Pop, rock and more
David Byrne – Who Is the Sky?
For Byrne’s first album since his hugely acclaimed American Utopia tour – and the subsequent Spike Lee-directed film – he’s working with an orchestra, as well as St Vincent and Paramore singer Hayley Williams, among others. The two tracks released so far, She Explains Things To Me and Everybody Laughs, have proved to be sweetly sunny and driven by acoustic guitar. The accompanying tour – due to reach Europe next year – will apparently “blend visual art, storytelling and music into one compelling live performance”.
• Released 5 September
Saint Etienne – International
Saint Etienne have been an endlessly fascinating fixture on the leftfield of pop for 25 years, spawning everything from Top 10 singles to documentaries about the Lea Valley and the South Bank. Their most recent albums I’ve Been Trying To Tell You and The Night have delved into concept-driven ambient experimental territory with hugely rewarding results, but International is to be their final release. Something of the breadth of their approach is revealed by the list of collaborators, which stretches from DJ Erol Alkan to 80s heart-throb Nick Heyward.
• Released 5 September
Jade – That’s Showbiz Baby
Jade Thirlwall’s former band Little Mix made a clutch of great hits but nothing that could prepare you for the deeply idiosyncratic charms of Thirwall’s tempo-shifting Puppet On a String-sampling Angel of My Dreams. If subsequent releases haven’t quite bent the rules in such a striking manner, then they’ve certainly been of an impressively high quality, pushing her debut solo album into the “eagerly awaited” category.
• Released 12 September
Self Esteem
Rebecca Taylor’s third album as Self Esteem, A Complicated Woman, didn’t propel her into pop’s big league in the way some people expected, but no matter. The high-concept, tightly choreographed live shows she’s thus far performed around it – in a West End theatre shortly before its release and at a packed-out Park stage at Glastonbury shortly after – were rapturously received and understandably so: a sometime actor, Taylor has a keen sense of theatricality, but she’s also a straightforwardly commanding, hugely engaging performer.
• Tour begins 15 September, 02 Academy Birmingham
Cardi B – Am I the Drama?
The follow-up to a debut album that came out in 2018 – the rapper has been concentrating on motherhood in the intervening period – Am I the Drama? has been so long in the pipeline that at least one of the singles confirmed as part of the tracklisting, the chart-topping, controversy-generating Megan Thee Stallion collaboration WAP, is five years old. Whatever your reasons, taking an extended leave of absence is a risky business in a genre as fast-moving as hip-hop: whether Am I the Drama? succeeds in re-establishing her at its centre remains to be seen.
• Released 19 September
Kokoroko
The London jazz collective’s most recent album Tuff Times Never Last offered up a gorgeous selection of midtempo but funky tracks influenced in equal part by Afrobeat, highlife and – occasionally – old-fashioned 80s British soul. Its contents were frequently gorgeous – blissful single Sweetie is a hot afternoon in musical form – but when playing live, the band really come into their own: the danceability is amped up, the fluid virtuosity of the musicianship becomes even more evident.
• Tour begins 19 September, Leeds Project House
Robert Plant – Saving Grace
Robert Plant’s “new” band – formed with musicians local to his home on the Welsh borders – first debuted six years ago with a handful of small UK gigs at which they performed an intriguing range of covers and a couple of Led Zeppelin classics. A similar approach informs their debut album, intermittently recorded over six years, with the admirably eclectic Plant and co essaying tracks by everyone from Memphis Minnie to Moby Grape to Low.
• Released 26 September
Lady Gaga
The noisy electronics, big pop choruses and dancefloor-facing beats of Lady Gaga’s last album Mayhem felt like a restatement of her core pop values after the commercial and creative wobble of her appearance in Joker: Folie à Deux and her accompanying jazz-infused album Harlequin. If US reviews are anything to go by, the Mayhem Ball tour offers a suitably eye-popping high-camp, high-production-value theatrical extravaganza, described by one unexpected concert-goer, Nancy Pelosi, as “the most fun I’ve had in a long time”.
