Latest news with #VeronicaElectronica
Scotsman
an hour 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) ★★★★
The Guardian
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Madonna: Veronica Electronica review – Ray of Light rarities range from perfect to perfunctory
It's hard to overstate the impact of Ray of Light, Madonna's seventh album. Released in 1998, it totally reshaped Madonna's career, embracing trip-hop, electronica and Britpop and essentially proving to an unfriendly public that she was one of pop's great auteurs. It spawned one of her biggest singles – the haunting power ballad Frozen – and its title track is still a staple of radio and DJ playlists. In the past few years, many of contemporary and underground pop's most significant names – including Caroline Polachek, Addison Rae, a.s.o., Shygirl and FKA twigs – have referenced Ray of Light, whether directly or indirectly. It's a fool's errand to try to make a case for the best or most significant Madonna album – she has at least five strong contenders – but if there's a consensus pick, it's Ray of Light. Which is why the announcement of Veronica Electronica, a full-length Ray of Light remix album, was met with such hysteria from fans earlier this year. Madonna has spoken at length over the years about both Veronica the character – in true Madonna fashion, Veronica stems from a vaguely contradictory concept in which she is both a girl dancing at a club and, somehow, 'medieval' – and the album, which she intended to release after Ray of Light but ended up shelving. For diehards, the promised record is something of a holy grail – never mind that this long-awaited release only contains two truly new songs, one of which, an old demo titled Gone Gone Gone, has been floating around on the internet for years. Even so, it's hard to deny the simple pleasures that can be derived from hearing some all-time great Madonna remixes cut down to radio length and sequenced like the original Ray of Light. Drowned World/Substitute for Love sounds great taken out of its original glacial trip-hop context and turned into a DayGlo acid rager by BT and Sasha; the emotional ambiguities of the original song are replaced with warm positivity, and you can easily imagine the song soundtracking the final minutes of a raging house party as the sun begins to rise. Other tracks, such as Peter and Victor's remix of Skin – the other new song here – take an opposite tack; they heighten Skin's innate moodiness with a steely, exploratory techno beat punctuated by big, sharp breaks, turning the original track into something tweaky and unsettled. As is often the case with remix records, there are moments on Veronica Electronica that feel perfunctory – namely, the Club 69 remix of Nothing Really Matters. Perhaps any remix of the original song will always be held to a higher standard, given its status as one of the only out-and-out club tracks on Ray of Light, but unlike many of the remixes on the album, it feels as if there's no relationship between the source material and the rework here, aside from Madonna's vocal, which is looped to the point of irritation. It's frustrating when people claim to 'hate remixes', as if you can put a blanket statement on an entire artform, but this kind of remix may make you sympathise with the sentiment. Fabien's Good God mix of The Power of Good-Bye, on the other hand, represents all the potential of a curio project like this: a bizarrely minimal drum'n'bass rework of one of Madonna's best ballads, it finds enormous power in the conflict between Fabien's increasingly frenetic drums and Madonna's serene, sorrowful vocal. It's a surprisingly appropriate lead-in to Gone Gone Gone, a song so brilliantly weird that you really can understand why it was left off the original album. It is, essentially, a wistful breakup ballad set to a squelchy electro beat – a surreal tonal clash that hardly gels with Ray of Light's placid waters, but which gives a surprising amount of insight into Madonna's creative state at the time: here is one of the biggest stars in the world, in her creative prime, throwing anything at the wall to see what sticks. For that peek behind the curtain alone, Veronica Electronica is worth the price of admission.
