Nedra Talley Ross, last surviving member of the Ronettes, dies aged 80

 

The Ronettes in 1964: (L-R) Nedra Talley Ross, Ronnie Spector and Estelle Bennett. Ross, who was the final surviving member, has died aged 80.

Nedra Talley Ross, last surviving member of the Ronettes, dies aged 80

Singer performed hits including Be My Baby with her cousins Ronnie Spector and Estelle Bennett

Sian Cain and Ben Beaumont-Thomas

Mon 27 Apr 2026

Nedra Talley Ross, the last surviving member of the 1960s pop band the Ronettes, has died aged 80.

Beverley Martyn, spirited British folk singer, dies aged 79

 

BeverleycMartyn in 1970

Beverley Martyn, spirited British folk singer, dies aged 79

Singer-songwriter was known for collaborations with former husband John Martyn as well as star-studded 1960s singles and 2014 comeback album

Ben Beaumont-Thomas

Tue 28 Apr 2026

British folk singer Beverley Martyn, known for her collaborations with her former husband John Martyn as well as spirited, sublime solo work, has died aged 79.

 

Totó la Momposina
Bogotá, 2021

Totó la Momposina, vocalist and Colombian music legend, dies aged 85

The singer was one of her country’s most’s popular musical exports, and travelled the world with an evangelistic vision for spreading cumbia music

Ben Beaumont-Thomas

Wed 20 May 2026

Totó la Momposina, one of the most celebrated musicians in Colombian history, has died aged 85.

‘She trembled with the truths she had to tell’: Sinéad O’Connor by friends, fans and collaborators

Sinéad O'Connor

 

‘She trembled with the truths she had to tell’: Sinéad O’Connor by friends, fans and collaborators

Neil Jordan, Róisín Murphy, MC Lyte, Anne Enright and more share their memories of a uniquely talented, uncompromising artist, mother and ‘Celtic warrior’

by Ben Beaumont-Thomas, Sian Cain and Laura Snapes
Thursday 27 July 2023

‘She was very beautiful and very wild’

Anne Enright, author

Sinéad O’Connor was a daughter, a mother and a sister, she made a family that brought many people into its extended web of care, one that included the fathers of her four adored children. So when the world mourns an iconic talent and a great star, people in Dublin think about those caught up in her astonishing life story who are now bereaved. All these people joined in the battle for Sinéad’s mental health and worked for the protection and wellbeing of her children, and all of them, including Sinéad, contended with the distorting power that fame brought to her life. It was not easy. Somewhere in there, beyond the huge talent and huge difficulty, beyond public adoration and vilification, the ardent and anguished connection she felt with her fans, was the hope that her great heart and searching wit would bring her through. She was very beautiful and very wild, and she trembled with the truths she had to tell. Sinéad’s grief at the loss of her son was hard to witness and her loss will spark difficulties in many people. Before we turn her into a rock’n’roll saint and lift her image even further from the real, let’s check in with each other and lift the sadness where we can. It’s what she would have wanted. There was none like her. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a h-anam dílis (May her faithful soul be at the right hand of God).

Roger Waters threatens legal action over German concert cancellations

 

Roger Waters

Roger Waters threatens legal action over German concert cancellations

Waters was accused of being ‘a widely known antisemite’ in Frankfurt council instruction to cancel concert, with other German cities also proposing cancellations

Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Thursday 16 March 2023

Roger Waters has said he will take legal action against city authorities in Germany over the threatened cancellation of concerts there, after the former Pink Floyd frontman was accused of antisemitism, which he denies.

Evan Rachel Wood and Marilyn Manson

 

Evan Rachel Wood and four other women accuse Marilyn Manson of abuse

This article is m

ore than 7 

months old

Manson describes allegations as ‘horrible distortions of reality’ after record label drops him from their roster

Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Mon 1 Feb 2021 17.06 GMT

Evan Rachel Wood has accused her former partner Marilyn Manson of years of “horrific” abuse.

