Author: Alexandra Haddow

NME

I always thought Charlie Watts was an interesting man. Mostly because he played on huge stages across the world for 50 years with The Rolling Stones and always looked like he’d rather be somewhere else. This was, of course, confirmed in the amazing quotes that surfaced from him in the past week about playing Glastonbury. “I don’t want to do it,” he told the Guardian in 2013. “Everyone else does. I don’t like playing outdoors, and I certainly don’t like festivals. I’ve always thought they’re nothing to do with playing. Playing is what I’m doing at the weekend.” Tell it how it is Chaz (sorry, I’ll never call him Chaz again).

There’s a reason this quote went everywhere – it’s refreshing. Too often we hear celebrities banging on about how wonderful it is to be them, insisting they’ve never had surgery, saying they lost all the weight “running around after their kids”, then trying to seem normal by saying they feel best when they’re just at home with no make-up on. It’s boring, it’s tedious. Please, bring back the celebrity who doesn’t care. No Instagram collabs, no thanking God for your success, and no pretending you love everything about your job. If, now Charlie’s sadly left us, you’re looking for some more no-nonsense celebrities, here are my favourites I like to check in on just to feel normal.

Keanu Reeves

Why is this (beautiful) man not on more dream dinner guest lists? Sure David Attenborough is nice and I’m sure he’d now bang on about going vegan in his 90s (very much the ‘throwing a deckchair off the Titanic’ of dietary efforts) but Keanu lives the life of a man absolutely at peace with himself, who couldn’t give a fuck about fame. He’s 57 years old and he looks 34, so either there’s a painting of him in an attic somewhere or his lack of bother is an advert for not sweating the small stuff.

As the man himself says: “Money doesn’t mean anything to me. I’ve made a lot of money, but I want to enjoy life and not stress myself building my bank account. I give lots away and live simply, mostly out of a suitcase in hotels. We all know that good health is much more important.” You just know that when he dies (in 2125) there’ll be an outpouring of stories about how he funded entire towns through college or similar. Follow this Twitter account and feel instantly calmed.

Miriam Margoyles

I couldn’t not put this gem of a woman on the list. From her numerous, completely unfiltered appearances on Graham Norton (set aside a few hours of your day for this, and watch Matthew Perry’s face on repeat) to an interview I read with her this week where she said she eats an onion like an apple for lunch because “it’s good for you”, you get the feeling she could be offered a billion pounds to do something and if she didn’t fancy it that day, she’d tell you where to shove it. What a woman.

Robbie Wiliams

You can’t be from Stoke and get too up yourself. Even when he’s been a bit Hollywood over the years, Robbie’s still managed to do it with his own twist – like when he live-tweeted his wife giving birth to their daughter in 2014. He’s never afraid to put himself down, be extremely self-effacing when it comes to interviews, or indeed, tell a story about being wanked off by a fan in a castle he’d hired.

Shaggy

I once read an interview with the man who penned the best (or worst?) earworm of everyone’s childhood where someone asked him what motivates him to make music. His reply was brilliant: he makes enough money so that he can go back to Jamaica and live the good life then, when the money starts to run out, he starts making music again. Take my money, Shaggy.

Bill Murray 

Everyone has a Bill Murray story, whether it’s lucky enough to be first hand or passed around, whispered on the wind, told for generations. Legend has it that he doesn’t have an agent, you just have to leave a voicemail on his house phone. How do you get the number? I feel like you just have to will it hard enough and Bill sends it to you telepathically.

Photos of him surface every now and then around the world, just spreading joy, in the calmest fashion. You get the feeling he might be the inspiration for every Wes Anderson character combined. God, I’m such a sheep. Come and save me, Bill! Let’s live off-grid together!

The post In celebration of stars who, like Charlie Watts, don’t give a damn about fame appeared first on NME.

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Sometimes an artist passes away and, years later, you’re not quite sure if you dreamed it, such is the volume of music being released in their name.

Amy Winehouse’s ‘Lioness: Hidden Treasures; was released after her death, and her father Mitch suggested recently that another posthumous album could be in the works. Do we want that? Would she have wanted that? Who knows. What we do know is: one artist has made his feelings on the subject crystal clear. Rapper and crooner Anderson .Paak this week revealed a tattoo that reads: “When I’m gone, please don’t release any posthumous albums or songs with my name attached. Those were just demos and never intended to be heard by the public.”

So, with regards to Mr. Paak, at least, that puts that debate to rest. If I’m honest, I’m not entirely sure why it warranted a tattoo, and he couldn’t have just popped it in a contract or something, but the whole thing has sparked a debate about posthumous releases.