Irish Times
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Veronica Electronica by Madonna: Lost album is like a postcard from the edge of the rave era
Madonna Artist : Veronica Electronica Label : Warner From Taylor Swift to Beyoncé , pop star reinventions are a dime a dozen nowadays. But that was not the case in February 1998, when Madonna ended a four-year recording silence with her career and zeitgeist-defining seventh album, Ray of Light. This was Madge reborn, transfigured, lifted up and unshackled from her previous image as tweaker of taboos and scourge of moralists. It was also helpfully stocked with bangers – from the Tori Amos / Fiona Apple -flavoured ballad Frozen to an effervescent title track that pulsated with the joyous abandon of an evening spent raving your socks off. Eager to make the most of her return to prominence, Madonna had planned to follow Ray of Light with an ambitious remix LP, given the working title Veronica Electronica (named for the persona Madonna had adopted while toiling in the studio with producer William Orbit). However, as Ray of Light became a phenomenon, plans for a spin-off were shelved, for fear it would encroach on the success of the original record. Twenty-seven years later, Madonna's career is in a different place. There has been ongoing chatter about a biographical movie starring Julia Garner as the young Madge. However, that project is now apparently to be reworked into a Netflix series (with Garner seemingly no longer involved). READ MORE She has also been on the receiving end of unkind – and often sexist and ageist – reviews for 2019's Madame X. The accompanying tour was controversial more for its tardy start-time than for anything Madonna got up to on stage. Having once scandalised the world with her raw sexuality, now Madonna was only getting headlines because she didn't know how to operate an alarm clock. There's never been a better moment, then, for an outpouring of foot-to-the-floor Madonna nostalgia, and that is precisely what the fun, boisterous and belatedly unleashed Veronica Electronica delivers. Along with that, it is a great time capsule that brings the listener back to the heyday of the superstar DJ. This was a glorious age when remixes were less sad cash-ins than conceptual opuses, invariably conjured by figures such as producer and deck-spinner Sasha, who overhauls Ray of Light opener Drowned World/ Substitute of Love – inspired by the fun JG Ballard novel, The Drowned World – and whips it up into a supersized rave odyssey. There isn't much variety across Veronica Electronica, which more or less follows the running order of Ray of Light (the title track reworked into a rigorously OTT onslaught by Sasha). Two previously unreleased tunes, The Power of Good-Bye and Gone Gone Gone, are in a similar vein to the pre-existing material, and it is surprising to hear the latter was originally omitted because Madonna felt it jarred with the project's overall vibes. Ray of Light caught Madonna at a crossroads. She'd given birth to her first child, Lourdes Leon, in 1996 and was preparing to play the title in Alan Parker's adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita. [ Distressing news about Elton John and Madonna. We don't get too many cask-strength feuds any more Opens in new window ] She had, moreover, become immersed in the Jewish esoteric belief system of Kabbalah – events that led to a period of self-questioning and a desire to move forward as an artist. 'That was a big catalyst for me,' she told Q magazine in 2002. 'It took me on a search for answers to questions I'd never asked myself before.' She was also pushing herself as a vocalist – a consequence of the singing lessons she took for Evita and which can be heard on the epic remix of Frozen, where Madonna's delivery has the quality of a storm rising over ocean waters. 'I studied with a vocal coach for Evita and I realised there was a whole piece of my voice I wasn't using,' she told Spin in 1998. 'Before, I just believed I had a minimal range and was going to make the most of it. Then I started studying with a coach.' Madonna was eager, too, to tap into the energy of 1990s electronic music – which led her to collaborate with synth-pop artist turned producer Orbit. Yet, though their alliance would prove enormously fruitful, it was not a straightforward collaboration. Orbit was a bit of a lost soul and initially thrown by Madonna's ferocious work ethic. 'She's a fabulous producer,' he would later tell the Guardian. 'When it says 'produced by Madonna and William Orbit', people don't always give her the credit for that. But she's as responsible as me.' Among Madonna fans, Veronica Electronica has long been regarded as the ultimate lost album and news of its release has been greeted with joy. But even an agnostic will find lots here to enjoy. It's a postcard from the edge of the rave era and an eloquent love letter to pop at its purest and most euphoric.
