The Dublin chart-toppers are back with their third album, the pop-skewing ‘Wide Awake’. Ahead of its release, the band sit down with Mark Beaumont to chat about acclimatising to arenas, quarter-life crises, ‘nasty’ politicians – and why their frontman being the son of rock luminary Bono only made them work harder

Twenty years on from the group’s genre-splicing debut album, Mark Beaumont talks to those who were there, from The Rapture to Hot Chip, about the most influential New York band of the Noughties

Everyone remembers the Irish singer’s mesmerising video for ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’. Few know that Prince was the musician who wrote and released the original – or the level of chaos that ensued when he and O’Connor met. On the song’s 35th anniversary, Mark Beaumont delves into its emotive story

The 82-year-old delivers an extraordinary set drawn almost entirely from The Beatles and Wings canons, bringing tears, nostalgia and even screaming

The soulful Sixties crooner was 33 when he was shot by the manager of a $3-a-night motel in Los Angeles. The lingering conspiracies surrounding his death, writes Mark Beaumont, threaten to overshadow a life of music and civil rights activism – not to mention a voice that would go on to influence Otis Redding and Tina Turner

Bidding farewell to 2024, The Independent’s music critics Mark Beaumont and Helen Brown count down the best albums of the year