Sounds Live! Magazine

The emergent Palestinian Canadian popstar is also SPIN Canada's inaugeral cover star.

Nemahsis at the Soundstage, W Toronto, by Nolan McBride.

The final day of North By North East festival (NXNE) closed out on Sunday evening, 14 June 2026 at the W Hotel’s brand new Soundstage in downtown Toronto to bring the curtains down on a week of celebrating Canada’s rich and diverse music scene, showcasing the best emerging talent from across the country and genres.

The event was headlined by rising pop star and Palestinian Canadian singer Nemahsis, marking her return to performing live after a hiatus that followed a whirlwind year for her in 2024, that saw her release her acclaimed debut album Verbathim, take it on tour across the country and then sweep the JUNO Awards in early 2025, but took its toll. It also doubled up as the official launch for SPIN Magazine’s Canadian edition, of which Nemahsis is the first cover star.

Nemahsis on the cover of the inaugural edition of SPIN Canada. Cover photo by Norman Wong.

SPIN Canada’s editor-in-chief and NXNE founder Michael Hollett opened the evening by declaring that even as NXNE was coming to an end for this year, a new era of Canadian music journalism was beginning with SPIN. Magazines and art journalism have been under threat in the last few years, pointed out Michael, ironically, this comes at a time when Canadian culture is thriving like never before, and SPIN Canada pledged to cover the gap in coverage by focusing on Canadian artists, culture and live music experiences.

The next few hours were a demonstration of the unique strength of Canadian culture. Local songwriter Harper (known mononymously) opened the show by performing a few heartfelt ballads. The singer revealed in between songs that he was added to the bill less than 48 hours prior. Having toured with Nemahsis before, he’d reached out hoping to watch the show, only for Nemah to personally ask him to open instead. “Best seat in the house!” he smiled from behind his piano on stage. I couldn’t think of a more Canadian music industry experience: it’s a small, close-knit community compared to its American and UK market counterparts, but it punches well above its weight: aside from his own music, Harper has produced tracks for artists like the Nigerian pop superstar, Burnaboy.

Nemah Hassan, known artistically as Nemahsis, is herself a master class in combining storytelling and song in her uniquely enrapturing way. The show felt intimate, as a group of roughly hundred fans and industry folk gathered around the stage to listen as Nemah recounted stories of home, growing up, the challenges her family faced, and how it all poured into her songs, bringing them to life in vivid colour.

Picture by Nolan McBride.

The daughter of Palestinian Canadian immigrants and one of six children, she told the tale of her hit song ‘Coloured Concrete’, inspired by a memory of how her parents had to remove their rugs on the family home’s floor to get rid of mould, but wouldn’t be able to afford to have to redone and so had to choose to leave the floors uncovered. To keep the kids distracted from the cold concrete flooring under their socked feet in the winter, Nemah’s parents told the kids they could painted the floors any colour they wished. Nemah captured those pockets of joy from her childhood in vivid melodies and anthemic choruses, stripped down with just her guitarist and bass/keys player on stage with her.

The band, pictured by Nolan McBride.

The evening continued with the JUNO-winning singer weaving in Palestinian instruments and western pop anthems that she’d felt would be fit for Adele, seamlessly into a musical style very recognisably her own to anyone familiar with her music. It struck me again just how Canadian a style of music that was: rich storytelling of cultures melding into each other, the give and take of growing up between them; the fusion of traditional and pop music stood out to demonstrate Canadian music and culture at its best.

Nemah brought a quietly confident stage presence, commanding the crowd to sing along to the choruses and sway to the music, and the room swelled with applause as she stood triumphant against the stage background, a picture of blinding-white linen set against the sky, with the homeliness of earthen, handcrafted pottery pieces surrounding her on stage.

Picture by Nolan McBride.

Michael Hollett led a post-show on-stage Q&A with Nemahsis, where she was also unveiled as the cover star for the inaugural digital edition of SPIN Canada. A longer, in-depth interview with Nemah conducted by Hollett appears in the new edition of SPIN Canada which can be found at spinmagazine.com.

As Nemah talked about her journey from nothing to becoming one of Canada’s biggest new popstars, I saw her beginnings reflected in the faces of the artists and fellow NXNE performers sat in the room, like Newmarket rockers Noise Hotel, who had picked up the NXNE People’s Choice award earlier that evening. Always sharply dressed in matching suits onstage, they won over festivalgoers during their set at Sneaky Dee’s on Thursday night (11 June).

Noise Hotel by Nolan McBride.

As such, this felt like a fitting way to end Canada’s premier artist discovery and emerging music festival, and the biggest national celebration of the emergent arts: NXNE is the start to many a Canadian artist’s career. As many have done over the festival’s 31 year run, some day many of these artists will be sitting on the other side of that stage as Nemah was, having made it. And cheers to that.

Michael Hollett Q&A with Nemah. Picture by Nolan McBride.

Raucous rock with a side of tomato soup: UK 'indie sleaze's most irreverent band are lively as ever on their return to North America.

