple of years: in order to do anything in the future, you have to do it now.
The other day, I chatted to ChatGPT, and I said, ‘Can you find me a Tai Chi master in my area?’ It came up with this person who I then met the other day – and that just feels amazing! The future is in our minds, in our history books, it’s in our predictions, but it isn’t real life. This is all there is.
I’ve been embracing an element of stillness. When something is hyper-good or hyper-bad, I try to regulate that, so the waves of feeling and emotion become less overwhelming. It’s really embracing what’s manageable: what’s happening here, what’s happening now.
Drum’n’bass duo Chase & Status have been revealed as the latest headliner for London’s All Points East festival on Aug. 16. They join previously announced performers for the two-weekend event including The Maccabees, RAYE and Barry Can’t Swim. Billed as the latest instalment in their RTRN II DANCE series, the duo will curate a day’s […]

Dressed to the nines, bottle-blonde hair coiffed, black cab parked across the street. Rebecca Lucy Taylor — a.k.a. Self Esteem — is stepping outside the front door of her London flat, heading to “one of them fancy ‘dos,” when mild calamity strikes. Attached to the collar of her gown is a large, grey, electromagnetic security tag – one that would take a delicate operation to remove. Grey skies and a dash of brolly-ruining wind certainly aren’t helping the situation, either.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
“I just stood there like, ‘F–k this. When will it not be like this?,” she says, recalling the memory. To help illustrate what it felt like in the moment, Taylor talks with her palms pressed against her head. “I have a saying for times like this, like when you get toilet paper on your shoe: ‘That’s very Self Esteem.’
Trending on Billboard
“There’s part of my ego that wants to tell myself all of this is not a f–king joke,” the Rotheram-raised artist continues. ”But then I also can’t help but be present in reality. What would have helped me was if one of the indie girls I used to look up to and be intimidated by had just… farted, or something. That would have been amazing!”
Taylor has learned how to take such indignities with humour and good grace. There was the time, she says, that she walked the BRITs red carpet to a muted response. Or when her sublime second LP Prioritise Pleasure narrowly missed out on the Official U.K. Charts’ top 10 in 2021, landing at No. 11. (“That was the most ‘me’ thing ever.”) Leaving the following year’s Mercury Prize ceremony – which was already hastily rescheduled following the passing of Queen Elizabeth II – empty-handed, meanwhile, was “another ‘no, not quite you’ moment.’” When asked in a subsequent Standard interview about what she collects for a hobby, Taylor playfully responded: “Awards you get for being nominated for something, but not quite winning them.”
There was a time back there, shortly after the pandemic began to wind down, when Taylor was everywhere in the U.K.’s music press. Prioritise Pleasure, with its big, ambitiously constructed choruses that contextualized vivid emotional flashpoints in Taylor’s life, was met with unanimously glowing reviews, leading to its author being subjected immediately to weighty predictions about her future. Along with Taylor’s rich voice, the record shone through its fluorescent electro flourishes and euphoric pop feel. Predecessor Compliments Please (2019) was much more of a cult concern, introducing a promising new star content looming in the wings.
Taylor has gone from existing as an underground darling to being recognized as a pre-eminent alt-pop icon. Though her singles rarely scale the charts, they remain ubiquitous at major festivals (Glastonbury, Green Man, Parklife) and in safe spaces for her devout LGBTQ+ following. There are many jobs, too, that comprise her career – she’s also a West End actress (Cabaret), video director, theatre composer (Prima Facie), panelist, radio host, TV personality – to the point that it feels like she’s hardly disappeared since her last record. This level of graft and visibility has earned her widespread industry recognition and a dazzling public reputation.
“There’s long been this weird underdog [reputation] that has echoed around me,” she says.
This back-and-forth internal monologue plays out through her forthcoming third LP, A Complicated Woman (due April 25). It contains plenty of epic, thrillingly weird music that only Taylor could create: songs about transcending fear and blowing up your life set against glowing choral melodies (“Focus Is Power”) and thumping club beats (“Mother”).
