Latest news with #TimMinchin
Mint
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Mint
A Minute With: Musician and writer Tim Minchin looks back
LONDON, 2025 -Tim Minchin's latest album "Time Machine" is a collection of songs that the now successful 49-year-old wrote, but never recorded, back in his twenties, when he couldn't get a record deal. After gaining critical success as a comedian in 2005, the British-Australian Minchin went on to write the music and lyrics for hit West End musical "Matilda the Musical" and signed with record label BMG in 2020. In an interview with Reuters, Minchin reflects on his new record as well as his songwriting and views on social media. Below are excerpts edited for length and brevity. Q: Your album is out, how does that make you feel? "I feel really reflective. But also I've reached a point in my career ... where I just feel like ... here's my offer ... and because I don't read social media anymore and I won't read reviews, it's just out in the world... And hopefully people listen to it." Q: How would you describe your music? "I think the way I use words is slightly different from a lot of singer/songwriters... Most pop songs, they're broad, you can hear in them what you want ... whereas mine are like - ''oh no, this is what the song's about'." Q: Is there a difference writing music for yourself or characters such as Matilda? "I always feel like in a way, I'm placing myself in someone else's shoes... some of my songs are really personal and they're really about me. But it is a craft - songwriting - and that can mean placing yourself in a particular emotional state." Q: What makes you feel inspired at the moment? "My job is to put good ideas into the world and beautiful stories and make people feel things... That job of spreading empathy and joy and laughter and emotion and if I can do that and feel optimistic ... then I'm one person not being a cynic." Q: Do you wish you had released this album in your twenties? "The greatest thing that ever happened to me is not getting success (then) ... it's terrible for people... I'm very happy that I'm just gently putting these songs out into the world (now)." (Reporting by Sarah Mills; editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
Reuters
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Reuters
A Minute With: Musician and writer Tim Minchin looks back
LONDON, July 28, 2025 - Tim Minchin's latest album "Time Machine" is a collection of songs that the now successful 49-year-old wrote, but never recorded, back in his twenties, when he couldn't get a record deal. After gaining critical success as a comedian in 2005, the British-Australian Minchin went on to write the music and lyrics for hit West End musical "Matilda the Musical" and signed with record label BMG in 2020. In an interview with Reuters, Minchin reflects on his new record as well as his songwriting and views on social media. Below are excerpts edited for length and brevity. Q: Your album is out, how does that make you feel? "I feel really reflective. But also I've reached a point in my career ... where I just feel like ... here's my offer ... and because I don't read social media anymore and I won't read reviews, it's just out in the world... And hopefully people listen to it." Q: How would you describe your music? "I think the way I use words is slightly different from a lot of singer/songwriters... Most pop songs, they're broad, you can hear in them what you want ... whereas mine are like - ''oh no, this is what the song's about'." Q: Is there a difference writing music for yourself or characters such as Matilda? "I always feel like in a way, I'm placing myself in someone else's shoes... some of my songs are really personal and they're really about me. But it is a craft - songwriting - and that can mean placing yourself in a particular emotional state." Q: What makes you feel inspired at the moment? "My job is to put good ideas into the world and beautiful stories and make people feel things... That job of spreading empathy and joy and laughter and emotion and if I can do that and feel optimistic ... then I'm one person not being a cynic." Q: Do you wish you had released this album in your twenties? "The greatest thing that ever happened to me is not getting success (then) ... it's terrible for people... I'm very happy that I'm just gently putting these songs out into the world (now)."