Since he talked to Instagram Stories about this thorny issue, other artists have joined in to reiterate the sentiment. Lana Del Rey reposted the image, saying in her ‘gram caption: “It’s in my will but it’s also on his tattoo.” And who can blame these artists? I’m a comedian, and while I’m not suggesting for one moment that I’m anywhere near in the same circles as international recording artist Lana Del Rey, I would be appalled if someone went through my notebooks after I’d died and even read my half-baked jokes about dating boys in bands, let alone said them out loud, let alone made them available for public consumption.

I can’t help but feel like I’m on the side of the artists in a world where artists have increasingly come to be seen as commodities, ready to be wheeled around for endless tours and special appearances thanks to streaming services ensuring they don’t make minimum wage for their work. Isn’t it even more exploitative to make money from things that they never meant to hear the light of day?

It’s easy to see why it happens: people love money, for one thing, and at the moment, mainstream culture sometimes feels like it’s having a crisis of confidence. A fear of the new. A panic at actually trying to get people to listen to or watch anything new. We’re living in a Groundhog Day of remakes, the golden years of, ‘But didn’t they just do a Spiderman like two years ago?’ So of course record companies are going to squeeze every living drop of cash out of a well-loved artist, especially if it’s via songs the fans have never heard before.

I understand the fans want to hear as much as possible from their favourite artists, but it also feels slightly ghoulish and exploitative of grief on a huge scale. If an artist is happy for their works to be released posthumously, then of course go for it. But if they’ve never said anything about it, it’s probably best to err on the side of caution and ensure something is put in place to stop that happening. In the extremely complicated world of trying to understand who owns a song that someone has written (a predicament you’ll encounter when trying to get your head around someone as famous and successful as Taylor Swift having to re-record some of her songs in order to regain control over them), we could at least simplify who owns what in death by suggesting that unless that the artist opts in to posthumous releases, they’re out.

With more posthumous releases than ever in recent years, including ‘albums’ from rappers such as Juice WRLD, Pop Smoke and Lil Peep, it feels like the debate is coming to a head. This shouldn’t become commonplace if there’s a growing sentiment that it’s not what artists wanted. Please: view these musicians as people, have some compassion, and – without wishing to sound too preachy, respect their art a bit more than seeing dollar signs after they’ve gone.

Anderson .Paak may have started something here; he obviously felt strongly enough about it to get it etched onto himself rather than just write it down. Of course we want to hear as much of our favourite artists as possible, even after they’re gone, but some things are better left a mystery. Some things weren’t made to be heard, and we should keep it that way.

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In January 2020 I walked past a poster for The Subways announcing a tour and immediately flashed back to seeing them at the Northampton Roadhouse circa 2004 – my first ever gig. I thought about all the gigs I used go to and the indie nights that started in my very underage school years (Revolver in Corby every Saturday at Club 2000) and continued throughout uni. Then I moved down to London and haven’t been to one since.

When I say indie night, I mean: proper, full on, fiver in, Red Stripe by the gallon, northern lads singing about pulling and dancing, snog-someone-at-the-end-of-the-night-and-get-a-kebab-on-the-way-home nights. A Jarman brother blasting out of the sound system.

So, in January 2020, I tweeted to ask people: would they come if I put on exactly that? It went a bit mad – thousands of people said they were in. I took a leap of faith, booked east London’s Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, called it Indie Amnesty (after the hashtag of brilliant indie anecdotes that went viral a few years ago) and wrote the event description: “Pretend it’s anywhere between 1990 and 2010 for one night only with cheap entry, Britpop / Indie DJs and drunken snogging in a basement bar. Forget the state of the nation in the year of our lord 2020, Labour is still in power and groups of working class Northern kids are still making music that rattles your bones from the inside out.’”

It sold out within a week. Simple! April 11th 2020 would be a legendary date in the diary.

Except, of course, it wasn’t. The level of excitement with a two month build-up was bad enough – imagine how it felt when, amid the pandemic, that became 16 months. By the time last Friday (August 6) came around, after a lot of stress and me screaming at everyone that they needed a negative test to gain entry, I was finally about to host my first night in a club atmosphere since a bouncer politely asked me to get down off a table in notorious east London dive The Dolphin at 4am on a cold Saturday in March last year.

A working men’s club with a huge red-lightbulbed heart on the wall, gold tinsel behind the DJ booth, wood-panelled walls and a freestanding pole (obviously) on the dancefloor: it was the perfect way not only to make everyone feel like it was the ‘90s / early ‘00s again, but also a bit like we were all in the video for ‘Common People’. Ideal. Here’s what I learnt we’d all missed from a proper night out in the last year and a half.

People still turn up three hours late 

At 10.30pm I was dancing like a maniac to some Arctics album tracks and having a great time, but I realised it still wasn’t full. Everyone gets to a club night three hours after it starts. It’s not a proper night if you’re completely full by 9pm, unless it’s some sort of Christian Rock event, the Tory Conference, or one of those early raves for people that have kids now and for some reason want to put themselves through more torture. Luckily, by 11pm the place was banging.

