Virgin Media Music
Virgin Media Music is a section of the Virgin Media website, which provides music streaming services consumers in the United Kingdom.
47 articles
List of articles in the library
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 1 March 2010
ELLIE GOULDING tripped into the public consciousness two weeks ago, as she stood knock-kneed and tongue-tied between Fearne Cotton, Geri Halliwell and Courtney Love at ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, June 2010
CHRISTINA AGUILERA'S first album in four years finds the former golden girl of US pop re-emerging into a musical world where Lady GaGa has set ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, June 2010
Smiley Virus bumps along on autopilot ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, August 2010
What Katy did next — world domination! ...
Kanye West : My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, November 2010
AFTER THE disappointing reviews and sales of his autotune-laden 2008 album 808s & Heartbreak, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a magnificent return to form ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, November 2010
THE LEVELS OF anticipation surrounding Nicki Minaj's debut album have been so delirious that you almost expect Pink Friday not to be delivered by digital ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 12 September 2011
HAVING SEEN his debut single, the haunting picture of a teenage drug-addict prostitute that was 'The A Team', hit number three earlier this year, Sheeran ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 19 September 2011
KASABIAN HAVE loudly proclaimed their fourth studio album to be a classic. This is no surprise: they always do. ...
Emeli Sandé: Our Version of Events
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 13 February 2012
SHE IS SET to be one of the pop faces of 2012 but Emeli Sandé is not yet the finished article. This doesn't mean she ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, March 2012
THIRTY YEARS INTO her career yet still at the apex of the pop world, Madonna is a victim of her own success in that she ...
Florence and the Machine: MTV Unplugged
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 10 April 2012
WHEN YOU REMOVE the noise and bluster from Florence + The Machine songs, what is actually left? ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, June 2012
This time around, Justin Bieber wants us to know that he is all grown up. He is a man. ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 4 June 2012
WHEN THE HIVES broke through here in 2002 with their top 10 compilation album Your New Favourite Band, they appeared exciting and irresistible. ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, September 2012
A FULL QUARTER of a century into their career, the Californian pop-punks should really be churning out tired, formulaic albums or, more likely, contemplating splitting. ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, October 2012
IT'S VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE to believe that Taylor Swift is still only 22. ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 8 October 2012
ELLIE GOULDING has been letting it be known that this follow-up to her three-million-selling debut album, Lights, is a far darker and more troubled record, ...
Robbie Williams: Take The Crown
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 5 November 2012
"I THINK everything about Robbie Williams is fantastic," Morrissey once declared, "except the voice and the songs." ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 14 January 2013
NEW YORK rapper A$AP Rocky's debut has been a long time in the making. Originally scheduled for release last September, it was then mysteriously delayed ...
Peace interview: Are they the saviours of indie?
Interview by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 19 March 2013
Is indie rock poised for a comeback? For two years or so now, the charts have been dominated by tinny, Autotune-heavy rave-pop and sensitive acoustic ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 25 March 2013
THE STROKES WILL never remotely equal the zeitgeist-straddling stature of their emergence around the millennium, when the five attitudinal New Yorkers were hailed as the ...
Daft Punk: Random Access Memories
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, May 2013
DAFT PUNK'S FORTE has always been their sleek, glistening futurism, the sense of mischievous glee they take in the very textures of electronic sound. ...
The National: Trouble Will Find Me
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 20 May 2013
IN THE EARLY '90s, Britain's hippest TV show was an imported American drama series named thirtysomething. The series told the stories of a group of ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 3 June 2013
CLUBLAND HAS been polarised between two dispiriting extremes for close on a decade now. If the DJ isn't playing twitchy, edgy, introspective grime or dubstep, ...
Queens Of The Stone Age: …Like Clockwork
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 3 June 2013
QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE occasionally get called a metal band. This is rather like calling Picasso a house painter. The veteran Californian band may ...
Jay Z: Jay-Z: Magna Carta Holy Grail
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, July 2013
WHAT DO YOU do when you are a multi-millionaire businessman who hangs out with the Obamas but still wants to be a gangsta? ...