Scotsman
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Album reviews: Madonna Tim Minchin Paul Vickers and the Leg
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Madonna: Veronica Electronica (Warner Records) ★★★ Mabel: Mabel (Polydor Records) ★★★ Tim Minchin: TimMinchinTimeMachine (BMG) ★★ Paul Vickers and the Leg: Winter at Butterfly Lake (PX4M) ★★★★ Over recent years, Madonna has been re-issuing some of her best-loved albums on limited edition silver vinyl. True Blue and Like a Prayer are already part of her Silver Collection; now her long-rumoured Ray of Light remix album joins the club with the playful title Veronica Electronica. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Madonna | Ricardo Gomes There is ample competition for the accolade of best Madonna album but Ray of Light, released in 1998, must be in the running for its moody pop atmospheres, euphoric dance tracks, immaculate production by William Orbit and majestic string arrangements by Glasgow-based composer Craig Armstrong. These rare and unreleased remixes of most of the album tracks were originally intended for a companion album, but plans were shelved when Ray of Light took off, zephyr-like, rebooting Madonna's career for the new millennium. Veronica Electronica features new edits of remixes by the likes of Orbit, the late Peter Rauhofer, Sasha, BT and Victor Calderone, who may not be able to improve on the joyful source material but can tap into its renewing spirit. The title track is already an ecstatic invocation. The Sasha Twilo Mix Edit adds some spacey bells and galactic whistles, while Peter & Victor's Collaboration Remix Edit of Skin - don't those titles just trip off the tongue? - is both banging and hypnotic. The Club 69 Speed Mix of Nothing Really Matters introduces counter rhythms to the bassy beats, while Caldarone turbocharges Sky Fits Heaven with propulsive carnival percussion and irresistible electro vibrations, and Fabien Waltmann's Good God Mix Edit of The Power of GoodBye adds a fidgety thrum over which Armstrong's original swirling string arrangement soars. As enjoyable as these reinterpretations are, they are no substitute for some quality new material from Madge herself. The best she can muster here is an unheard track from the original sessions called Gone Gone Gone on which she offers hymn-like lamentations over floating synthesizers and a robust disco rhythm. Unlike many an unreleased demo, this mesmeric dance pop tune deserves to see the (ray of) light of day. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Mabel | Simone Beyene Brit Award-winner Mabel's latest released comprises nine 'unfiltered' tracks recorded in her home studio in recent months. It's pretty repetitive fare in which she wrangles with positive and negative aspects of relationships, retrofitted to present a 'toxic love letter to my ten years in the industry'. Opening track Jan 19 is set at the moment when the scales are falling from her eyes. Elsewhere, she shakes a manicured finger at some disrespectful behaviour on the low-slung R&B of Run Me Down, appeals for a kinder, less judgmental approach on Love Me Gentle and advocates for people over possessions on Benz, folding in reggaeton, drum'n'bass and slow jam synths along the way. Tim Minchin | Contributed Tim Minchin made his Edinburgh Fringe debut in 2005, arriving as an unknown cabaret pianist and leaving a comedy star. Since then he has penned global musical theatre smash Matilda among other big ticket achievements. In contrast, his latest project is a personal excavation of songs written in his 'prolific-but-obscure twenties' that arguably should have stayed there, from underwhelming ballad Understand it to the jazz lounge noodling of Moment of Bliss. He crosses from sentimental songwriting to rollicking satire on Song of a Masochist but former Fringe favourites You Grow On Me and Not Perfect fall flat without the bearpit energy of a Gilded Balloon audience. Longtime Edinburgh-based collaborators Paul Vickers and the Leg present Winter at Butterfly Lake, a 'heartbreak suite' which is conventional only by their standards. Vickers' voice and Pete Harvey's string arrangements are powerful opposing forces but they style it out on the demented grungey bluegrass of Optical Illusions and chunky chamber pop of Contents of the Earth. CLASSICAL King of Kings: JS Bach (Chandos) ★★★ Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The conductor Sir Andrew Davis was famous for his hearty chuckles