The smoking area still rocks

No less than six people texted me the next day to tell me how much fun they had in the smoking area. Sometimes I wish I smoked just so I could partake in it.* The drama! The flirting! The break-ups and make-ups! The new pals you make! It’s a dating app in real life – y’know, like it should be. My friend got two women’s numbers there at different points of the night. I think I’ve seen him smoke precisely one (1) cigarette before, ever.

*I don’t smoke – it’s disgusting – but, like, can we invent a cheese sandwich area or something instead? “We met ‘cause I asked him for a bite of his toastie” has a certain ring to it.

I have really missed flirting

Good God have we all needed this: slightly tipsy exchanges at the side of the dancefloor with someone you think might be attractive. Being able to buy a drink for someone you only just met. Asking someone a question that isn’t, ‘How was your lockdown?’, and then ruining it all because you got too drunk and said something weird. All the good stuff.

And dancing like no-one’s watching

If the videos of people dancing like complete idiots on the stage / pole / dancefloor are anything to go by, everyone missed throwing themselves around a room they don’t live in and giving absolutely zero care about what anyone thinks about it.

DJS still don’t play the songs you ask for

We’ve all had to be our own DJs for the last 16 months. I got the guy who ran the aforementioned Revolver to do a set, as well as another pal whose work as a DJ went out the window last March. He described the sense of community as akin to something “people go to church for”. There is a certain religious aspect to seeing a DJ up there on the decks. Just as with God, you can make requests! Except you can be almost certain they’ll nod and say, ‘I’ll see if I have it’, and then go back to their job and definitely not play it! You forget that of course they have it because the internet exists now but they’re using CDs! You don’t understand DJing. Good clean fun.

Nobody like Jägerbombs

I hate the things. Absolutely hate them. Then you realise nobody likes them. They just exist in that space where if you’re drunk enough to think one is a good idea, you’re already too drunk. I beg of you, do not let them back into my life. I know they made an appearance on Friday and I’m worried they’ll be back. I miss them, but in the way that you miss that ex you know was a nightmare post-11pm.

There’s only one answer when it comes to the last song

You take bets on what it’ll be. You have an argument about what it should be. You grab your best mate and screech along to it as the dreaded house lights come back on and you’re deciding where the nearest McDonalds is. You forget what it was the next day anyway. Probably Oasis.

The post Almost 18 months late, I finally got to put on my indie club night. Here’s what I learned appeared first on NME.

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Kanye West – man, myth, legend? Performance artist? Piss taker? – is living in a stadium while he finishes his new album, because obviously he is. Not content with eschewing LA for his favoured Wyoming ranch (why am I picturing him sat around a grand dining table with horses dressed in dinner jackets?), Yeezy is residing in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz stadium as he puts the final touches to ‘DONDA’, his forthcoming record dedicated to his late mother. The venue is also just up the road from Morris Brown College, where she taught for almost 20 years. I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Kanye has been sharing his sleeping quarters with us (Yeezys in shot, of course) and we’ve gotta say, it doesn’t scream “billionaire artist”. As much as it might seem jazzy to live in a stadium, what would it actually be like? Better than your eight-person flatshare in east London? Don’t worry about imagining it, because I’ve done that for you.

Food

We hope you like sweaty hotdogs and burgers that are double the size of what you actually need because that’s the order of the day here. Don’t worry though – they’ll only set you back £13 (card only). If you’re looking to switch it up and get some greens then pie, mash and mushy peas are your go-to. You may as well get ready to embrace scurvy and rickets while you’re in there. Entree for sir? Perhaps those nachos that you never see anybody buying, with the cheese that looks like grouting. Let’s be honest, I’m writing this like hotdogs, burgers and pies are a bad thing. I’d be happier than ever.

Drink

Mmmmm, taste that? That’s a flat pint, served in a paper cup. Carling for breakfast, lunch and dinner please! Truly the only beer they serve in hell – and of course, it will be warm. Is there something in the pipes of a massive venue that just takes the fizz out? Do the bubbles run out cos it spends ages getting to the tap? Perhaps you’ll find out during your stay. Once you have, why not wash it down with a £4 bottle of water and a blue Slush Puppie (although nobody over five drinks that shit and – hopefully – there are no five-year-olds in your stadium-house)?

Sleeping

It’s not gonna be great unless you enjoy sleeping in the stale scent of a megastar’s sweat – actually, when you put it like that I could probably set up camp in Harry Styles’ dressing room after a 14-day stint at The O2. It might be quite good practice for prison, though, e.g. for when you get arrested for stalking Harry Styles. On the plus side, you can hit up the merch stand for some extremely cheap but cosy pyjamas that probably say something like “FEMINISM IS NOW” for no real reason, next to a band that consists of six white guys with guitars.

