Electric Light Orchestra leader Jeff Lynne announces death of ‘remarkable musician and friend’ who played everything from the Minimoog to the Clavinet

Richard Tandy, the keyboardist in Electric Light Orchestra who shaped much of the British rock band’s sound, has died aged 76.

His death was announced by the ELO leader Jeff Lynne, who wrote on social media: “He was a remarkable musician and friend and I’ll cherish the lifetime of memories we had together.” A cause of death was not given.

The Grammy-winning musician, who had a string of instrumental hits in the 50s and 60s, has died of cancer

Duane Eddy, the rock’n’roll guitarist who achieved solo stardom with a string of instrumental hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including Rebel Rouser and the theme to the TV series Peter Gunn, has died at the age of 86.

The Grammy-winning artist died of cancer surrounded by family at Williamson Health hospital near his home in Franklin, Tennessee, his wife Deed Abbate told the Associated Press . “Duane inspired a generation of guitarists the world over with his unmistakeable signature ‘Twang’ sound,” a representative said in a statement. “He was the first rock and roll guitar god, a truly humble and incredible human being. He will be sorely missed.”

Already the most listened-to Black artist in Brazil and a favourite of Beyoncé, Ludmilla has a whole new audience after her viral Coachella show. She discusses the racism and homophobia she’s had to face getting this far

In between her two-weekend debut at Coachella earlier this month, while the first concert was going viral, the Brazilian singer Ludmilla did business meetings, spent a day in Miami and kicked off new music projects. This interview took place on her way back from a short trip to the mountains surrounding the Hollywood sign, a call squeezed into a schedule that will end with a party: “I deserve some fun too,” she says.

She is following the guidebook to pop stardom, with her sights on an international career. Performing a repertoire of Portuguese-language songs, drawing from Brazil’s raw baile funk sound as well as pagode (a modern branch of samba), Ludmilla has already won a Latin Grammy and become the most listened-to Black artist in Brazil, and one of the only women of Afro-Latin heritage anywhere to reach a billion streams on Spotify and do a set on Coachella’s main stage. One of her admirers, Beyoncé, sent over a voice note to introduce it: “From Rio to Coachella, ladies and gentleman, Ludmilla!”

They’ve played with everyone from Lucinda Williams to a pre-fame Billie Eilish. Now, on their intensely personal new album, they confront the trauma of being pistol-whipped and dealing with an eating disorder

Lawrence Rothman has lived a lot of lives: in the early aughts, they performed under the name Lillian Berlin in the ultra-political hard rock band Living Things. They’ve been a model, posing with Kate Moss in a 2008 Roberto Cavalli ad; and with their wife, Floria Sigismondi, director of The Runaways , in i-D magazine. Kim Gordon, Lucinda Williams and a pre-fame Billie Eilish are just some of their collaborators. And on their debut solo album, 2017’s The Book of Law, they explored nine alter egos, each with distinct personas and visual identities, through flamboyant, off-kilter pop.

With the release of 2021’s Good Morning America, they switched gears into sun-scorched country, a mode that continues on their third album, The Plow That Broke the Plains: an intense, upsetting, starkly personal record. “To bear things inside of myself that are uncomfortable, it felt weirdly easier for me to do it in a singer-songwriter setting,” they say. “In an experimental setting, the lyric is hidden in math, and you haven’t purged it from yourself. I had a lot of purging I had to do on this record.”

The singer-songwriter’s brand of stubborn protest songs with a strain of tenderness has kept him relevant for 40 years. Here he talks about why he’s fighting for trans rights, his late-night tweeting habit and his forthcoming tour – with his son

Recently, Billy Bragg showed his two young granddaughters a little promo film he put together celebrating his 40 years of making records. The girls were nonplussed by the early scenes on picket lines and spiky festival stages, but towards the end, recognising an avuncular white-bearded bloke with a guitar, they brightened: “Look, it’s Grandad Bill!” they chorused. “It was actually all Grandad Bill,” their father pointed out, but they weren’t having any of it.

Meeting Bragg at the station car park in Weymouth – not far from where he lives along the Dorset coast – and heading up to a cafe on the headland overlooking the sweep of the bay, I sympathise a little bit with their sentiment. The first time I saw the singer in the flesh was sometime late in 1984, when he was giving it his full “one-man Clash” performance on student stages at miners’ benefits. Even at the time that felt like it might be a hard act to grow old with; yet here he is in the seaside retirement resort, still fighting the good fight.

(Total Pleasure/Virgin)
Recreating the noises in her head, Annie Clark’s first fully self-produced album ranges across styles and emotions, and is her most direct yet

Worth remembering: Annie “St Vincent” Clark’s college band was called the Skull Fuckers . The guitarist is no stranger to coaxing hairy sounds out of her instrument, nor to drilling down to uncouth feelings within. After a series of albums with slicker sound palettes, she has gone dark and heavy for her seventh studio , All Born Screaming ; heavy-hitter Dave Grohl plays apocalyptic drums on a pair of tracks. Clark’s first entirely self-produced work, it aims to recreate the noises in her head without a filter. Gloriously unstable modular synths often figure. Apparently it took dozens of vocal takes to strike the right timbre of desolation on Hell Is Near, the bleak first cut.

At the other end of the record, the title track highlights the suffering in the human condition – and simultaneously, the fact that the pain means we’re alive. In between, Clark touches on lust, loss and death in a more direct manner than her highly stylised personae often allow for. From the noisy low end of lead track Broken Man, through Flea ’s prowling industrial pop and the superlative goth jazz, Bond-like theme of Violent Times , it’s a loud and unapologetically varied work.

Swift now has joint highest number of chart-toppers for a female artist, as The Tortured Poets Department earns biggest opening week in seven years

Taylor Swift has tied with Madonna to become the female artist with the most UK No 1 albums, earning her twelfth chart-topper with the global phenomenon that is The Tortured Poets Department.

Swift also dominates this week’s singles chart, with three songs in the Top Five including a No 1 for Fortnight, featuring Post Malone. It’s her fourth No 1 single, and her third chart double.

SWG3, Glasgow
Delicately sipping a Red Stripe and accompanied by a seven-piece band, the Brit School grad loosens up her Mercury prize-nominated album with radiant star power

One hand raised to the heavens, the other fixed sharply on her hip, Olivia Dean is beaming. The 25-year-old musician is just three songs into her largest headline tour so far, and Echo – last year’s suave, soulful pop single about possibly misplaced trust – is a chic foil for her glamorous, Supremes-style choreography and her chemistry with her charismatic seven-piece band. With one flick of the wrist she summons a flourish of keys, a cymbal splash or a joyous trombone solo, and Dean looks both thrilled and in total control.

Still: “I’m quite nervous this evening,” she confesses, delicately sipping a Red Stripe. It’s surprising to hear from the Brit School graduate, a week after she delivered a stand-out Coachella set but, then again, Dean’s crowds are growing rapidly. Only last year she played to an audience a quarter of the size, down the road at King Tuts. She’s since been nominated for three Brit awards, and in June she’s bound for Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage.

French singer dedicates top prizes at Les Flammes ‘to all the blacks’ after backlash over rumoured Paris show

The French pop star Aya Nakamura has won three big prizes at France’s Les Flammes awards for rap, R&B and pop, and she thanked fans for their support after a racist row over rumours she would sing at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.

“I’m very honoured because being a black artist and coming from the banlieue is very difficult,” Nakamura told the ceremony, which she opened with a medley of her songs. She dedicated her awards – female artist of the year, pop album of the year, and international star of the year – “to all the blacks”.