and precious grammar school wit. Such eccentricities live on in his orchestrations of Bach organ music, ranging from the bombastic to the intricately beautiful, as witnessed in this part-posthumous album by the BBC Philharmonic. Davis, who died last year, lived to conduct four of the tracks; Martyn Brabbins stepped in to complete the project. The organ loft was where Davis began his musical life, none so lofty as his stint as organ scholar at King's College Cambridge in the 1960s, and you imagine - certainly from his treatment here of the big Preludes, Toccatas, Fantasias and Fugues - his taste was shamelessly eclectic. Where it works - the surreal orchestral imaginings of the monumental Passacaglia and Fugue for instance - Davis' playfulness tickles the senses, and the Chorale Preludes are mostly a confection of delights. Novelty value is the key selling point. Ken Walton JAZZ Marianne McGregor: Make Believe (Self Released) ★★★★
Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Tim Minchin: ‘I'm blessed. I've got Matilda paying my mortgage'
There aren't many more fun evenings than the one I had at Tim Minchin's Songs the World Will Never Hear last month. For almost three hours the big-haired Australian musical comedian (or is he a comedy musician?) regaled a besotted Hammersmith Apollo audience with songs and chat that veered from subversive to moving to hilarious. He and his band segued from The Good Book, a country number mocking evangelical Christianity, to a showstopper called Confessions in which he sang earnestly about feminism, human rights and environmental Armageddon before adding the timeless rejoinder: 'F***, I love boobs, though.' The tour was subtitled '20 years of fkn hardcore rock'n'roll nerding' and the audience matched the performer for geekiness. When Minchin mentioned Avogadro's constant, the number of atoms in one mole of a chemical substance, dozens shouted out its value (6.02 x 10 to the power of 23, since you asked). 'You wouldn't get that at an Oasis show,' he said. During one of many extended interludes about death, religion and kittens, he said: 'Tonight the plan is to do more songs and less talking … that's going well.' The roars of laughter suggested that people were fine with that. 'I want to assert my right to do exactly what I f***ing want,' Minchin says with a grin when we meet two days later. For much of his 20-year career he has done just that — in his Instagram bio he describes himself as 'songwriter, singer, pianist, actor, writer, comedian, producer, speaker, poet, wanker, reader, runner, worrier'. Most famously, he wrote the music and lyrics to Matilda the Musical, which has been a fixture in the West End since 2011 and ran for four years on Broadway, winning seven Olivier awards and five Tonys. He followed that in 2016 with Groundhog Day, an adaptation of the film, which won two Oliviers. His acting roles include a rock star in Californication and 'a really sexy koala who was a bit of a dick' in the animated film Outback. At the heart of his career is a tension between sincerity and sarcasm, big-headedness and self-deprecation, and most of all between music and comedy. As Minchin once said: 'I'm a good musician for a comedian and I'm a good comedian for a musician, but if I had to do any of them in isolation, I dunno.' He was being hard on himself, but it clearly bothers him. He is turning 50 this year and said in the show that 'my present to myself is to never again explain what genre I am'. Minchin knows his act isn't for everyone. 'It's very sort of didactic and shameless. I don't look like Harry Styles.' Well, he's far more glamorous on stage than your typical comedian, with his eyeliner, extrovert mane and barefooted sensuality. Today, in this ritzy hotel in west London, there are shoes and no make-up but he still dazzles. He is publicising the release of Time Machine, a collection of reimagined songs he wrote when in his twenties. While still witty ('I'd never dream of asking you to discontinue use of my therapeutic pillow,' he trills in I Wouldn't Like You), they tend towards the heartfelt. 'I'm a muso; the fact that I'm funny is a bonus,' he says. A newer, Randy Newman-like ballad called Peace is even more sincere. It was given a wild ovation at his show, after which he said: 'I can't tell you how much it means to be able to sing a song like that in a room like this.' Was that because it made him feel like a 'proper' musician? Bristling slightly, he points out that last year he did his Unfunny tour, where the accent was on the music. 