The Big Read

The Big Read – Maggie Rogers: “My story is the story of the internet”

Two years ago, a viral clip with Pharrell put the spotlight on Maggie Rogers. Her debut album ‘Heard It In A Past Life’ traces that journey from plucky graduate to an SNL performer and a musician whose impact is reaching an audience bigger than she could have ever imagined. Thomas Smith witnesses the transformation.

The Big Read – Billie Eilish: the most talked-about teen on the planet

As we launch the NME 100 – the brand new artists we’re tipping to break through in 2019, the full list of which is on NME on Monday January 7 – Thomas Smith travels to LA to meet Billie Eilish, the teenage singer-songwriter whose genre-bending music is showing the millennials it’s time to move aside.

The Big Read – Yoko Ono: Imagine The Future

Once vilified as the person who broke up the Beatles, Yoko Ono is finally being recognised as a treasure, for her  commitment to peace, her solo work and her unwritten contribution to much of John Lennon's work. As her peace tower shines its beacon into the stratosphere from Iceland's capital, Elizabeth Aubrey talks to Ono about the new, archive version of 'Imagine', and why women in art are finally being recognised.

The Big Read – Wolf Alice: “The whole year has been bonkers”

As they cap off a stellar year with two special Christmas shows at O2 Academy Brixton, Wolf Alice tell Rhian Daly about the highlights of 2018, from touring with Queens Of The Stone Age to winning the Mercury. Pictures by Jono White

The Big Read – The 1975: Notes on an exceptional year

Ladies and gentlemen, your NME Album Of The Year winners: The 1975. Words by Dan Stubbs, pictures by Mara Palena.

The Big Read – Slowthai: “Is Britain actually great, or are you?”

The self-styled ‘Brexit Bandit’, Slowthai is the Northampton rapper questioning what it means to be British. While his brutish live shows and barbed, barbiturate bangers may seem nihilistic, he’s really about “love and unity”, determined to find a voice in a society he doesn’t feel serves him. And he has a motor mouthed manifesto for a better Britain, finds Jordan Bassett. Pictures by Mike Prior.

The Big Read – Olly Alexander: “If I don’t get f**king guest-list for Spice Girls, I’m quitting music”

next week, olly alexander and his band, years & years, headline london's O2 arena in celebration of both their latest album, 'palo santo', and the wider world they've created around them. nick levine meets the man who's become the mouthpiece for a movement

The Big Read – Mumford And Sons: “We’ve thought a lot about mortality this year”

Mumford And Sons are back – but not as we know them. Having ditched the folk sound that made them famous – and the arena rock that followed – new album 'delta', out now, is an eclectic tone piece that even shimmies into r&B. Jordan Bassett learns how personal experience, politics and the grenfell tower disaster had the four-piece contemplating life from a different perspective.

The Big Read – Muse: Together in electric dreams

If life is a video game, Muse are winning. A festival-headlining British rock behemoth, they've just released an album, 'simulation theory' – their eighth – that cements their reputation as the black mirror beatles. but while vr headsets, visions of the singularity and concerns about autocratic government are worthy distractions, it's the friendship between the three members that holds the band together, finds Tom Connick.

The Big Read – The 1975: “I could never let heroin be part of my identity. Junkies are losers”

When Matty, George, Ross and Adam set out to make ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’, it set them on a course of discovery and introspection that would change their lives. Dan Stubbs heads to LA to hear how friendship, addiction and two weeks with a noble horse has resulted in The 1975 making not one but two new albums that might just change the world, too.
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