Telegraph
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Madonna hasn't had a fresh idea in decades
'The future, the future, the future,' trills Madonna, on stuttering repeat in her latest album, Veronica Electronica, out Friday. And if you think the future of which she sings sounds suspiciously like Madonna's own past, well, that might be the point. Veronica Electronica is a remix album featuring tracks from her 16-million selling 1998 blockbuster Ray of Light. Now that was a moment when Madonna really did sound like the future, working with British ambient electronic producer William Orbit to create a thrilling, sinuous mix of science fictional synthetic sound with dance-floor beats drawing on trip-hop, drum & bass and techno interweaving with lyrically rich songcraft, engaging with parenthood and personal growth through a mystical new age lens. Madonna was turning 40, a dangerous age for a mainstream pop star, with its implications of dawning middle age in a youth-obsessed medium. Yet Ray of Light was a triumph. After the oversexed experiments of 1992's Erotica and 1994's Bedtime Stories, Madonna found a way to make grown-up pop music that still sounded at the cutting edge of things. I think it remains her most mature work, and features her most accomplished singing, a consequence of vocal training she underwent for her starring role in the 1996 film Evita. It spawned five global hit singles, propelling her towards a further imperial period, albeit with fun but less progressive albums such as Music (2000) and Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005) casting her as reigning Queen of the Dance rather than bold pioneer of new pop frontiers. It is curious that Madonna is revisiting Ray of Light now. It is not an anniversary, and there seems to be no pressing reason for its release. Indeed, it is not even new. Veronica Electronica features seven re-edited and sequenced B-sides and DJ mixes from the 1990s, plus one extra demo presumably tagged on to make completists feel like they are getting something previously unavailable. The disembodied repetition of the phrase 'the future' on a remix of Nothing Really Matters seems misleading when shorn of context. The original line from which it was taken was 'Nothing takes the past away / Like the future.' And here she is, nearly three decades later, fetishising her own past. Perhaps that is all pop is capable of now, when everything is arguably a remix, remodel or reformatting of things that have gone before. There is a confluence of reasons for that, mainly bound up with the rise of streaming as the dominant distribution method and its emphasis on algorithmic curation as the chosen way of organising music. The slow death of old music media (magazines, radio) has contributed to a homogenisation of musical discovery, with algorithms predicated to deliver similar-sounding tracks to keep listener retention high, reinforcing familiarity rather than innovation. At the same time there has been a weird blurring of genres, with an emphasis on mood and contextual lifestyle playlists serving audiences whose access to the entire history of music at the press of a button has arguably led to less tribal division. In the modern musical soundscape, anything goes and everything mixes together. Throw into that the growing influence of AI creation tools – which by their very definition are only ever going to regurgitate what has come before – and you have a situation where past and contemporary music are becoming indistinguishable. Here we are, a quarter of the way through the 21st century, and the most notable new musical trend of recent years has been the rise of country music. Rock (a genre long written off as on the verge of death) is experiencing the strongest new listener growth according to a mid-year report from American entertainment data company Luminate (whilst Christian / Gospel music is also surging). Meanwhile, the top trending stars in the world right now (via industry statistics site Chartmetric) look very familiar, including four pop facing singer-songwriters (Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Billie Eilish and Bruno Mars), two dance pop superstars (Rihanna and Lady Gaga, both of whom owe a considerable debt to Madonna), one veteran rapper (Drake) and a durable teen idol (Justin Bieber). Madonna herself currently registers as the 58 th most popular artist in the world, which might not seem impressive on her imperious terms until you consider that she is one of only six artists in the top 100 who was making music before the internet was unleashed upon us (the others being Michael Jackson at 39, Queen at 71, AC/DC at 75, Elton John at 80, The Beatles at 94 and Fleetwood Mac at 98). There is, of course, a relentless deluge of new musical artists vying for attention, yet nothing feels like a distinctive break with the past. It would be nice to think that her remix album shows Madonna reorienting herself by focussing on her finest work, except it is shoddily done, a repackage of old remixes that are already out of date and add nothing to her story. Really, I suspect it is just about releasing product, because the only way to stay visible and competitive in this relentless smorgasbord of endless choice is to keep providing content for algorithms to gorge on. It has been six years since Madonna released a new album (the underwhelming Madame X) but in that time she has