Legend has it that London arty punk rockers Art Brut played one of their first shows in the middle of a literal fight. They were attending a Libertines show in 2003 as fans, and Pete Doherty decided to make himself scarce mid-show. As tensions broke out when it became clear the band would not be returning to stage, someone shouted the eternal words: ‘Surely there must be a band here?’

Singer Eddie Argos’ little brother had recently gained an interest in rock n’ roll. He was not in a band, but Eddie was. Their band had no songs and had played maybe a couple of shows ever. His brother shot up, ‘We’re a band!’ As hundreds of ravenous eyes trained their focus on the newcomers, it became immediately apparent to Argos that there was no backing out now: Art Brut’s second or third-ever show (as the singer remembered years later, on the BBC radio docuseries, The Rise And Fall of Indie Sleaze) was filling in for an absent Pete Doherty.

Back in the day: Art Brut in 2013, via Rolling Stone.

Such misadventures, amongst others, were documented on the band’s eventual debut album Bang Bang Rock and Roll in 2005, on delightfully irreverent songs like ‘My Little Brother’ (about his aforementioned brother’s first forays into rock n’ roll fandom) and album opener and the straight-talking ‘Formed A Band’: “Art Brut, well, we've only just started.”

And now here we are, just over 20 years on from the debut album. This April, Art Brut set out on a North American tour, 15 years on from their last time here, bringing the full album to life (amongst other cuts from their back—and recent—catalogue) at Toronto’s iconic punk venue, the Horshoe Tavern on Monday, 13 April 2026.

Eddie Argos performing with Art Brut.

The passage of time is evident, and Eddie doesn’t shy away from it: as the band burst onto stage with ‘Formed A Band’, the kids that Art Brut were talking to on the song’s lyrics in the early 2000s, are now ‘people in their mid-thirties’. And Eddie’s rock n’ roll younger brother, who got the band one of their biggest early shows, isn’t much of a troublemaker these days. ‘Here’s a tip, if you’re writing songs about people, don’t say what their age is,’ chuckles Argos on stage, clad in a colourful printed shirt, a thick moustache to match his trademark eyebrows, now furrowed as he leans on his micstand. ‘I wrote this song about my little brother. He’s not 22 and he’s definitely not out of control now. He’s a teacher - he’s not usually the one you’d be worried about at a parent-teacher meet!’

But Art Brut roll with the punches. The mixtapes of B-sides and bootlegs are now YouTube playlists of obscure songs. As for the band’s energy and enthusiasm on stage? You’d never have guessed 20 years had passed. There are new songs thrown into the mix from their last solo studio album, 2018’s Wham! Bang! Pow! Let’s Rock out! The band are as expressive, lively and talkative as ever, Eddie pointing out the characters involved in the song ‘She Kissed Me - And It Felt Like A Hit’, even performing a bit of live foley, pausing mid-song to explain to the crowd, ‘this is meant to be kissing sounds’.

One of the true highlights of the show was the song ‘Modern Art’. On the debut album, it may be a cheeky two-and-a-half minute punk song about admiring art galleries, but live, it’s a 20-minute long improv set. Slight spoilers ahead that you can choose to skip if you’re intending to see the band live soon. In fact, I’d recommend it.

Eddie explains to the crowd that he had been to two art galleries at the time of writing the song, and decided to namecheck both because girls like a guy that knows his art. This then leads to a brilliant tale following Argos recently visiting… his third-ever gallery to see a Vincent Van Gogh, once again being so excited by modern art that it makes him want to rock out. To a backdrop of punk rock chords, Eddie tells us about taking three steps back… and launching himself at the painting, only to be greeted not be the euphoria of becoming one with the art, but instead feeling the electric shock of the security’s taser. Down from the stage and walking amidst the crowd, this could well pass for a really good, modern standup routine. The comic timing is all there.

Gathering the crowd round him, crouching down and hanging onto his every word, Eddie tells us about licking the painting, only for it to taste like tomato soup. After launching a countdown to an ambitious 750 (which to be fair, Art Brut’s largely accurately-estimated crowd in their mid-thirties and older were not making it through), this descends into a joyous, chaotic crowd indeed rocking out to Art Brut’s art, which still feels just as fresh and modern.

Art Brut of course, sharing a name (and philosophy) with a modern art movement and Eddie Argos himself being a painter in his time away from the band, I wonder if he might have enjoyed the AGO’s current exhibit on modernism in art. Or perhaps even Paul McCartney’s photogallery.

We aren’t done yet, exorcisms are performed, shouting along to choruses of ‘Out, demons, out!’ (‘Demons Out!’, from the 2009 album Art Brut vs. Satan), and I am assigned band member at the Art Brut show - ‘Go home and form a band. You! You! You!’, Eddie points out individual audience members set to inspire the next generation of rock n’ rollers. ‘You’re in a band now!’ And it’s a lovely passing of the baton from the band that burst onto the stage and scene way back in 2003, with a song about their experience of newly forming a band.