“Musically, my album sounds mental,” she jokes. “Sometimes, I think, ‘You f–king idiot. You should have just made a shoegaze album that would do well on [radio station BBC] 6Music.”
Across the new record, there’s a sense that Taylor is reckoning with her humor, dreams and anxieties while charting the next stage of her evolution. By the time she returned home after the Prioritise Pleasure tour, she says she found her world had changed, and not in the way you usually associate with an acclaimed album. “Not having a day off in almost two years” had left her feeling burnt out, and she was unable to commit to any hobbies or day-to-day routines.
At the start of creating A Complicated Woman, Taylor felt alienated from her own feelings – a strange paradox, perhaps, for an artist who has never minced her lyrics and one whose powerful live shows, for many, feel like akin to a spiritual reverie. “For me, this has absolutely been the hardest album yet,” she says. “I was saying ‘yes’ to every offer that came my way, so it was written from a place of almost being against my will. It felt like teeth being pulled at times. It was difficult and complicated.”
She picks up and puts down a cup of tea without drinking. “Though it also saw my defiance meet my depleting, ‘I want to give up’-ness, which I think you hear in the record,” she continues. “That’s how the whole [creative] process has been for me: a sense of ‘F–k this’ as well as me saying to myself, ‘Come on, woman!’”
Self Esteem
Scarlett Carlos Clarke
To hear Taylor discuss these contrasting mindsets feels very fitting. Because for A Complicated Woman, she has decided to embrace the mechanisms of the industry around her in a new way entirely. Having released her first two solo records via indie label Partisan [Idles, Laura Marling], she recently signed with Polydor, a move that places her on the brink of the big time – 15 years after she first started putting out music as one half of now-defunct indie duo Slow Club.
We meet in Universal’s north London HQ; after pulling Billboard UK in for a swaying bear-hug, Taylor slouches on a long sofa for our conversation, wearing a soft grey hoodie, trainers and a pinch of makeup. Despite her formidable onstage presence, Taylor radiates self-effacing candour and she is transparent about her business rationale.
“I feel as though I’ve done my end of the deal,” she says of her decision to step up to a major label. “What has been frustrating about the music industry for me is: I’ve done everything to the best of my ability and have worked flat out, and then my life has been spent watching artists supersede me over and over again. You know, I’m older now, so it doesn’t bother me – like, it all comes down to money and the people who can market you. I know now that getting signed doesn’t mean you’re gonna be a huge artist, but anything that helps bolster my work makes me feel hopeful.”
It’s this steadfast approach that has helped Taylor to understand the deeper roots of the unhappiness that cast a shadow over the road to album three. Having weathered a breakup and a more gradual, but eventually near-debilitating depression, she went into writing sessions wanting to rebuild herself after these experiences. Last summer, she enjoyed holidays in Dubrovnik and Crete, occasionally jotting down lyrics while she was away but otherwise remaining off-grid. In the capital, meanwhile, she remains heavily immersed in the arts and the world of drag, both of which have helped shape her musical M.O.
Later in the year, Taylor had an emotional epiphany while watching the Robbie Williams biopic Better Man. She’s effusive as she explains how its warts-and-all tale – which charts Williams’ working-class childhood in Stoke-on-Trent, through to the fallout of his departure from Take That and resulting substance abuse issues – stirred up feelings in her about her own journey, despite having gone through different hardships.
The film sees Williams, represented via a CGI monkey, start to reconnect with childhood friends after briefly hitting pause on his solo career. Taylor says that she recently made the same move, as part of wanting to envision a more sustainable future for herself in the industry. The resulting insights she’s gleaned about her relationships and mental health are encapsulated within A Complicated Woman’s core objective of accepting how it feels to be a flawed, vulnerable public person.
“None of this is about me wanting to be a c–-ty little pop star anymore. It’s sort of deeply embarrassing to me to remember the version of myself who wanted to be famous.” Taylor says. “This whole journey has taught me that what’s important is people and community. That’s what the music means to me.”