completed two world tours, released a major compilation, and is currently developing a Netflix TV series about her life (most likely starring Jennifer Garner). If you have nothing new to offer, just remix the past. Everybody else is doing it. On my radar Earth: The Legendary Lost 1969 Tapes (Big Bear Records). With weirdly prescient timing, Ozzy Osbourne 's first known recordings are soon to be released, with the group that would become Black Sabbath. This is a set of demos recorded at Zella studios in 1969, that demonstrate what a wildly inventive and fearsome band Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward already were, conjuring something between heavy blues and frenetic free jazz. Add a dose of the occult, and heavy metal was born later the same year. Ozzy was ultimately laid low by Parkinson's disease. Coincidentally, I have been reading an advance copy of The Tremolo Diaries: Life on the Road and Other Diseases by Justin Currie, in which the Del Amitri band leader offers an acerbically entertaining and unsentimental account of touring whilst struggling with a Parkinson's diagnosis. He describes it as 'the uneasy feeling another man is growing inside of me and is slowly seizing the means of control.' It will be published by New Modern on Aug 28. I was much taken with this passage by Justin on his experience of hearing modern pop in a shopping mall: 'I'm staring down the barrel of Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran's weirdly thin music. It ticks all the boxes that pop needs to tick – pretty tunes, catchy hooks, lyrics with a modicum of real feeling. It just feels like all the guts have been taken out. At the end, we'll be living underground, drinking the filtered urine of the rich while Elon Musk transmits this sonic anaesthetic from his throne on the moon.' I don't think he's a fan. How do you solve a problem like Kanye West? Unarguably one of the most influential artists of our times, the reportedly mentally ill rapper-producer has made himself persona non grata in pop culture with his embracing of Nazi symbology, blatant anti-Semitism and self-hating racism. He's got new music coming this week, dropping more weirdly lo-fi tracks for his album in progress Bully. Don't expect to read many reviews of the most controversial man in pop, yet whilst researching my article about Madonna, I was surprised to find West is still ranking incredibly high on Chartmetric's assessment of currently trending artists. He appears at no 33 on their chart, with over 60 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and 105 million monthly views on YouTube. Cancellation is clearly not what it used to be.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Madonna hasn't had a fresh idea in decades
'The future, the future, the future,' trills Madonna, on stuttering repeat in her latest album, Veronica Electronica, out Friday. And if you think the future of which she sings sounds suspiciously like Madonna's own past, well, that might be the point. Veronica Electronica is a remix album featuring tracks from her 16-million selling 1998 blockbuster Ray of Light. Now that was a moment when Madonna really did sound like the future, working with British ambient electronic producer William Orbit to create a thrilling, sinuous mix of science fictional synthetic sound with dance-floor beats drawing on trip-hop, drum & bass and techno interweaving with lyrically rich songcraft, engaging with parenthood and personal growth through a mystical new age lens. Madonna was turning 40, a dangerous age for a mainstream pop star, with its implications of dawning middle age in a youth-obsessed medium. Yet Ray of Light was a triumph. After the oversexed experiments of 1992's Erotica and 1994's Bedtime Stories, Madonna found a way to make grown-up pop music that still sounded at the cutting edge of things. I think it remains her most mature work, and features her most accomplished singing, a consequence of vocal training she underwent for her starring role in the 1996 film Evita. It spawned five global hit singles, propelling her towards a further imperial period, albeit with fun but less progressive albums such as Music (2000) and Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005) casting her as reigning Queen of the Dance rather than bold pioneer of new pop frontiers. It is curious that Madonna is revisiting Ray of Light now. It is not an anniversary, and there seems to be no pressing reason for its release. Indeed, it is not even new. Veronica Electronica features seven re-edited and sequenced B-sides and DJ mixes from the 1990s, plus one extra demo presumably tagged on to make completists feel like they are getting something previously unavailable. The disembodied repetition of the phrase 'the future' on a remix of Nothing Really Matters seems misleading when shorn of context. The original line from which it was taken was 'Nothing takes the past away / Like the future.' And here she is, nearly three decades later, fetishising her own past. Perhaps that is all pop is capable of now, when everything is arguably a remix, remodel or reformatting of things that have gone before. There is a confluence of reasons for that, mainly bound up with the rise of streaming as the dominant distribution method and its emphasis on algorithmic curation as the chosen way of organising music. The slow death of old music media (magazines, radio) has contributed