After the show, we find Eddie himself manning the merch stand and chatting with scores of fans who are delighted to have the chance to see an idiosyncratic, forward-thinking, scrappy, arty and delightfully irreverent band who they thought they might never see again, whose brash and charming attitude, ragtag punk rock, wry smile and a penchant for sound bytes typified the 00s indie scene now being called “indie sleaze.” Eddie hinted that there may be new music from Art Brut on the way in the not-too-distant future. In today’s mad world that needs taking down a peg or two, we can all do with a bit more Art Brut in our lives!

Art Brut just finished a European 20th anniversary tour with fellow ‘indie sleazers’ Maxïmo Park this March, and are on tour across North America this month. Find all dates and info on their website, artbrut.org.uk.

Modern Art makes Eddie Argos want to rock out! And lick a van Gogh.

Art Brut took us on a fantastical journey to the art gallery, battling tasers, tomato soup and more in an excitement for art.

So much fun seeing Art Brut live this week.

And I wasn't even a pop fan, much less a Bieber fan as a kid! Actively disliked him, as a supposed "cool kid". Just happened to be 9 in 2009. That was just the pop culture of the time, wasn't it? I mean, even my mum knows Justin Bieber. My mum doesn't know anyone. You forget just how huge Bieber was.

He looks happier and more at peace now. You also forget/didn't realise, being caught up in the narrative about him being an annoying teen acting out and all that, that he was genuinely failed by the industry. So many adults who should've known better let him down. So many adults who should've taken care of him, let him instead take the fall.

So I'm glad he was able to go away and take some time away from the industry and come back on his own terms. And that people waited, and when he returned, they were right back here for him. And the fact that his first time back, he went straight to the top. Headline at Coachella. Not 6 pm, not a lowkey evening slot. Headline.

I also wondered just who exactly Justin Bieber's fans were now. He'd taken a little break, which means Gen Z any younger than me were barely around for Bieber 1.0. By the time they were forming their music taste on their own, in the last 5-10 years, Justin hasn't really been the top concern for kids listening to pop music. There's a new generation of pop stars in his absence. Younger ones, from the generation that their fans tend to be: whatever is the youngest. Gen Z, maybe even Gen Alpha.

Are they the millennials that were teens in the late 00s that were hit, like me, with the sudden full force of nostalgia and memories and realised the weight of this guy on the 2000s, of songs like Baby, of the beginnings of the YouTube era of stars?

Because I realise now, that as much as in my head, Justin Bieber is bunched together forever with a generation of stars like Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and the Jonas Brothers, probably others I'm forgetting now, Justin was not a Disney kid. Justin Bieber did not have the backing of a not-yet-dying prime time cable television network pushing him. He had the new media. Justin Bieber WAS YouTube music, long before YouTube Music was a thing. He was the beginning. He was the successor to the MySpace kids, the Arctic Monkeys of his generation in a way.

Justin Bieber WAS new media.

And that's what makes moments like this one so powerful:

Bieber pulling up the music video to Baby and singing along, his now-cropped hair contrasting that old fringe, one of the most recognisable faces of the late 2000s, a video most of us might remember watching when the YouTube interface looked very different. No dark mode, no Material UI. No Coachella livestream either, for that matter, and a very different Coachella.

Bieber was YouTube's child, YouTube made him, and he returned the favour tonight, and it hit me like a train. The passage of time, man.

(Sorry the gifs aren't particularly brightened or colour-corrected and otherwise prettied up: I was just hit with such strong emotion, I felt compelled to write but it IS 3:50 AM. I was watching David Byrne until nearly 3, and then for some reason decided to keep the Main Stage stream running as I wound down the night and got into bed. Felt like I should at least glimpse what's going on Bieber-wise. CanCon. I felt some duty as an onlooker of Canadian music.)

So there we have it. Justin Bieber's comeback, which in my eyes, was successful. It showed growth. It showed maturity. It showed a person that had taken the time away and was finally in control of his own life. He was doing things on his own terms.

Justin stood alone on one of the biggest stages in the world. Usually, popstars have an elaborate stage set-up, many structures to climb, sets meant to evoke a location, props for the audience to look at so they don't have to look expectantly at the star all the time. Give them some room to breathe.

Justin has never had the room to breathe. The press, the world, was in his face, staring expectantly during his worst moments. He's not afraid of people looking at him. He can stand alone and take it all— now on his own terms. It was just him.

Just him and his laptop.

And when he finally did bring out some semblance of a band, it was stripped down, acoustic and heartfelt.

And it worked. Justin Bieber is back.

I could hear the people screaming. I heard a woman's voice, so clear that I could make out the words even without a mic turned towards the audience, shout "te amo!" Guess Justin Bieber never really lost people's hearts. Long may Justin 2.0 last and reign supreme.

And now, at 4:06 AM, I will indeed sign off my spontaneous, emotionally-motivated review of Bieberchella, weekend 1. Can't believe I'm putting a 4 AM review in the magazine. But it feels fitting! So have fun and goodnight!

