Pete Paphides
Formerly The Times’ chief rock critic, Pete Paphides has been writing about music ever since his fanzine Perturbed came to the attention of Melody Maker in 1991. