Off with his Ed
Ed Sheeran and James Blunt hanging out together you can sort of understand: they share a record label, and their approach to making a career out of music — with hard graft and steely-eyed determination playing as important a part as talent — is further common ground. But the news that the two singers rub shoulders with royalty (in their case Princess Beatrice, from the freebie-loving, Ruritanian end of the Windsor spectrum) raised eyebrows. As did the revelation that HRH had come close to beheading Sheeran in the course of bestowing a mock knighthood on wee Bluntie with a ceremonial sword. Another couple of cocktails and the course of insipid middle-of-the-road balladry could have been changed for ever.
You say potato
Oasis may be no more — for now — but the beef between the Gallagher brothers shows no sign of abating. In fact, the 20th anniversary of their Knebworth shows, celebrated in Supersonic, the year’s best pop documentary, saw the pair dig below ground for fresh insults to hurl at each other. Liam kicked it off by repeatedly referring to Noel as a potato, or a pouting potato on Twitter. In true toddler style, once they’d started, they couldn’t stop. Noel dismissed Liam as an attention-seeker trying to crawl out of the “Where are they now?” basket. Liam sneered back that his brother “dresses like Gary Barlow” and called him the Ronnie Corbett of rock. As someone in Supersonic so eloquently put it: “Noel has a lot of buttons to press and Liam has a lot of fingers.” Roll on the reunion.
Feuds corner
Of the many, many talking points around Kanye West’s album The Life of Pablo, the Taylor Swift-dissing Famous proved the most contentious. “For all my southside n***** that know me best,” its first verse begins, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex. Why? I made that bitch famous.” The two singers have previous, of course, dating back to West’s notorious stage invasion during a 2009 awards show, when he grabbed the microphone off Swift. TayTay’s response to Famous was to deny having sanctioned the lyrics. Not so fast, countered Kim Kardashian, who Snapchatted a phone conversation in which her husband and the Shake It Off singer discussed the song’s content. Things escalated from there, as Justin Bieber sided with Kimye, posting a still of a Facetime chat between him and West captioned “Taylor Swift What Up”. The hashtag went viral.
Celestial supergroup
Pop’s pearly gates did swift business in 2016, with music’s premier league losing a host of greats to the grim reaper. It wasn’t long before social media began riffing on the sort of music they might make when they convene in the great recording studio in the sky. Endless permutations were mooted, but none was as mouthwatering as rock’s ultimate celestial supergroup: David Bowie and Sharon Jones on vocals, Prince handling guitar, Lemmy providing the drugs and, off in a side room got up like a monastic cell, Leonard Cohen labouring over the lyrics. How long the band would have lasted is anyone’s guess, but musical differences would surely have been cited before too long — that or a red-mist meltdown by Lemmy as the ketamine kicked in.
Bey watch
Poured into fishnets and a black leather military jacket, leading a regiment of afro-haired dancers in Black Panther-style berets through a fierce rendition of her surprise new single Formation, Beyoncé turned half-time at the Super Bowl into a politically charged, sexually suggestive, peer-trashing spectacular that paid tribute to Malcolm X, Michael Jackson and the Black Lives Matter movement. Her intentions split opinion — Formation’s supposed cop-bashing went down like a lead balloon, not least because the superstar and her CEO husband had insisted that a police escort clear a stretch of highway so they could get to the gig without waiting in pesky traffic — but as a demonstration of pop power, it was a triumph. It was also the year’s top pop magic trick. With a raised fist and a booty shake, Beyoncé made Coldplay, the show’s actual headliners, vanish.
Advertisement
Don’t scream, it’s over
A grown-up, grateful-to-God Justin Bieber brought his Purpose tour to Britain and delighted parents expecting to be kept waiting for hours while the star skateboarded backstage by starting his shows on time. But the 22-year-old proved he hasn’t put his diva days behind him. At every stop, he chastised excitable young fans for screaming while he was trying to talk. In Manchester, their refusal to keep quiet saw him storm off stage. In Birmingham, he branded fans obnoxious and disrespectful. “The point of the ‘no screaming’ thing is that when I’m looking at you in the eyes, you know that we’re actually having a connection,” Bieber explained. A bit rich from a singer who could barely be bothered to mime for most of his show.
Photo opportunism
With her lengthy world tour at an end and no new album in sight, Taylor Swift had time to reorganise her crucial-for-songwriting dating situation. Out went DJ Calvin Harris, whose lack of limelight-loving had clearly become an issue. In came tipped-to-be-Bond actor Tom Hiddleston, who embraced the role of the singer’s social-media sidekick with such gusto that he became a laughing stock. Hiddleswift, as they were dubbed, were pictured kissing on the rocks near the singer’s home, strolling arm in arm on a British beach and even meeting the in-laws. But it was Tom being photographed in an I ♥ TS vest on Independence Day that took it too far. Shame: we were looking forward to Taylor adopting a Liz Hurley accent à la Madonna in the Noughties.
The silent treatment
They weren’t so much angry, as very, very hurt. That seemed to sum up the feelings of the Nobel committee after its decision to award Bob Dylan the prize for literature met with a deafening silence from the man himself. It took him five days to acknowledge the honour, with a terse reference on his website that was quickly removed. All the while, the committee reportedly tried — and failed — to reach him on the phone, leading one member of the Swedish Academy to describe Dylan’s behaviour as “impolite and arrogant”. Oh, you think? Eventually, Dylan met them halfway, sending Patti Smith to receive the prize on his behalf at last weekend’s ceremony.
Money, it’s a gas
Eye-watering ticket prices, fees rumoured to be in the region of $5m for the rock dinosaurs topping the bill: the first Desert Trip festival, in California, saw tens of thousands of superannuated former hippies descend on Coachella Valley in October to watch Macca, Dylan, the Who, the Stones, Neil Young and Roger Waters ease through their back catalogues beneath the lofty palms. “Hope I die before I get old,” sang Roger Daltrey, as, seemingly dead to the irony, his equally long-in-the-tooth fans swayed their prosthetic hips in time to the beat. Waters, not to be outdone in the beyond-parody stakes, performed the Pink Floyd track Money. “Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash,” its first verse advises. Job done.
Royal variety show
How to break an androgynous, pansexual, drag queen-befriending French singer with a tricky name in 2016? Social media, surely. Maybe a quirky ad campaign with a big fashion brand. Or getting her kit off on the cover of LOVE magazine. Instead, Christine and the Queens went old-school with a trio of BBC TV appearances — on Later… and Graham Norton, and at Glastonbury — that instantly turned her from a cool cult act into pop’s most exciting new star. When Tilted morphed into Chaka Khan’s I Feel for You on Later…, and Christine and her troupe of male dancers made like Madonna trying to mimic Michael Jackson, the shiny perfection of modern pop was ousted by the joyous innocence of the 1980s.