'I sell tickets whatever I do,' he says. Yes, but does he see the tunes becoming dominant? 'That's what I thought I was doing — slowly cross-fading into a singer-songwriter. But why would I go on stage and go: 'Here's half of me'?' For an artist who often talks about having 'never been played on the radio and never had a record deal', live performance is the key. At the Apollo he kicked off with a rousing number called Turn Off Your F***ing Phone, and the show was a convincing case for being in the moment. Minchin hopes that AI will draw people into theatres, hungry for live experiences. It would certainly be hard to recreate the moment when he mucked up a song, started again and fast-forwarded — singing and playing the piano at double speed — to the point where he had gone wrong. 'I'm going to become a purist,' he says. 'You want to see me, you're going to have to get a ticket.' Born in Northampton to Australian parents, Minchin moved as a child to Perth in Western Australia. It was a liberal, middle-class upbringing: his father and grandfather were surgeons, his mother stayed at home and he went to a private school before studying English and drama at the University of Western Australia. 'I became a comedian because I didn't feel I had a right to complain,' he says. Musicians always seemed to be railing against something, he explains, mimicking a rapper: ''I popped a cap in his ass and someone shot me and my friend died.' And you're like, 'Well, I went to hockey training.'' Yet he never disowns his privilege, maybe because it gave him the self-belief to 'do exactly what I f***ing want'. • Tim Minchin: 'Progressives are as uncharitable as the far right' Are there any rivals in his very popular niche? 'Definitely not. I am peerless!' One who comes to mind is Bo Burnham, the American musical comedian whose Netflix special Inside was one of the joys of lockdown. 'Oh yeah, he's a very dear friend,' says Minchin, who is an outrageous name-dropper. 'He's the smartest person you will meet. I was a big influence on him and then the student overtook the master.' Burnham, 34, has been struggling with celebrity, Minchin says. 'Fame when you're young is trauma and he has a long way to go to get to the place of peace that I have got to.' The same goes for Burnham's partner, the singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers. 'She is unbelievably talented, but suddenly she was on a Taylor Swift tour and now everyone's looking at her and she's like, 'How do I write?' 'It breaks your brain on one level, getting standing ovations,' he says. When they stop 'it's a genuine chemical withdrawal', but he has learnt to deal with that by doing things like renovating the house he shares in Sydney with Sarah, his wife of 24 years. They have two children, Caspar, 16, and Violet, 18, about whom he was very funny in his show: 'She's grown up OK, but when she was younger she was a bad person.' He says: 'I'm the most blessed artist on the planet. I've got Matilda, who sits there paying my mortgage.' A song on the album Dark Side has a line: 'Clever never made no one rich.' Yet he says he has 'found the place where being clever did make you rich, which is comedy and theatre'. When Minchin says he has reached a place of peace, however, he knows that's not entirely true. Groundhog Day, his favourite thing that he's done, closed after five months on Broadway. 'This hit-or-miss dichotomy is bullshit,' he says. 'It got five-star reviews on Broadway and seven Tony nominations.' He concedes that it's not an easy musical, 'especially for Americans. The first lyric is, 'Lumpy bed, ugly curtains, pointless erection.' And then he kills himself over and over again, and it's clearly godless: how do you generate meaning in a meaningless universe? Groundhog Day says we need to be better; Americans want it to be like, 'We're amazing.'' I ask about Stephen Sondheim, who gave up on making a Groundhog Day musical because, he said, the film 'cannot be improved'. It led to an email row between them when Minchin was asked about it in an interview. 'I was prompted, but in the article it looked like I had volunteered [a reference to Sondheim saying the movie was unimprovable]. Steve said something like, 'Thanks for being a c*** about me in the press.' I was about to open Groundhog Day on Broadway and I wrote back, 'Stephen, I was asked a question, it got framed as an offer. I'm about to open a Broadway musical, you know what that feels like, can you imagine what it feels like to get a mean email from Stephen Sondheim?' I got really cross and he went, 'I'm sorry, let's start again.' • Read more theatre reviews, guides and interviews 'I've got some chips on my shoulder about Broadway,' Minchin says. 