to a homogenisation of musical discovery, with algorithms predicated to deliver similar-sounding tracks to keep listener retention high, reinforcing familiarity rather than innovation. At the same time there has been a weird blurring of genres, with an emphasis on mood and contextual lifestyle playlists serving audiences whose access to the entire history of music at the press of a button has arguably led to less tribal division. In the modern musical soundscape, anything goes and everything mixes together. Throw into that the growing influence of AI creation tools – which by their very definition are only ever going to regurgitate what has come before – and you have a situation where past and contemporary music are becoming indistinguishable. Here we are, a quarter of the way through the 21st century, and the most notable new musical trend of recent years has been the rise of country music. Rock (a genre long written off as on the verge of death) is experiencing the strongest new listener growth according to a mid-year report from American entertainment data company Luminate (whilst Christian / Gospel music is also surging). Meanwhile, the top trending stars in the world right now (via industry statistics site Chartmetric) look very familiar, including four pop facing singer-songwriters (Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Billie Eilish and Bruno Mars), two dance pop superstars (Rihanna and Lady Gaga, both of whom owe a considerable debt to Madonna), one veteran rapper (Drake) and a durable teen idol (Justin Bieber). Madonna herself currently registers as the 58th most popular artist in the world, which might not seem impressive on her imperious terms until you consider that she is one of only six artists in the top 100 who was making music before the internet was unleashed upon us (the others being Michael Jackson at 39, Queen at 71, AC/DC at 75, Elton John at 80, The Beatles at 94 and Fleetwood Mac at 98). There is, of course, a relentless deluge of new musical artists vying for attention, yet nothing feels like a distinctive break with the past. It would be nice to think that her remix album shows Madonna reorienting herself by focussing on her finest work, except it is shoddily done, a repackage of old remixes that are already out of date and add nothing to her story. Really, I suspect it is just about releasing product, because the only way to stay visible and competitive in this relentless smorgasbord of endless choice is to keep providing content for algorithms to gorge on. It has been six years since Madonna released a new album (the underwhelming Madame X) but in that time she has completed two world tours, released a major compilation, and is currently developing a Netflix TV series about her life (most likely starring Jennifer Garner). If you have nothing new to offer, just remix the past. Everybody else is doing it. On my radar Earth: The Legendary Lost 1969 Tapes (Big Bear Records). With weirdly prescient timing, Ozzy Osbourne's first known recordings are soon to be released, with the group that would become Black Sabbath. This is a set of demos recorded at Zella studios in 1969, that demonstrate what a wildly inventive and fearsome band Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward already were, conjuring something between heavy blues and frenetic free jazz. Add a dose of the occult, and heavy metal was born later the same year. Ozzy was ultimately laid low by Parkinson's disease. Coincidentally, I have been reading an advance copy of The Tremolo Diaries: Life on the Road and Other Diseases by Justin Currie, in which the Del Amitri band leader offers an acerbically entertaining and unsentimental account of touring whilst struggling with a Parkinson's diagnosis. He describes it as 'the uneasy feeling another man is growing inside of me and is slowly seizing the means of control.' It will be published by New Modern on Aug 28. I was much taken with this passage by Justin on his experience of hearing modern pop in a shopping mall: 'I'm staring down the barrel of Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran's weirdly thin music. It ticks all the boxes that pop needs to tick – pretty tunes, catchy hooks, lyrics with a modicum of real feeling. It just feels like all the guts have been taken out. At the end, we'll be living underground, drinking the filtered urine of the rich while Elon Musk transmits this sonic anaesthetic from his throne on the moon.' I don't think he's a fan. How do you solve a problem like Kanye West? Unarguably one of the most influential artists of our times, the reportedly mentally ill rapper-producer has made himself persona non grata in pop culture with his embracing of Nazi symbology, blatant anti-Semitism and self-hating racism. He's got new music coming this week, dropping more weirdly lo-fi tracks for his album in progress Bully. Don't expect to read many reviews of the most controversial man in pop, yet whilst researching my article about Madonna, I was surprised to find West is still ranking incredibly high on Chartmetric's assessment of currently trending artists. He appears at no 33 on their chart, with over 60 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and 105 million monthly views on YouTube. Cancellation is clearly not what it used to be. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more. 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