‘I’m in my sod-it era’: Sophie Ellis-Bextor on speaking up, suing the tabloids and finding power in perimenopause

The singer’s kitchen discos and that Saltburn scene have given her the mother of all career resurgences. So how is she capitalising on this midlife moment? With an album about the perimenopause

Josh Pyke: ‘I turned around and throat-punched the guy – and the whole gig stopped’

The Australian musician on survival skills, moonlighting as a door-to-door salesman, and the one pop star he doesn’t get

You haven’t felt the power of heavy metal until you’ve seen a room of grown men cry

Here in metal-mad Finland, I see the 50-year-old genre is still in rude health – and helping people see the light in dark times, says Mike Watson, media and art theorist based in Finland

Rick Davies obituary

Singer and songwriter with Supertramp whose gritty voice and lyrics helped propel the band to huge success in the 1970s and 80s

Spinal Tap eat your heart out: the Pretty Things drummer Viv Prince forged the blueprint for rock’n’roll hijinks

Stories of meth drinking, crayfish slinging and laying carpet onstage while Sandie Shaw played briefly made him rock’s most unhinged wild man

Self Esteem to star as raging rock star in revival of David Hare’s Teeth ’n’ Smiles

Rebecca Lucy Taylor will play Maggie, a role originated by Helen Mirren, in a ‘landmark’ 50th anniversary production in London in March

Mark William Lewis: Mark William Lewis review – A24’s first musical signing’s cinematic south London scenes

Haunting harmonica and poetic banality add to the Londoner’s spookily sonorous baritone to create a hypnotically familiar yet ineffably fresh album

‘Addiction teaches you a lot’: breakout pop star Lola Young on sex, substances and self-loathing

The south Londoner’s honesty about her vices has made her a gen Z hero: she was in rehab when her biggest hit was blowing up. Singing about sex on her new album, she says, is a way to mask the pain

Ed Sheeran: Play review – subcontinental sounds and shards of darkness – but still unmistakably him

Despite embracing Indian and Persian sounds, Sheeran’s eighth album goes back to basics after two records of muted melancholy – albeit with some surprising undercurrents

And if your head explodes: Pink Floyd’s 20 best songs – ranked!

Fifty years after the release of Wish You Were Here, we count down the best of the band’s Syd Barrett years, their difficult recovery and later reunion

Belinda Carlisle review – gleeful veteran lassoes devoted audience with ageless hits

Rattling through her 80s hits the singer is clearly revelling in the nostalgia – in a showcase that makes her a strong candidate for the Glastonbury legends slot

Mikaela Strauss AKA US singer-songwriter King Princess: ‘I thought love was pain … then I began to ask why’

A viral debut made her the next big thing, but rather than repeat herself, she’s followed her heart. The New Yorker talks about the virtues of indie label life, and how her latest record takes on the ‘girl violence’ she sees in lesbian communities

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues review – rockers return for mockusequel of pin-sharp laughs and melancholy

Enter the Tapocalypse as Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Rob Reiner return in a still-funny, cameo-studded telling of the hapless band’s final gig

What should you do if, like me, you are irredeemably naff? Embrace it

From Abba to Supertramp, my taste in music has often inspired a rising sea of scorn. But whatever. I am cool with being uncool, writes Adrian Chiles

‘We were ready to be the next Spice Girls’: X-Cetra, the Y2K girl group earning cult fame 25 years late

When four Californian pre-teens made an album together it was just one of many creative adventures and quickly set aside, but its reputation as naive avant pop has quietly grown. Still friends, the band explain their odd rebirth