Robin Thicke: Blurred Lines ***
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, July 2013
It's difficult not to view Robin Thicke as definitive proof of the age-old adage that sex sells. ...
Iggy Azalea: "I haven't got daddy issues!"
Interview by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 10 July 2013
IN 2004, A 14-year-old Australian white girl named Amethyst Kelly heard Tupac Shakur for the first time. Blown away by his poetic intensity, she resolved ...
Robin Thicke: Who is Robin Thicke?
Comment by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 25 July 2013
WHATEVER YOUR thoughts on its icky sexist video of gyrating, semi-naked models, it is impossible to deny that the lascivious R&B throb of Robin Thicke's ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, September 2013
Arctic Monkeys now routinely operate at such a rarefied pitch that it is easy to take their excellence for granted. ...
Kings Of Leon: Mechanical Bull
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, September 2013
THREE YEARS AGO, things were looking distinctly bleak for the arena-filling Nashville rockers. Following a sub-par fifth album, Come Around Sundown, that singer Caleb Followill ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 23 September 2013
HIS LAST ALBUM, Take Care, was a multi-platinum-selling number one around the globe, but if anything this has plunged hip hop's most angst-ridden player into ...
Miley Cyrus: Bangerz Track-By-Track Review
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, October 2013
PROVOCATIVE. That seems to be the word we are contractually obliged to use in relation to Miley Cyrus nowadays. Her provocative new musical direction. Provocative ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 7 October 2013
BRITNEY, JUSTIN T, XTINA… Miley Cyrus is not the first former Disney starlet to chafe at her anodyne past and yearn to show us her ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 21 October 2013
KATY PERRY, the frivolous, hard-partying pop starlet, has an unfortunate Achilles heel – she wants to be taken seriously. ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, November 2013
IT IS JAKE BUGG'S misfortune to be recording in a cynical, over-mediated age. ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 4 November 2013
Rappers are arguably more vulnerable than any other artists to difficult second album syndrome. ...
Celine Dion: "I am having my wild moment!"
Interview by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 8 November 2013
YOU DON'T GET to be the most successful female singer in history, selling more than 200 million albums, without looking after your voice. Thirty minutes ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 18 November 2013
WHEN DEV HYNES emerged almost a decade ago as one-third of slapstick punk deconstructionists Test Icicles, there was little reason to suspect he was an ...
Robbie Williams: Swings Both Ways
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 18 November 2013
WHAT IS THE point of Robbie Williams in 2013? It is a question worth asking, as Robbie nowadays finds himself in a career mid-life crisis. ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 2 December 2013
RARE IS THE A-list artist today who doesn't launch their new album by breathlessly proclaiming it their most honest, intimate, confessional magnum opus to date. ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 13 January 2014
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN albums are often statements, whether 2002's The Rising's heartfelt response to 9/11, or 2012's Wrecking Ball's vitriolic condemnation of the fat-cat bankers behind ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 24 February 2014
A MAVERICK musical magpie, Beck has over his 20-year career veered off into nu-folk, Mississippi blues, hip-hop, country, funk and electro-hued pop noir. He never ...
Paloma Faith: A Perfect Contradiction
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 10 March 2014
THE BIG-LUNGED Hackney soul siren is tremendous fun, a deeply entertaining live performer and raconteur, and her burlesque-inspired raids on the dressing-up box frequently yield ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 21 April 2014
AZALEA IS certainly one of the most singular pop success stories of recent years. ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, May 2014
HEARING GHOST STORIES, it is unclear whether you are listening to a new pop album or intruding on devastating personal grief. ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 5 May 2014
HAVING ANNOUNCED her "retirement" when she retreated to the countryside to start a family five years ago, Lily Allen affects to be nervous of her ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Virgin Media Music, 5 May 2014
ON HER TWO previous albums, Youth Novels and Wounded Rhymes, Li perfected a strain of forensically intense Scandi-pop that majored in brooding atmospherics, glacial synths ...
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