• Tour begins 29 September, London O2 Arena
CMAT
Pop is a notoriously tricky business to predict, but you wouldn’t bet against CMAT’s third album Euro-Country being a hit on a scale that far outstrips her past work. It’s musically more expansive than its country-infused predecessors and stuffed with fantastic, provocative songs, as evidenced by the viral success of Take a Sexy Picture of Me. And, as anyone who caught her Glastonbury appearance knows, she is absolutely fantastic live: sharp, exceptionally funny, blessed with an incredible voice and quite unlike anyone else around.
• Tour beings 2 October, O2 Academy Brixton
Taylor Swift – The Life of a Showgirl
Rumblings of a new Swift album seemed impossible: the glitter from the Eras tour had only just settled; she had a new album just last year. Underrate pop’s most high-achieving workaholic at your peril: she recently revealed that she recorded her 12th album between Eras dates, flying to Sweden to record with Max Martin and Shellback – the co-architects of her most laser-guided pop smashes from Red, 1989 and Reputation. No one’s heard a peep, but she’s promised “melodies that [are] so infectious you’re almost angry … and lyrics that are just as vivid”.
• Released 3 October
Little Simz
Simz’s sixth album, Lotus, was not an easy listen: it emerged from a period of turmoil in which she started and scrapped four different full-length projects and ended up suing her former chief collaborator Inflo; its angry, diaristic lyrics were matched with raw, occasionally rock-facing production. But it seems to have done nothing to halt the rapper’s continuing rise: after she curated and performed at this year’s Meltdown festival on the South Bank, she’s ascended to arenas for this autumn tour.
• Tour begins 16 October, Manchester Co-op Live
Jalen Ngonda
If your tastes run to classic soul, then US-born, UK-based singer-songwriter Jalen Ngonda represents the real deal. His voice is incredible – there are shades of Marvin Gaye and David Ruffin about his delivery, but his sound is his own – and he’s a skilled songwriter, as his 2023 debut album Come Around and Love Me and the handful of singles he’s released since displayed. He’s also reliably fantastic live: relentless touring means tickets are already running low for these UK shows.
• Tour begins 16 October, Newcastle City Hall
Jasmine.4.t
Jasmine Cruickshank’s You Are the Morning is one of 2025’s finest debut albums. She has what would once have been called “heavy friends” on board – it was produced by Boygenius, whose Phoebe Bridgers signed Cruickshank to her Saddest Factory label – but, in truth, she doesn’t need the endorsement of alt-rock royalty. She’s a fantastic songwriter in the old-fashioned, rough-hewn indie manner, who’s transformed tough personal challenges into powerful and ultimately joy-bringing music.
• Tour begins 11 November, London Scala
Kneecap
Somewhere underneath the continual tumult surrounding Kneecap, there lurks a band who are exceptionally good at what they do, not that the attendant furore has dented their popularity. Quite the opposite: a July gig in Glasgow sold out in 80 seconds after they were dropped from the Trnsmt festival, while this tour is bookended by a September date at Wembley Arena – which provoked more controversy after a poster advertising the show was banned from the London Underground – and two sold-out arena dates in Dublin.
• Tour begins 18 September at the OVO Arena Wembley London
Lorde
Lorde debuted her fourth album Virgin, in its entirety, at a not-so-secret performance at this summer’s Glastonbury, her first live appearance in the UK for three years. That it attracted a mixed response tells you more about playing 40 minutes of unheard material to a festival audience than said material’s quality: Virgin is an impressively dark, emotionally ragged restatement of the dance-pop sound of 2017’s Melodrama – and expectations understandably run high for her tour.
• Tour begins 15 November, Manchester Co-op Live
Stereolab
After a decade-long hiatus, Stereolab returned to a pop world that seemed to have come around to their way of thinking, at least a little. Critically revered outliers in the 90s – lyrics influenced by Marxist critical theory, music by Krautrock and esoteric electronica – they now find themselves acclaimed by Tyler, the Creator and Pharrell Williams, their motorik sound a regular rock trope, and their critiques of late-stage capitalism mainstreamed. And yet they still sound entirely unique and wonderful: comeback album Instant Holograms on Metal Film is a gem.