I saw the Toronto band BBQ Pope last. They have an impressive alt rock sound that fills the gap between Toronto’s busier shoegaze, punk and indie scene. It’s impressive the way they can fill out the soundscape as a live trio, all the while bouncing off the walls on stage. They’re a very energetic band! They’ve got the riffs, they’ve got the solos, they’ve got good choruses and energy for years. And my goodness, I love their band name, it always tickles me.

But their sound stretches beyond just that. Some songs lean a bit more pop punk, they’ve got a very singable tune on their latest album, the 2025-released second album Unfurl. The song’s called ‘Pop Punk Song From 1994’. It’s got more of a Weezer influence to me (an image, no doubt, aided by bassist and singer Reid’s very Rivers Cuomo glasses).

The song’s lyrics go, “Lately I've been feeling like a pop punk song from 1994…”, so naturally I had to end our interview yesterday by asking them, if they were a pop punk song from 1994, which song would they be?

I guess you’ll have to wait until our interview is out to find out… coming soon!

Give them a listen, and then check out their last single Miami, firstly because the February chill is the best time of course for a U.K. band to release a summery, upbeat tune about how it is just “so Miami” outside. Summer’s a state of mind! Second, the song is like if Kraftwerk made a soul track while remaining cool. I don’t know, they’re sort of becoming my favourite new band. Certainly one of the albums I’m most anticipating in 2026 is their debut, Outtanational. 1 May.

I've also got a new band from Toronto called Mad Iris that we recorded a live set for. They're quite shoegaze and noisy, but they're almost dreampop songwriters, and that combination is pretty interesting— you may have seen the kind of bedroom-metal blend before, but theirs is quite different and sounds a lot less bedroom and more like if you had someone with a kind of angel voice fronting a screamo band. It's great. They also have 3 guitarists, all doing something different, which makes for a very interesting sound. They've got their debut album coming out end of May, so it was a great time to get ahold of them for a quick chat— and yup, we've got an interview for you as well!

I can't deny, huge week in music. Last weekend say the release of very anticipated albums by RAYE, Robyn, Slayyyter (how many y's?) and more. Genuinely gonna be pop girl summer (I mean have you LOOKED at the Lollapalooza Chicago lineup for this year??)

(Look at the headliners - is that pop girl summer or what?)

So I've got some of those releases for you - new albums on the cards for Paul McCartney as well - an album dealing heavily in nostalgia and looking back (references to black and white photos, cheap guitars, secrets and promises made back on Forthlin Road... yeah. This album's the Beatles Retrospective. Paul has also said recently that he couldn't help but look back when writing this time. I'm sure his photogallery from 1963-64, which is currently showing at art galleries around the world, must've jogged Paul's memory and pushed him towards writing about memories).

And the new Muse album was announced. They're going on tour with Bloc Party in North America for the first part, Portugal the Man in the second.

They've toured with Portugal before iirc, and Bloc Party, well. Scroll up. They also played some new songs that sound very exciting, some throwing back to the straight-up guitar indie rock of their first album Silent Alarm from 2005, some with more complex loops and layering of guitars, giving it a more experimental feel. Classic Kele Okereke!

They also said they're going to have a new album out this year, though a date or title haven't been announced yet. Same goes for Yard Act, though based on what I've seen, I have my guesses for what the album might be called. I'll talk about it on the show tomorrow.

The new Bloc Party tunes - named Pigwig, Love Bombed, Only He Can Heal Me. They're about love, they're political. You'll feel it, they're quite signature Kele, again.

Posted a little clip and review from the Gurriers show! Interview coming out soon!

It’s just a Sign of the Times… In the middle of the pit with Gurriers during their electrifying debut Canadian show at The Garrison in Toronto.

Gurriers are one of those bands that can just turn your inner grievances at the state of the world into incredible choruses that double up as rallying cries, encourage some of the best moshpits and also, incredibly, have you dancing along.

I love doing interviews, because at the end of the day, it’s just a conversation with another artist. It’s getting to pick the brains of your fellow contemporary creative people, when it’s not always easy to get people to open up about creative endeavours and things that happen inside the head, but the façade this formalised structure called an artist interview provides, it lets you have those conversations and open up on the altar of… I don’t know. Promotion, I guess. If you’re being cynical. But also on the premise of spreading the ideas of your art and drawing more people into the conversation, which I think a good interview should do.

Truck Violence at the Handlebar in Toronto, 2026

So I was talking to Truck Violence, they released their debut album Violence in 2024. It has a lot to say. You know how when you’re a teen, the idea of meaning something more and leaving a mark is one of the biggest concerns for you outside of physical needs? When you’re such a little thing that fighting the ultimate impermanence of humanity looms too large over you and you need to make a difference. You’ve got to have something to show for it.

I genuinely believe that everyone has one project in them. A personal manifesto, if you will. Everyone has that debut album in them, so to speak.