In an Instagram post, the actor wrote:

The name of my abuser is Brian Warner, also known to the world as Marilyn Manson. He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years. I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission. I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander or blackmail. I am here to expose this dangerous man and call out the many industries that have enabled him, before he ruins any more lives. I stand with the many victims who will no longer be silent.

Four other women – Ashley Walters, Sarah McNeilly, Ashley Morgan and Gabriella (with no surname given) – have also alleged abusive behaviour via public Instagram posts. McNeilly and Walters allege physical and emotional abuse, including behaviour they characterise as torture; Morgan alleges sexual and physical violence, and coercion; Gabriella alleges rape, physical violence and that Manson forced her to take drugs.

Ellie Goulding

Interview

Ellie Goulding: 'I was made to feel vulnerable, like a sexual object'

Knocked off course by anxiety and an album she didn’t believe in, the singer is back after five years away with a bold new sound – and an urge to speak out

Ben Beaumont-Thomas

Friday 10 July 2020

Ellie Goulding has spent the coronavirus lockdown holed up in what is essentially the world’s nicest student house. Her art dealer husband Caspar Jopling is studying an MBA at Oxford University – he is on the boat race team, Clark Kentishly nerd-handsome and ripped – and she has been at his lovely old cottage in the surrounding countryside. You get the feeling the only noodles to have crossed the threshold are wholewheat udon rather than Super or Pot.

Lost Rolling Stones song with Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page to be released

Mick Jagger on the cover of Goats Head Soup, which is being reissued.
Photograph: Record Company Handout

Lost Rolling Stones song with Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page to be released

Scarlet is joined by two other unreleased songs, Criss Cross and All the Rage, on a deluxe version of Goat’s Head Soup

Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Thu 9 July 2020

A long-lost song the Rolling Stones recorded with Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page is to finally be released. Scarlet, thought to be named after Page’s daughter, was recorded in October 1974. It is described in a press release as having “layered guitar textures” from Page, and is “as infectious and raunchy as anything the band cut in this hallowed era”.

It is to be released on a deluxe edition of the Stones’ 1973 album Goats Head Soup, recorded in Jamaica and containing the atypical hit single, Angie. It is generally seen as a notch below the run of albums that preceded it, including Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main St, though Mick Jagger praised it above Main St on release, saying: “I really put all I had into it.”

The reissue will feature two other unreleased tracks, including Criss Cross, which has been released with a new (and somewhat lecherous) video: a quintessential uptempo Stones rock’n’roll track with Jagger singing: “Skin to skin, tongue to tongue, touch me baby … I think I need a blood transfusion.” It has been previously heard as the outtake Criss Cross Man.

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The other unreleased track is All the Rage, which has “a wild, post-Brown Sugar strut”, according to the release. A live album, Brussels Affair, is also included in the box set, to be released on 4 September.

The Stones are working on an album of original material, which will be their first since 2005’s A Bigger Bang. They released a single from it, Living in a Ghost Town, in April. Guardian critic Alexis Petridis called it “appealingly sleazy … trim and light on its feet” and said it was “substantially better than the stuff Jagger and Richards came up with 15 years ago”.

THE GUARDIAN

Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull hospitalised with coronavirus

Star described by her representatives as being ‘stable and responding to treatment’

Ben Beaumont-Thomas

Sat 4 Apr 2020 23.41 BST

Last modified on Sun 5 Apr 2020 08.22 BST

Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull has been hospitalised in London with coronavirus.

The singer, who became famous during the “swinging London” scene of the 1960s and has had a respected (and occasionally troubled) career since, is said to be stable and responding to treatment, according to her representatives.

Her friend, the performer Penny Arcade, told Rolling Stone Faithfull had self-isolated following a cold, and then checked herself into hospital last Monday, where she tested positive for Covid-19. She has since contracted pneumonia.

Faithfull, who is 73, has had various health issues in the past. She suffered from anorexia during a spell of homelessness in central London in the early 1970s, when she was also addicted to heroin. In 2006, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent successful surgery. In 2007, she announced she had hepatitis C, diagnosed 12 years previously. She also has arthritis, and has had other joint issues, including a hip injury which became infected after surgery and forced her to cancel a 2015 tour.