• Tour begins 15 December at Royal Festival Hall, London
Classical
The Dream of Gerontius
A homecoming for Elgar’s mighty oratorio – the greatest of his choral works. Written for the Birmingham music festival, this performance will take place almost exactly 125 years after its premiere in Birmingham town hall. Kazuki Yamada conducts the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with soloists Roderick Williams, Jess Dandy and David Butt Philip.
• Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 17 September
Oliver Leith’s Garland
The young British composer most substantial work since his 2022 eye-catching Kurt Cobain-inspired opera Last Days has its world premiere at Peckham’s Bold Tendencies, the former multistorey. He describes it as a “big processional” piece; 118 performers will be involved, plus apparently, a horse, bicycles, a car and other pedestrian detritus “played” to create noise and rhythm.
• Bold Tendencies, London, 18-19 September
Cinderella (La Cenerentola)
Her probing staging of Flying Dutchman earlier this summer for Opera Holland Park won acclaim; what will Julia Burbach make of Rossini’s Cinderella story? ENO opens a much reduced season with the sparkling comic opera with Burbach and conductor Yi-Chen Lin both making their Coliseum debuts
• Coliseum, London, 27 September-14 October
Chineke! Beethoven’s Triple Concerto
After a Prom with Simon Rattle, the Black and ethnically diverse orchestra continue their 10th birthday celebrations with Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, featuring three of their most celebrated alumni, Tai Murray, Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Isata Kanneh-Mason. A new work by Errollyn Wallen, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Ballade and William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony complete the touring programme.
• Warwick Arts Centre, 24 September; Royal Festival Hall, London, 28 September; National Concert Hall, Dublin, 30 September
Tamboo-Bamboo: Concerto for Timpani and Orchestra
The world premiere of Matthew Rooke’s concerto spotlights the Trinidadian instrument with a rich and complex history. Beethoven’s Eroica ends the evening, Andrzej Panufnik’s Sinfonia Sacra opens a fascinating concert with US conductor Anthony Parnther making his debut with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
• Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 24 October; Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, 25 October
The Hallé’s John Adams festival
A three-day festival celebrates US composer John Adams, with works old and new across four concerts. The composer himself will conduct his choral symphony, Harmonium, his longtime collaborator the violinist Leila Josefowicz will perform Scheherezade.2 (written for her), and the UK premiere of his newest composition, the The Rock You Stand On, brings the mini-festival to a close.
• Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 30 October to 1 November
The Railway Children
Earlier this year the Royal Opera’s triumphant staging of Festen confirmed Mark-Anthony Turnage as one of the leading opera composers of our day. How would he follow that troubling tale of paedophilia, racism and deceit? With an adaption of E Nesbit’s much-loved gentle and quaint 1906 children’s story, of course.
• Glyndebourne, 30 October to 1 November; 8 November Queen Elizabeth Hall, London (semi-staged)
The Makropulos Case, Royal Opera
Janáček’s enigmatic late masterpiece comes to Covent Garden for the first time in a staging by Katie Mitchell and with Royal Ballet and Opera’s newly installed Czech-born music director Jakub Hrůša in the pit. Ausrine Stundyte is Emilia, blessed – or cursed – with immortality, and the top notch cast also includes Peter Hoare, Johan Reuter and Alan Oke.
• Royal Opera House, London, 4-21 November
Rebecca Clarke Focus Day
Clarke (1886-1979) was a pioneering instrumentalist and composer who was declared by Gramophone “one of the very best of her time”, and “almost certainly the best composer of any period to have also been a woman”. A day of concerts, talks and music by her contemporaries offers a chance to hear much of her little-played and little-known music. Performers include Kitty Whately, Ailish Tynan and pianist Anna Tilbrook.
• Wigmore Hall, London, 8 November
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Simon Rattle in Liverpool
Almost 50 years to the day since their last visit, the Munich orchestra returns to Merseyside with its new Liverpool-born conductor. Half a century ago, the young Simon was in the audience to hear them. Now, he leads the band in a programme of Schumann and Stravinsky.
• Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, 10 November