But not everyone has the second album in them. It’s something I’ve thought about with bands like Oasis, because famously, songwriter Noel Gallagher had openly said that he had said everything he wanted to say on their debut album, and since then his music has largely concerned itself with love and the occasional other observation. It’s all said on that debut album! 1. The ‘80s were hard and austerity was shit but we found ways to escape occasionally (‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’) 2. I was made for music. I’m gonna be a rock n’ roll star (‘Rock N’ Roll Star’) 3. Our love will live forever (‘Live Forever’). That’s the essence of Noel Gallagher, that’s the essence of Oasis. Even the second album (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? ultimately only echoes ideas from the first album. He’s said it all. After that, Noel said, they got rich and famous, and Noel had nothing worldly to complain about that he felt strongly about anymore. What happens when you have said your piece, and you have nothing left to say anymore?

Mr. Cigarettes & Alcohol: Liam Gallagher of Oasis

What happens when you run out of things to say? Truck Violence, it felt, had poured their guts out on their first album. Notions of their hometown, of life growing up, of witnessing alcoholism and abuse, of leaving home, of fighting for authenticity and saying something meaningful, all features strongly on the debut album, Violence. It comes through so strongly that I have to say, I haven’t heard bands be this naked and direct in their ambitions and desires in a while. It felt less like music, or maybe felt like more than music, more than performance art, more like purging yourself of the thoughts and ideas. Expelling them. Not so much expanding them, but removing them from your head. Presumably making room for new, exciting ideas. But the first ones are most definitely written to be banished.

Tell me Tell me that I’m good enough That I’m not too far gone That I am interesting

When I’m reading my favorite books I can't help but feel inadequate like I’ll never be interesting enough to have a collection of prose written about me and Ultimately that’s my goal To be written about

Like fronds that to clay trail Only in disappointment Till the romantics of early shrivel surely wears away And it surely wears away

Karsyn Henderson is a poet, and it’s very interesting to me that his medium of choice for his poetry is screaming the words over harcore punk guitars and occasionally banjos, but I digress.

Truck Violence

What happens when you run out of ideas, of things to say that you feel strongly about? I put the question to Truck Violence.

“There’s a lot going on in the world— not even just politically. There’s a lot to think about, there’s a lot to discover. I’m never running out of ideas. In fact, there’s so much that I want to touch on [in our music]. If you run out of things to say… I don’t know. I don’t want to sound harsh, but you probably didn’t have much to say in the first place.”

And fucking fair enough. That is Truck Violence through and through: ideas and emotion bubbling over the top of more laidback Prairie landscapes, typified in its banjos but gushing forth with the force of their hardcore guitars and screamed lyrics.

Truck Violence. All but last image by Cece Tang.

And I love being a vehicle to these ideas, doing these interviews, talking to different artists, being able to see this full spectrum. It almost makes the interview feel like an integral art form to me.

The song quoted above is ‘Undressed you layn’t before’, by Truck Violence. Catch the above interview and live session with them in full next Sunday, 15 March on CFRC Radio.

Often dubbed the “biggest night in British music” and the most important award in the British music industry, the BRITs are the industry awards that celebrate the best of the best in the UK: only albums and singles that have charted, i.e. are successful in the previous year, are even eligible for the BRITs.

The 2026 BRIT Awards promise to bring together some of the biggest names making waves in the industry right now, from rising jazz star Raye to modern pop’s golden boy Harry Styles, from the return of Britpop stars Pulp 30 years after they last graced the BRITs stage to Spanish sensation Rosalía, whose addition to the roster of performers has had onlookers excitedly wondering if she will bring the full symphonic force of her orchestra with her to Manchester on Saturday night, 28 February.

As we ready ourselves to see what this year’s awards have to offer, let’s go back 30 years to one of the most eventful nights in BRIT Awards history: the 1996 BRIT Awards ceremony, taking place on 19 February at the 20,000-capacity Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre and televised further to the entire nation.

The Rise of the Common People

In early 1996, Britpop had been on the rise and was primed to explode. Some of its biggest stars had had huge moments in music the year prior: Pulp headlined Glastonbury, stepping in for the Stone Roses, whose guitarist John Squire had broken a collarbone less than 10 days before the festival. In some ways, it was a figurative passing of the torch from those who had laid the groundwork for Britpop to ignite the nation the way it had, to its new faces, Pulp, who had a huge moment with ‘Common People’, the class-conscious commentary on poverty tourism that turned singer and frontman Jarvis Cocker from the lanky, unlikely pop frontman into the erudite working class hero almost overnight. Pulp were set to have an even bigger moment than ever before in their lives at the BRITs.

Battle of Britpop

Blur and Oasis had brought Britpop to the primetime evening news and front pages of national papers with their single chart battle, dubbed the Battle of Britpop: ‘Roll With It’ vs ‘Country House’, a battle Blur had ostensibly won though by the narrowest of record sales margins, but by February 1996, Oasis had overshadowed Blur by announcing two shows at their beloved local side Manchester City FC’s home ground, Maine Road. The rivalry had resulted in hugely successful albums for both bands: Blur’s The Great Escape and Oasis’ chart-topping What’s The Story (Morning Glory)? were matters of national concern in the UK.

With plenty of nominations each, the bands showed up to the BRIT Awards to collect the spoils of their efforts from the previous year, on 19 February 1996 at Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre, the 20,000-seater venue Oasis had sold out for 2 nights the previous year. Oasis themselves refused to perform at the BRIT Awards ceremony, instead wanting to perform “outside, for the people in the street”. Noel Gallagher said the band were apparently told beforehand turning down the performance might threaten their career. Oh, well.

Good Mooning Britain!

Pulp performed ‘Sorted For E’s and Wizz’, a performance that sees singer Jarvis left suspended in the air as he sings the final lyrics, “What if you never come down?” But a dramatic comedown was waiting around the corner for the Sheffield frontman, who would go on to make much bigger headlines for events later that night.

Michael Jackson undertook a full-production involving stage sets, a choir and children, setting himself up to play a messianic character, towering over the stage as he sang ‘Earth Song,’ which rubbed Cocker the wrong way, and he decided to make his dissatisfaction with all the fuss known publicly by walking onto the stage during Jackson’s performance and waggling his bum towards the audience. He was chased by the popstar’s team and detained until the morning hours, when comedian Bob Mortimer, formerly a solicitor, was able to secure Jarvis’ release.

The next morning, Jarvis got a taste of what being a famous person in the headlines of the mainstream press was like. The organisers condemned Jarvis’ actions, but Oasis’ Noel later called Jarvis a star and said he should be awarded an MBE for it, while Blur’s Damon Albarn called Jarvis ‘the hero of the people.’ As time went on, it came to be seen as representative of the growing divide between the mood of the British and American public, the very thing that led to Britpop’s rise as a distinct musical movement from American music (particularly grunge) in the first place.

Shitelife in the spotlight

Despite the biggest headlines being on Pulp, and them not performing, Oasis still managed to steal the spotlight. The battle of Britpop played out once again at the BRITs in 1996: both Blur and Oasis had been nominated against each other in several categories, but it was to be Oasis’ year: they swept the awards, winning British Album of the Year, Video of the Year for ‘Wonderwall’ and British Group of the Year. Singer Liam Gallagher incidentally, also waggled his bum loads.

The infamous ‘Shitelife’ singalong took place when Oasis clinched Best British Group. Oh, and in between it all, songwriter Noel Gallagher slagged off record industry execs, Annie Lennox and also managed to take a swipe at Michael Hutchince of INXS as he presented them with the Best British Video award, saying, “has-beens shouldn’t give awards to gonna-bes.” On INXS’s last album Elegantly Wasted that came out the following year, the title track is rumoured to contain the lyric, “I am better than Oasis”.

Later that evening backstage, Liam had another spat with Hutchence, threatening to throw a fire extinguisher at him in a fight that had to be broken up by U2’s Bono. The reason reportedly was that Liam’s then-girlfriend Patsy Kensit had previously been in the press with Hutchence. Liam also had a go at Michael’s then-girlfriend, presenter Paula Yates, who had been pursuing the 23-year-old Gallagher on and off for a few years. On stage collecting their award, Liam threatened to punch Michael, who kissed him instead. A messy story all-round, that naturally warranted a full page feature in the next week’s music papers (and tabloids).

Somehow, Noel Gallagher found a moment to thank leader of New Labour and future Prime Minister, Tony Blair in one of his speeches. “There are seven people in this room tonight who are giving a little bit of hope to young people in this country. That is me, our kid, Bonehead, Guigsy, Alan White, [Creation Records founder] Alan McGee and Tony Blair, and if you don’t got anything about you, you get up there and you take Tony Blair’s hand, man, he’s the man. Power to the people!”

Noel did also however, end part of his animosity from the Battle of Britpop with Blur. That month, in the February 1996 edition of Q Magazine, Noel expressed remorse and apologised for his 1995 comment wishing Damon and Alex from Blur ‘caught AIDS and died’. “I said what I said, and as soon as I said it, I was (head in hands). I apologised in the next breath to the interviewer.”

Will this year’s awards live up to the rock ‘n’ roll excess and brawling of the past? Probably not, but musicians are playing on a completely different battlefield today. And Pulp will return after 30 years as they compete for Group of the Year following the release of their comeback album More last year, while Noel Gallagher receives a lifetime achievement award of sorts for Songwriter of the Year, presumably on the back of significant album sales and chart success following Oasis’ Live ‘25 reunion tour, not to mention the ceremony being held in his hometown of Manchester, if he decides to show up in person.

Watch the whole 1996 BRIT Awards ceremony broadcast below, if you’re really bored. The 2026 BRIT Awards will be live on 28 February on itv in the UK from 8:15 pm local time. The BBC will be on the red carpet doing interviews and coverage from 5 pm GMT, which can be streamed on the BBC News website along with blog updates. International viewers can watch the ceremony on the BRITs Youtube page from 8 PM (3 PM EST).

Swaggering, bombastic, extremely fun, occasionally heartfelt and always a show full of love: that's Shame alright!