Dating

Let’s be honest, if you meet someone in a pub and tell them you’ve got 14 acres that aren’t out in the sticks, there’s a good chance they’re coming home with you. But when they arrive at the stadium, they’re gonna think you’re some sort of Bond villain and/or on the run from the police. There’s no way you could ever get anyone to commit to coming back with you through the gates and tunnels, and then backstage, all the way to your little room of sadness with breezeblock walls. My friend Carl once lived in a windowless one-bed apartment next to Heaven in Charing Cross that had ornamental curtains on the wall and a two-fold front door that looked like it belonged on a stable. When he brought a girl back, she made them get the bus to hers instead because she clearly feared for her life. It was £1200 a month.

Decor

You might want to hunt around backstage for a few leftover tour posters to adorn your bare walls and feel a bit more at home here. Otherwise, you might go a bit Shawshank.

Bathroom facilities

This isn’t a great one. If you have to get up in the middle of the night and go to the loo, it’s gonna take you an age to get to, you’ll get lost at least three times, and when you get there, five of them will be out of order and there are people crying in three – which leaves none. Start getting used to pissing yourself.

Entertainment

The final kicker, Mrs Brown’s Boys are doing a two-month uninterrupted run. Time to get your flatshare in Dalston back.

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When I read that The X Factor is ending after 17 years on our screens, I was in shock. “The X Factor was still on?!” I thought. I will give any of you one million pounds if you can name any of the winners from the past five – nay, eight years. James Arthur is the last one I remember. Did he win it? I think he won it. So what’s made it finally go? And what will we do on Saturday nights now?

For a start, you can watch The Masked Singer instead. Honestly, it’s the definition of “so bad, it’s good” – but I can’t stress the “bad” part of that enough. I watched it with two friends last year to slag it off – a mystery singer in a ridiculous costume belting out a tune for celebs to try and guess who they are – and ended up crying with laughter at the absurdity of it all. I highly recommend watching best bits compilations on YouTube if you’re ever feeling a bit low. Truly inspiring.

A spokesperson for ITV confirmed this week that the Simon Cowell-owned production had no plans to return at this stage, with an “insider” apparently telling The Sun: “Clearly the last thing he wants is for X Factor to fizzle out with a whimper and become a bit of a joke – especially in contrast to the show in its pomp.” I think that particular train might have left the station a few years ago, pal.

In the current climate, The X Factor was beginning to perhaps seem a tad cruel in the earlier stages of the competition. I’m not part of the “you can never laugh at anyone” clan, but getting people on that huge stage when they’re clearly absolutely awful and having judges tell them that they’re rubbish isn’t really cool any more. It just seems unnecessarily nasty. Especially as you just know that in all the rounds up until then, the producers were licking their lips and telling them they’d be great for the live shows.

If you were thinking that perhaps this means a change in direction for ITV and the end of the High-Trousered Perma-Tanned Boot-Cut Cowell, though, think again. Just when you thought it was safe to turn on your TV set, he apparently has plans for a new show entitled Walk The Line, previously described in NME as a six-part “musical gameshow” that’s “set to premiere on ITV later in 2021”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen two more terrifying words next to each other than “musical gameshow”. Why are they doing this to us? Let’s just look back fondly on the best moments of The X Factor and move on with our lives, finally put Louis Walsh out to pasture on a nice farm and start showing repeats of At Home With The Osbournes (the original and best reality show) on Saturday nights instead.

Of course, The X Factor has produced good things – it gave us Harry Styles, for God’s sake. Who else would I have to fantasise daily about going on road trips across America with if he didn’t exist? Perhaps the greatest gift of all, aside from him and his impeccable style, is Alexandra Burke, who was actually quite a decent singer (who can forget her duet with Beyoncé, when Alexandra pretty much wet herself on stage, as we all would?) but, more than that, also told daytime TV show Daybreak in 2012 that she brought the phrase “elephant in the room” over to the UK form the US. Thanks for the memories, Alex.

Then, of course, you have Matt Cardle, the actual winner over One Direction in 2010. His duet of ‘Unfaithful’ with Rihanna in the final was like watching a wee lad being hit on by one of his mum’s friends in a pub and finding he can absolutely nothing about it. Let’s also not forget that the ‘older’ category on the show was for people over 25. Are they trying to make us all have a breakdown? Luckily Steve Brookstein proved that us oldies can do it when he won the first series in 2004, aged 37, and was promptly never seen again.

Let’s chalk up the wins we did see – Little Mix, One Direction… erm, probably others – and move on. The bog-standard singing talent show format is done (I hope). Let’s move on with our lives and either watch something good, go and sees some live music, or sit at home and watch Joel Dommett reveal that Tree is Teddy Sheringham. Now that’s entertainment.