Apart from a decade-long fallow period following her 1960s breakthrough, she has steadily released music throughout her life. Her most recent album was 2018’s Negative Capability, described as “a masterly meditation on ageing and death” in a five-star Observer review.

THE GUARDIAN

Interview

How we made Peppa Pig

Interviews by Ben Beaumont-Thomas

‘After its success, we’d go to meetings with lots of ideas for other shows – but they just wanted 3,000 more episodes of Peppa Pig’

Phil Davies, producer

Animation is a slow, laborious process. I’m way too impatient for it. I want a lunch and a life. So, after studying animation at Middlesex University, I became a producer instead. However, two guys I met there – Mark Baker and Neville Astley – stuck at it. By 2000, things had become very hand-to-mouth for them: they’d make an animated film, pitch another, then make it. So we decided to do something together and Peppa was one of our ideas.

I was shocked at how poor some children’s animation was. Not just the production values – the stories didn’t even seem to have a beginning, middle or end. A lot of it was completely incomprehensible and all the girls were either princesses or ballerinas.

So we made Peppa a four-year-old child and told the whole series from her perspective. She has a red dress because she has a slightly fiery personality. Parents tell us Peppa is too cheeky – someone in the Australian parliament said she was peddling a warped feminist agenda. But if she was a boy character no one would be saying that. Why is it that a girl has to be an anodyne, sweet, pink thing?

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 ‘Anything could be a story’ … the first episode, about jumping in muddy puddles.

We’re lucky that all of us came from stable homes: we remember how the world was when we were four. Anything you could think of could be made into an episode – the first one was about jumping in muddy puddles. They all come from simple ideas: her grandparents have a pet parrot called Polly; she goes on a boat trip; she has a pen pal ... My daughter is an ice skater and we thought it would be fun to have Peppa go ice skating. I used to be a mad pilot, so aeroplanes turn up in episodes every now and again.

A friend of Mark’s, Lily Snowden-Fine, voiced Peppa. She was three or four. The recording sessions were very entertaining – I used to come in and find her hiding under the recording desk playing with dolls. We just got her to repeat short lines. Four-year-olds make wonderful mistakes and mispronounce words – my favourite line in the whole series is when Lily/Peppa says to her friend, “I think your heart’s a bit loose, you need to put a plaster on it.”

When people with young kids find out I’ve got something to do with Peppa, they get a bit starstruck. You get a small window into what it must be like to be an actor or rock star.

Mark Baker, co-creator

When Peppa came out, there were a lot of children’s characters that didn’t really have a family, or parents. Our experience was that children don’t like laughing at themselves, but do like laughing at their parents. By having a Mummy and Daddy Pig, we could get humour in without having to laugh at the child character. Animal stories are good for children because they give you licence – a pig is allowed to be messy – and animation works because it’s one step removed from reality, so children feel safe watching it.

Everything that went on around us and happened to our children would be sucked up into the stories. In some ways you feel guilty – you’re always listening out. Lily, the four-year-old who voiced Peppa, once had a rash, and was told she shouldn’t scratch it. So she walked to the front door of her house, crouched down, and scratched. Her mother said, “You said you weren’t going to do that,” and she said, “No, it’s OK, I’m doing it secretly.” That child logic – you can’t invent it.

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 ‘Everything that happened around us and our children got sucked up into the stories’ ... the whole gang.

We always hoped it would be successful, but at a certain point we got fed up and wanted to do something else. We’d go to meetings with other ideas, but they just wanted 3,000 more episodes of Peppa. It’s like Daniel Craig doing Bond again – he must fight with it, but in the end he does it.

The natural thing as an animator is to assume you’ll be broke, so it’s still surprising to go into a shop and see a product we weren’t aware was being developed. It’s odd to think there are people making a living out of Peppa who we’ve never met. We thought we might be creatively successful, but never thought we would be running a proper company, and be responsible for other people’s lives. People having their mortgages paid by our creation – that’s bizarre.

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