There may have been one of the biggest snowstorms in decades on the streets of Toronto, but inside the Phoenix on Jan 23, UK electrifying rockers shame were whipping up a different kind of storm.

Back in Canada after a 2-year break that saw them release their fourth studio album Cutthroat, the London alt rock, post punk band are currently on a long tour across North America that ends in Vancouver on 14 February.

Shame are a force to reckon with from the second they walk on stage, swaggering on the easy hip hop beats of Pharoahe Monch’s 90s hit ‘Simon Says’. Get the fuck up! Put your hands in the sky! It’s going to be one of those nights.

Exuding charisma, energy and with a captivating stage presence, frontman Charlie Steen has utter command of the crowd. Even through his cool shades, you get the sense that he’s connecting with every member in the audience.

Charlie Steen performs with Shame. Image credit: Sam Ciampa

Wielding his mic stand like a sceptre, Steen skulks the stage – every bit the post punk frontman. But he cannot help a little smile slipping through every so often. Shame the project has been a journey in self-acceptance and friendship for a band of childhood friends, growing up together, setting out to overcome personal insecurities through connecting with the parts of us all that are less talked about but are easier to present through music.

It’s what gives leverage to songs like ‘Adderall’ live. It makes the quieter self-reflections hidden within the monologues of songs like the new ‘Nothing Better’ and ‘Cowards Around’ more powerful and cathartic when a sold-out room of 1350 people is singing the words back to them. It’s what makes the boisterously fun lyrics of a song like single ‘Cutthroat’, title track of the latest album, so addictive and fun to bounce in a moshpit to live. It allows Steen to adopt a larger than life persona on stage, and facilitates the chaos, the crowdsurfing—and Charlie delightedly grabbing onto incoming surfers’ hands as they near the stage—into becoming one of the best live shows. He’s doing his little dances up on stage, shimmying his shoulders. He’s loving every second of it, and that’s why you’re going to love it too.

Charlie Steen of Shame in Toronto.

And the love and friendship around the room is palpable. ‘Snow Day’ is dedicated to a fan who had passed away, whose friend spoke to the band at the record signing they had done earlier in the day at Kops Records. Friendship was the theme of Shame’s last album, 2023’s Food For Worms, and you feel the quiet lament for lost time within friendships and their celebration on ‘Fingers Of Steel’ and ‘Six Pack’.

But don’t be misled by Charlie Steen’s showmanship up front of the stage, Shame are no one-man act. Watching bassist Josh Finerty is show in its own right. The music industry’s gain was probably the circus or athletics’ loss: Josh literally runs laps of the stage, twists, turns, jumps around, does flips, all while still playing his bass, singing backing vocals and generally keeping with the positive chaos that is a Shame show.

Bassist Josh Finnerty in action (and in air).

Shame came up in the Windmill scene of the late 2010s: bands that got their start and came up playing the iconic London venue, the Windmill in Brixton, bands like Fontaines D.C. and black midi. Shame had been talked about in the same breath as post punk bands of the late 2010s like Fontaines D.C., The Murder Capital, Gilla Band, IDLES before them.

Check out more of photographer Sam Ciampa’s shots of Shame from The Phoenix on 23 January below.

I'm listening to the new Dry Cleaning album, Secret Love, which I've been listening to a bit and trying to feel out its essence. It's felt to me like an album that's trying to assert its place in the world. In some parts flow-of-consciousness, in some parts defiantly grounded in a reality that has invited drifting. Singer Florence Shaw's lyrics sometimes feel more like thoughts— there are laundry lists, affirmations, idle yet visceral inner thoughts - on the song ‘My Soul/Half Pint’, Flo feels conflicted about being organised and tidy but the notions of 'cleaning': “I'm a woman and I think if I clean, I feel resentment in my soul” even as she finds it a pretty immature way of thinking. There's an internal tension to a lot of Dry Cleaning's songs: the pull of rationality against the push of the more bizarre thoughts that cross our head: “Maybe it's time for men to k clean for like, five hundred years.”

Musically, they've worked with Cate Le Bon and pushed their signature post punk into more krautrock directions, motoric and German, sprung to life by Flo's vocals on songs like the title track ‘Secret Love (Concealed in the Drawing of a Boy)’. I also hear more funk on the record. Then songs like 'Rocks' turn up the punk rock intensity. In other places, I'm reminded of Gang of Four. It's good. I'll be listening to it again, maybe on a walk in the snow. Florence is really good at describing a growing discomfort where you seem okay from tue outside but want to burst into flames intetnally. Potentially got an interview coming up with the band. I want to know more, I'm excited.

I'm going to listen to the new Cribs album, Selling A Vibe. I'm not super clued up on the Cribs back catalogue but I heard critics liked the last album a lot. So far it's felt standard 2006-callback indie rock from one of indie sleaze's forerunners in the UK. There's a hint of looking back, but from a place of being older and in processing the heady 2000s. But that's only from what I've heard of the singles. I'm looking forward to hearing the full album.