The post ‘The X Factor’ bows out after 17 years: here’s what really killed the singing reality show appeared first on NME.

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A couple of years ago, a comedy writer called Laura Crisp went viral with her thread of tweets about working in HMV as a teenager. Anecdotes included a man who came in every week and pretended to faint in order to receive mouth-to-mouth, a staff member who was nicking cash and storing it in a Keeping Up Appearances boxset and, hilariously, a bloke claiming he was Paul Weller and asking if he could have some Jam CDs as he’d “lost” his.

The stories were brilliant, but I think the other reason it resonated with so many people was that fact that for many generations, HMV played a role in their adolescence. This week, the store celebrates its 100th birthday – or at least that of its flagship store in central London – so despite the fact this has probably just made you aware that HMV still exists, let’s give it up for them for making it so far.

Readers of a certain age probably bought their single or album from HMV (or maybe even Our Price – or am I showing my age here?), so it’s an important cultural milestone in all of our lives. Remember browsing through the posters in their rack? Laughing at the rude ones despite not really understanding them, gawping at your favourite bands and begging your mum for £8 so you could slap one up on your bedroom wall and announce you had a personality and taste in music.

Browsing was a thing back then: rifling for hours through CDs, singles, DVDs, deciding what to spend what little cash you had on. HMV was a musical mecca, a treasure trove where you could get pretty much anything you wanted – maybe even in the sale. I’ve been to in-store gigs that had a unique intimate feel to them and, if you liked what you heard, you could turn around and buy the record. (Or don’t, if it’s your boyfriend’s unsigned band in Leeds in 2008, just as a random example.)

As much as we all love independent record shops – they’ve even got their own day now, after all – and although vinyl has well and truly made a comeback, we can surely all admit that they can sometimes be intimidating. “Oh, you haven’t heard of Strange Stairways? Are you sure you even lift, bro?” I might be mixing my images there, but you see what I mean.

HMV was there for all the kids in towns like mine (OK, after Our Price closed down, we had to go to the next town to see the dog and his gramophone – but still), the store serving as one-stop-shop for everything. In the glory days, you could choose a CD and listen to it in the headphones with the huge coiled lead purely to look cool and pass the time on a Saturday afternoon.

In all honesty, I thought HMV was purely online now, but before writing this column learned that HMV still has 107 shops in the UK. It seems like every year we see a headline about the biggest name in high street music facing closure or threat of administration – the latest being the closure of three stores at the start of 2020, not to mention – in a real body blow – their aforementioned flagship Oxford Street store closing in 2019, making national news.

There’s light at the end of the tunnel, though. HMV’s online sales have more than doubled in the past year, so maybe there’s hope for them yet. Plus, they’ve announced that they’re opening 10 new stores around the UK, and as part of their 100th birthday celebrations have Ed Sheeran performing an old-school in store gig in Coventry, which I’m sure will be more popular than the aforementioned Leeds one of yesteryear. It’s quite a feat to make it 100 years in any business, let alone one that has become increasingly hard to make money in.

The famous dog from the logo (he’s called Nipper, and sadly, didn’t make it to 100) inspired the name His Master’s Voice, a bold choice if ever I’ve heard one for what was originally purely a music shop. It seems that dog lovers have always held influence, though: the brand began life in the early 20th century as a record manufacturer named The Gramophone Company, but the image of Nipper became so popular that they changed it to the famous one we know now.

Despite multiple economic collapses, a World War and the onslaught of digital music, HMV is still somehow with us. I hope they’re here to celebrate their 150th birthday with us too, especially after the past year and the heartache it’s created for everyone. We still need HMV for those kids going to buy their first record, and for the people just who want to browse. Long live music and vinyl, long live Nipper and long live HMV, the original record store. See you at the posters.

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Festivals are back! Aren’t they? Are they? Fingers crossed for whatever you’ve booked that it slips through the net of what is quite frankly the “government throws a dart at the regulations and announces them three hours before they happen” strategy.

Anyway, now we think about it, festivals, aside from orgies (and quite frankly the two are often interchangeable) are pretty much ideal conditions for our old pal to thrive. Dancing in a grotty field with thousands of other people who aren’t showering and sleeping in airtight waterproof germ-igloos? Sign us up! Of course there’ll gobe safety regulations in place when festivals come back, but we can all do out bit to make sure we’re a bit safer when we’re so drunk we actually decide Snow Patrol are good.

We’ve explored in the past how not to be a dick during festival season, but things have changed a bit now, eh? Here’s our guide on how not to be a dick this festival season.