A Complicated Woman’s conclusion seems to be that hope is still worth fighting for. The melodies are adventurous, and the contradictions of Taylor’s inner psyche loom large, as she confronts both her shadow self and ego. A loud, nail-paint emoji-esque articulation of desire and asserting agency in the bedroom, “69” finds her looser and more liberated than ever. And then there are more poignant tracks like “The Curse,” which navigates despair and exhaustion with an unvarnished frankness.
Recording the latter in the height of 2024’s Brat summer – where Charli XCX’s “365 partygirl” energy felt ubiquitous – caused a minor moral dilemma for Taylor, she laughs: “I felt so embarrassed when I was making my album. I f–king love Brat, but there I was in the studio making my songs like, ‘Get up and try your best! Maybe try and drink less!’”
Taylor is looking forward to seeing her own personal ambitions evolve as her profile continues to rise. Maintaining a private life is at the top of the agenda, and she wants to remain engaged with and curious about what’s around the corner. New opportunities are keeping her “booked and blessed,” while she is working towards buying a flat and has also written a new book.
In the pipeline is A Complicated Woman Live, a “quasi-theatrical” performance art show. Directed by the Tony award-winning Tom Scutt, the run (Apr. 16-19) will see Taylor perform tracks from her back catalogue at London’s Duke of York Theatre. She remains tight-lipped about what the set-up will look like, beyond that she sees it as “my version of [David Byrne’s] American Utopia,” and will be backed by an 11-women band.
“I want women to leave these shows and go, ‘I’m not scared about getting older, f–cking bring it on,’” says Taylor. “I want queer people to feel like that too. And I want straight men to feel really worried and scared.”
Taylor will enter this new era, too, with a stronger self-preservationist streak. Her hope is to keep the goalposts firmly in one place, knowing that she feels at peace with her relative obscurity on the world stage. “Everyone’s telling me, ‘You should go to America,’” she says with a sigh. “Obviously it’d be nice because of the sheer money there is to be made out there, but Slow Club toured America so many times. I can’t go back to playing to like, 50 people!”
Well, remember Better Man? Robbie didn’t ever quite crack the States, Billboard UK posits. “Exactly,” Taylor responds. She smiles. “And that’s okay.”
Parklife Festival has confirmed its full line-up for 2025, including its second headliner. 50 Cent will top the bill alongside the previously-announced Charli XCX at the event in Manchester on June 14-15.
They’ll be joined by other new names including Jorja Smith, Peggy Gou, Lola Young, Overmono, Pawsa, Ewan McVicar, FLO, Andy C, Mella Dee, Hybrid Minds, Joy Orbison and more. Northern Irish electronic duo Bicep, meanwhile, will be bringing their Chroma AV DJ set to the weekender.
The announcement coincides with the news of Parklife’s 15th anniversary. Since its beginnings in Manchester’s Platt Fields area in 2010, the event has expanded to become one of the U.K.’s biggest weekend festivals, now operating in the 80,000-capacity Heaton Park in a northern suburb of the city.
Trending on Billboard
Last November, Parklife announced its first wave of acts, which featured Confidence Man, Antony Szmierek, Interplanetary Criminal and Jodie Harsh. View the line-up in full below.
Tickets for the festival will go back on sale on Friday (Jan. 31) at 10am (GMT), following a sold-out first release last year. Weekend tickets start at £135 plus booking fees ($168), while day tickets begin at £85 plus booking fees ($105).
The general on-sale will follow a number of presales that begin tomorrow (Jan. 29) for customers of Three, as well as those signed up to Parklife’s official mailing list.
In 2024, Parklife was headlined by Doja Cat, J Hus and Disclosure. In recent years, artists such as The 1975, Aitch, The Prodigy, Megan Thee Stallion and Tyler, The Creator have also led the charge.
New additions for this year include a brand new stage, Matinée, featuring a 360° DJ booth, as well as a more central location on the site for VIP & Backstage areas.
Check out the full lineup below.