There are new singles from Gorillaz, they've indeed moved the album The Mountain's release date up a whole month and I've listened to them both, I do like how different they are: ‘The Hardest Thing’ with Tony Allen, it's transitional, fitting for a man who transcended genre as Allen did, it's almost free form and I suspect it was written in the same sessions we got ‘How Far?’ from. Damon has talked about how they're bringing up voices from the vaults for this album, and death and passing are recurring themes in different aspects of the music. It's done with respect and curiosity, I think. And in tribute.

‘Orange County’ is the second single they've dropped, the two in a pair. This one's electropop with a touch of acoustic sitars. Lightness and beauty coupling with heartbreaking lyrics is a look Gorillaz wear quite familiarly – this song feels like it could've been on their 2018 album The Now Now. I'm excited for all the different sounds the album could have when you look down that list of contributors: from Anoushka Shankar (who graces ‘Orange County’ with her sitars) to Johnny Marr.

Shows - we're going to go see Racing Mount Pleasant soon. We first saw them opening for Geese, and they've got a vibe that's to me somewhere between Sigur Rós and Black Country, New Road. A seven-piece, sprawling and impressive musical soundscapes that build and lyrics that go between apologetic, brooding dialogue and something more in the vein of Pavement. Their self-titled album came out last year.

I'm seeing Shame in a week as well! 'Cutthroat' was one of my favourite singles last year, and the album's good. I'm still sussing it out, but the album is very shame to me as I understand it so far: it's ambitious, doesn't speak in absolutes, isn't afraid to implicate itself and love openly: love life, friends, the imperfections. Musically, I have moments where their contemporaries poke their heads through the music: I hear hints of Dry Cleaning, Wunderhorse, Fontaines D.C. and Wolf Alice, even with Charlie Steen's unmistakable voice at the helm.

That’s: Oasis, CMAT, Lambrini Girls, Geese, Franz Ferdinand, Wet Leg, Jasmine.4.T, Sam Fender, Piss, Cardinals, Sorry, Dry Cleaning, Model/Actriz and Pulp as our main covers.

London rap artist Central Cee had a huge 2023: when his collaboration with British rap stalwart Dave broke the internet, it achieved more than just virality: it became one of the first UK rap songs to truly break through in America. It took another year and a half from that moment until Cee’s debut album would come out (he considers his last two records, Wild West and 23, mixtapes as he wrote and promoted them with the mindset of a mixtape, while this album was written with the ‘premeditated energy’ of an album). The answer to why, is the conclusion he came to and the album title: Can’t Rush Greatness.

On his debut full-length, Central Cee delivers a reflective album, dropping bars with self-belief, all while grappling with newfound success, including in America (‘These American girls keep laughing any time I say “bottle of water”’). The comparisons with American rappers gets a full examination on songs like ‘GBP’, and the contrast is further driven home through a feature by American rapper 21 Savage: a different accent, a different cadence; it is the sound of UK rap defiantly announcing its arrival on the world stage, on ‘red carpets in trackies and Air Max’, as Cench declares, the world is ready and hungering for ‘a boy with a London style’.

On the opening track of the album, Central Lee declares that by now, he needs no introduction. After being snubbed at the 2023 BRIT Awards and losing the Best Hip Hop/Grime/Rap category to Manchester rapper Aitch (a fact referenced on three separate songs on the album), Cench would rise to international acclaim with a handful of strong singles over a year leading up to the album. Money, comfort and rapidly-changing circumstances followed his success, and Cench reflects on songs like ‘Walk In Wardrobe’ and ‘Limitless’: a hard life, raised by a single mother in a council house on benefits, affected by drugs and violence that he describes as ‘walking through a warzone’, it seems worlds away from the walk-in wardrobes and tapping credit cards at restaurants without needing to know how much the bill is. But the boy who fell asleep to the sound of sirens is kept up at night by the peaceful, if uneasy quiet. The grass isn’t greener, concludes Cee, because financial freedom doesn’t stop people dying.

He further reflects on the vicious cycle and breaking out of it on album closer ‘Don’t Know Anymore’. But there are lighter moments on the album too, like the witty single ‘Gen Z Luv’, painting a picture of a modern love, including the absurdity of explaining a future child that he ‘met your mum on the FYP’.

The album is set to lush and relaxed RnB beats, almost in stark contrast to the urgency of Cench’s words and occasional drill beats over the course of the album. Soundtracked by twinkling keys and collaborators like the soul singer Kamal (‘Now We’re Strangers’) and faces of UK rap, grime legend Skepta (‘Ten’, alluding to the 10,000 hours of practice needed to be considered a professional) and Dave (on title track ‘CRG’), Can’t Rush Greatness tells a story of one facet of modern London and working class Britain, and it is a record extremely rooted in place and circumstance. But Cee shows off his global impact too, bringing in international collaborators Lil Durk, Young Miko, 21 Savage and Lil Baby.

There is an underdog, working-class universality to the album: as Central Cee told Apple Music when the album dropped, “These songs are[…] to touch the people, remind everyone that I’m human—that they’re human.”