Don’t share drinks 

This is on a par with blowing out candles on a birthday cake in that we thought nothing of it before lockdown and now we’re all a bit like, “I’m surprised we haven’t had a pandemic before – we’re all disgusting.” Keep that cup with you all day. Plus, there’s nothing worse than picking up the wrong drink and realising you’re friends with someone who drinks Strongbow.

Be careful who you share a tent with

If, like me, you’ve got a mate who likes to get… friendly with new people at every festival, maybe even when you’re in the tent trying to pretend you haven’t got ears, suggest they don’t be a dick and in fact invest in a one-man tent. At the Isle of Wight Festival a few years ago I borrowed a tent from my brother-in-law, and when I got to the festival it was a groundsheet and some pegs. The lad next to us had a spare six-man tent for me and my friend, and his pals were livid as he’d made them set up a two-man and a one-man for the three of them, but he said it was “cosy”. So sell it to them this way.

Get a hazmat suit for the portaloos

Again: HOW DID WE NOT HAVE A (PORTALOO-ORIGINATED) PANDEMIC BEFORE?!

Don’t get on someone’s shoulders when they’re trying to watch the headline act

Applied before COVID; applies now. Will apply after the apocalypse and there’s only cockroaches, Rupert Murdoch and that one girl in denim hotpants who obscured my view of Liam Gallagher singing ‘Champagne Supernova’ in Heaton Park in 2009. Not that I’m still annoyed about it.

Don’t lick anyone’s face

Might sound random but it wasn’t at Glastonbury 2016 when a woman did this to me and then told me she was in love with me. IN love. Bit much.

Don’t get in a mosh pit

This might be an unpopular opinion, but don’t do this anyway. Can we not just enjoy the music? (Hello I’m 88 years old.) Can you imagine taking all the right precautions to be safe and then ending up getting COVID from someone’s armpit during the finale of ‘Killing In The Name’. My first-ever gig was The Subways at the Northampton Roadhouse and I got the absolute shit kicked out of me whilst trying to have a nice time to ‘Rock & Roll Queen’. All five stone of me stood at the side for the rest of the gig and got folded into the bus home, and that was without a deadly pandemic. Don’t do it.

Plan ahead for the shower situation

Everyone has a story about their mate who pulled someone on the fourth day of a festival and the ensuing hygiene horror story that unfolded. If you can’t fork out the extra £45 quid for access to the showers (I’m aware it’s been a tough year for everyone but let’s face it £45 at a festival is giving up your last three pints; consider sacrificing something) then bring biodegradable wipes – or maybe a refillable spray bottle – and just try and make sure you have some sort of wash in the time you’re away from home. Maybe take a small tin bath and let the inevitable rain do the rest?

Throw your wristband in the recycling the second you get home

I’m fairly sure these things are gonna single-handedly contribute to the fourth wave if we carry on leaving them around our arms for decades after we attended. Side note: never go beyond a second drink with someone who has one on that isn’t from the same year you’re in. They do not wash their hair.

Snog through a mask

Kidding! Just go for it if you’ve done everything else. It’s the least we deserve. See you at the burger van.

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“Tell me what you want, what you really really want” might not seem like a pioneering lyric in 2021, but 25 years ago this week, when Melanie Black shouted it down the camera at us dancing around the St Pancras hotel in a tiny lime green crop-top and jazzy trousers, pop music changed.

‘Wannabe’ by the Spice Girls signalled the arrival of a new brand of girl power and opened the door for a new wave of bands to even the score within the (even more) male-dominated industry. I was at primary school and completely uninterested in Take That, baffled by why my pals loved them so much… and then the Spice Girls came along. They were my first music obsession (aside from Kylie and Michael Jackson, but Victoria and co. were my first foray into new music) and I remember feeling like an actual queen when I was the first of my friends to get the Spice Girls annual. In 2008 I marched to The O2 excitedly to watch their reunion, and applauded loudest for VB just doing a catwalk rather than singing a solo. Know your strengths guys, it’s OK!

Since then, the biggest girl band of all time has gone on to teach us a fair few things about life, music, and everything in between. Here’s what we’ve learnt in the past quarter of a decade…

It’s incredibly easy to pull Robbie Williams

Robbie Williams had a lovely time in the ’90s and ’00s; we know this. And perhaps the biggest indicator of this being when he told the story of getting, er, serviced by a woman posing as a cleaner in a castle he’d hired. He also recently clarified that he didn’t actually sleep with four of the five Spice Girls, just the three. It seems if you were around Robbie for longer than 40 minutes between the years of 1995 and 2010, you might have ended up, er… dating him? Though I’ve never seen David Beckham have any awkwardness with him though, so maybe Victoria managed to resist.