'It's mean, a bit nasty, not a meritocracy.' He says Sondheim used to remind him: 'I've never had a Matilda.' That's quite a compliment from a giant. 'I'm like, 'You're Steve Sondheim. You don't need a f***ing Matilda, you idiot.'' His focus on live shows reminds me of Daniel Kitson, the revered comedian who never does TV or DVDs. They are mates too, of course. 'Before we became friends he hated me because I was razzle-dazzle. He was so desperate not to have a brand that it became a brand.' A bit like Richard Dawkins, a fundamentalist in his atheism. I ask if he is a fan of Dawkins. 'Oh no, I'm a friend,' he says. This is getting out of control. He knows 'some of the smartest people on the planet', from the physicist Brian Cox to Matthew Warchus, who directed the original Matilda and its film version. His next musical, which he can't talk about, is another film-to-stage adaptation and he is playing a crooked harbourmaster in The Artful Dodger, a Disney series. He also has an idea for a TV show 'that could be my opus — it's a vehicle for me, about music, a period piece. I can't get it commissioned so I'm thinking about writing it into a theatre show.' Wherever it ends up, odds on it will be a hoot. Time Machine is out now; Matilda the Musical, Cambridge Theatre, London;
Daily Mail
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Hannah Waddingham shows off her figure in a bright blue fitted dress as she arrives at Jimmy Kimmel Live!
Hannah Waddingham showed off her figure as she arrived for guest appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Monday. Greeting fans outside the Hollywood studio, the actress, 50, looked incredible in a bright blue fitted dress. She teamed the knitted number, that featured a scooping neckline with a pair of white peep toe heels. To complete her look, Hannah styled her hair into a tousled blow dry and accessorised with a 70s-style sunglasses. Speaking on the show she talked about her recent work on the new Smurfs movie, Hannah explained: 'I'm trying to do more animated stuff so my daughter can watch my work. 'I made the mistake of letting her watch the Christmas episode and her mother sears like a trooper in that. She continued: 'She was sweet, she said "I know that thats Rebecca swearing and not you mummy." And I was like "yes, it it."' Hannah shares her 10-year-old daughter, Kitty, with her ex Gianluca Cugnetto. The actress recently became the 'biggest Celebrity Gogglebox signing in years' as she makes her debut on the new series - and fans want her to have a permanent slot. The Ted Lasso star joined Friday evening's line-up alongside her famous pal Tim Minchin. And according to reports, show bosses 'couldn't believe their luck' with the exciting signing. A source told Daily Star: 'Getting Hannah on board is a major coup. She's such hot property at the moment… so many shows want her. 'This is one of the biggest signings in the history of Celebrity Gogglebox. The insider added: 'Hannah and Tim are a great combination. They have great banter that's perfect for Celebrity Gogglebox.' Greeting fans outside the Hollywood studio, the actress, 50, looked incredible in a bright blue fitted dress To complete her look, Hannah styled her hair into a tousled blow dry and accessorised with a 70s-style sunglasses The actress recently became the 'biggest Celebrity Gogglebox signing in years' as she makes her debut on the new series - and fans want her to have a permanent slot Hannah is best known for being in Game of Thrones, when she was cast as Septa Unella, as well as her roles in Ted Lasso and Benidorm. Taking to X to share their thoughts, viewers shared: '#Gogglebox please have Hannah Waddingham and Tim Minchin on more episodes they are fabulous; 'How tf did they get Hannah Waddingham on Celeb Gogglebox?! I am fully invested #CelebrityGogglebox; 'Altho someone needs to tell her she's not watching tv right. She looks stunning, but binging tv requires a bare face, messy bun and pj's/sweatpants, not the perfect look she's got going on rn #CelebrityGogglebox; 'HANNAH WADDINGHAM??!!!! #celebritygogglebox #Celebritygogglebox.' Other celebs that featured included This Morning's Alison Hammond and broadcaster Sara Cox.
