The Big Read

King Princess: “When Harry Styles tweeted about me, it was a huge deal”

The genre-blurring star, currently in the studio with Mark Ronson, reflects on viral fame, ‘queer pop’ and her love of gak (not that kind)

Pale Waves: “I’ve been hiding who I am for so long now. I don’t wanna do that any more”

A near-fatal bus crash and a global pandemic can’t stop the band’s sexual and spiritual awakening on their Avril Lavigne-indebted second album

Gorillaz: “I could feel in my bones that we were due this current trouble”

The cartoon band were readymade for an era that has seen the old certainties upended, as epic new album ‘Song Machine – Season One: Strange Timez’ proves

James Blake: “There’s always been more to me than sadness”

‘Before’, the producer’s new EP of loved-up bedroom bangers, is the sound of facing the person you were, and who you’re learning to be

Bring Me The Horizon: “I’m like everyone else: confused, scared and angry”

As the metal titans return with their timely new EP ‘Post Human: Survival Horror’, frontman Oli Sykes reflects on a decade of toil, trouble and triumph

Machine Gun Kelly: “I’ve been jumping up and down on the table, believing in myself, for-fucking-ever”

The outlandish rapper has reinvented himself as a pop-punk star with the year’s biggest guitar record. And, he says, we have his girlfriend Megan Fox to thank

Beabadoobee: “I wear my heart on my sleeve with this album”

She might be obsessed with ’90s grunge, but Bea Kristi is a very modern rock star determined to usher in a new generation of guitar heroes

Kelly Lee Owens: “I genuinely feel magic around me at all times”

The Welsh producer’s second album ‘Inner Song’ is a meditative, powerful techno-pop triumph in the face of a crumbling world

Boy Pablo: “I’m just a normal dude that got lucky”

The bedroom pop sensation made it big overnight thanks to indie smash ‘Everytime’, but insists he has the drive to go the distance

Dizzee Rascal: “This album is making a statement – I’m a fucking serious rapper”

Following chart success and a globe-trotting career, the rapper finds inspiration in his east London locality Bow for album seven