The girl band is just the start

Since the girls broke into our cassette players and our hearts with their wall-to wall-bangers, they’ve all gone from strength to strength. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Victoria Beckham – global fashion designer and make-up mogul – was even in a girl band. Emma Bunton now has a successful radio career, Mel C won an Olivier Award for her turn in Blood Brothers, as well having perhaps the most successful solo career of them all; most importantly, however, she appeared on Celebrity Gogglebox this year. Geri had a semi-decent solo career (‘Mi Chico Latino’ remains a tune) and is now married to a squillionaire Formula One guy. Mel B has never been far away from our screens, and has had a huge career in the Simon Cowell universe. Can we another have another reunion to show the next generation what you once were, please?

You can meet your heroes

Let’s never forget the duets. Mel C’s ‘Baby When You’re Gone’ with Bryan Adams is one of the best pop songs of the last twenty years (don’t argue with me) and Mel B collaborated with Missy Elliot on ‘I Want You Back’, an underrated R&B club classic. Neither of them compare to VB and Dane Bowers though; ‘Out Of Your Mind’ is a truly iconic ’00s track that was beaten to its rightful place at the top of the charts by Sophie Ellis Bextor’s ‘If This Ain’t Love’. Remember chart wars?!

You don’t need to be controversial to be a huge star

They still managed to be the coolest women in pop without becoming arseholes in the process, and they’ve all talked about their struggles, respectively: Mel C opening the conversation on mental health and eating disorders and Mel B discussing her abusive ex-relationship. None of them have ever been arrested, cancelled, or been called out on any bad behaviour in the press. Squeezing Prince Charles’ bum doesn’t count as bad.

Feminism is popular with women, who knew?

The ‘90s was the time of the ‘Ladette’ trying to keep up with the boys, and with the largely macho Britpop scene in full swing, it might not have seemed like a welcoming environment for five girls in their teens and early twenties. But they burst onto the scene as feminists and declared that Girl Power was cool, showing women they could be themselves and be at the top of your game.

Eddie Murphy might not be the man we all hoped he was

Do better next time, Eddie.

Success doesn’t have to corrupt you

The girls are all still friends, and hang out together every now and then. FAITH RESTORED.

You can get what you really, really want

If the Spice Girls have taught us anything, it’s that you can get wherever you want to be if you work hard enough. You can get through the darkest times of your life, and the pressures that come with achieving the things you want to, and come out the other side. With your best friends in tact. That’s Girl Power.

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Nature, as we’re all well aware, is healing. It looks like things actually might fully be back to normal in a few weeks, and we can dance and snog people we met at bus stops once more. Live music is arguably the worst hit industry in all of this (perhaps airlines, too, but they’re often Baddies, and musicians make us feel good) and absence has certainly made the heart grow fonder, creating even more nostalgia for things that we might not have appreciated before. Specifically, in the case of this article, Blur and mullets.

• READ MORE: Damon Albarn: “I had to do something to lift me out of these storms”

When NME interviewed Damon Albarn about his new album ‘The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows’ this week, from his idyllic Icelandic home, the musical polymath and Britpop legend teased that a Blur reunion wasn’t completely out of the question: “We did have an idea, though I’ve just been a bit busy at the moment obviously. When it happens, I’ll be made up. When it’s wanted, I’ll do it. I don’t want to foist that stuff on anybody unnecessarily.” Spoiler for you, Damon: we want it. We definitely want it. But I’m not convinced we want it with your new mullet.

Behold! His uneven barnet, like a footstool on the back of his head. Cheaper than a sign around your neck that says: ‘No sex for me please.’

Is this a thing we’re bringing back too? Are mullets cool again? On paper, they are worst thing to happen to humans since office jobs. Albarn has a home on the outskirts of Reykjavík and I bet Icelanders make mullets look great; perhaps he’s taken their lead on it. Either way, they’ve come a long way from the days of the original mullet-sporter Billy Ray Cyrus, whose ‘short at the top, extremely long all down the back’ style was bordering on illegal, and actually looked like he had two completely different haircuts.

Can you sport a mullet ironically? Is that what Damon is doing? Or did he just cut his own hair in lockdown and couldn’t quite reach the back? Is that how mullets began? It turns out (after some extensive Googling) that they’ve actually been around since the ancients, but the term ‘mullet’ was actually invented by the Beastie Boys, of all people: on their 1994 song ‘Mullet Head’ they sing: “Number one on the side and don’t touch the back / number six on the top and don’t cut it wack, Jack”. So now you know. At best you might be cool enough to pull the mullet off; at worst, you look like you might be on a list.

Even the great man himself, David Bowie – and I’m sorry for blaspheming – can count his ‘looks like it was actually sprayed on’ mullet as one of his worst styles. Yes: I know it was iconic and even Kate Moss sported it on the cover of French Vogue in tribute to him, but it still makes my eyes want to set on fire when I look at it. Bowie and Damon are exceptions to the rule that all men who have sported a mullet are blokes you wouldn’t want to go down the pub with. The mullet hall of fame reads like a list of guys you’d ban from the local because they once took their trousers off at the table “for a laugh”.

You can’t take anyone seriously if they have one. Imagine you’re in an accident and the paramedic had a mullet. Or the doctor is delivering bad news. I suspect you’d be looking around for the hidden camera. A man with a mullet will never be Prime Minister – and look at our Prime Minister’s hair as it is. That’s saying something.

I’m all for trends coming back around, and for wearing things ironically. I once bought a top from a vintage shop for an ‘Awful Shirt’ themed party and then ended up loving it so much that I wore it everywhere. It was truly horrific. I love mum jeans; I own at least five items with shoulder pads. I’m open-minded. But sorry, Damon, the mullet is where I draw the line. Even you don’t quite pull it off, and you’ve written a new album about nature in the middle of Iceland, and are one of the finest musical talents of your generation. I’ve tried to get on board with it – I even started writing this piece hoping to be a fan, but I can’t do it.

Mullets are the hairstyle equivalent of stepping on an upturned plug, or a spill in a fresh sock. They must be outlawed immediately. So well done on the new album, Damon. I’m excited to listen to it – but please, for the love of God, get the clippers out for the Blur reunion, because the only way we don’t want to see it is with your hair dangling over the back of your shoulders.

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At the start of this year, like a lot of us, deep into our third lockdown and even deeper into the long British winter, I watched Framing Britney Spears, the documentary that really brought home the nature of the star’s conservatorship. I wrote about the duty of care we should extend towards celebrities, and how quickly we tear them down (especially women) when they so much as slip on their pedestal.

READ MORE: ‘Framing Britney Spears’ review: heartbreakingly human story that still lacks a happy ending

As much as I don’t – and didn’t – agree with the conservatorship while watching the documentary, I will also admit that I wasn’t completely convinced that the situation was quite as bad as the stringent #FreeBritney fans were making out. Britney had made statements saying she was OK and, even though I thought that the fans’ concern was justified, I wondered if they had exaggerated it in their adoration of her.

I’m both saddened and relieved to say that after Britney’s statement in a California court yesterday, I was wrong. Saddened because it means that Britney really has been living through some sort of dystopian Handmaids Tale for the best part of the last 13 years, and relieved because hopefully her speaking out is the beginning of the end of this period of her life.

While this is a truly dark story, it’s also true that when Britney made her statement yesterday, news channels were interviewing fans camped outside the court in support – she wasn’t even in the building – and if we can find one very small silver lining in this whole ordeal, it’s in the power of her supporters. The #FreeBritney movement is a grassroots one, started by concerned fans who came to believe that the star wasn’t being treated fairly. Various supporters formed groups that culminated in a global #FreeBritney movement.

Tess Barker and Barbara Gray, the hosts of the Britney’s Gram podcast, where they talk about the star’s Instagram account, were featured in the Framing Britney doc. They explained how they originally started the show purely as a fan pod about Britney’s social media, but slowly began to suspect that something was awry with her conservatorship. They were then thrust into the eye of the storm after receiving an anonymous phone call from someone who claimed to be a former paralegal who had worked on Britney’s situation. “What is happening,” the caller claimed, “is… disturbing to say the least.” Gray and Barker released the episode in 2019 and the #FreeBritney movement grew exponentially.

The hosts claimed to have confirmed the identity of the mystery caller, but their evidence was still disputed in the media, and Framing Britney Spears was criticised for being biased and selective on the footage and viewpoints it featured.

In Britney’s statement, made to the court via telephone court yesterday, she said, among many other things: “I have a IUD inside of myself right now so I don’t get pregnant. I wanted to take the IUD out so I could start trying to have another baby. But this so-called team won’t let me go to the doctor to take it out because they don’t want me to have [any more] children.” She added: “I should be able to sue them for threatening me and saying if I don’t go and do these meetings twice a week, ‘We can’t let you have your money’.”

The full statement is as scary as it is sad, and the fact that this has been allowed to happen for the past 13 years – to one of the most famous women in the world – throws up the question of how many anonymous people are being held in similarly unescapable conditions, as well as whether or not a change in American law needs to be brought about.

There’s no doubt that we haven’t heard the half of Britney’s story, and perhaps we will never hear the truth, but the purest thing about this saga is the way that her justice was encouraged and – perhaps, to some extent – brought about by her loyal fans. They wait outside the courts, attend the rallies, analyse her messages and look past what they were told repeatedly by the media and the courts.

Stars often say they would be nothing without their fans, which of course isn’t quite true, but perhaps Britney’s fans have ensured that she will soon be something she hasn’t been since 2008. Perhaps she will be free.

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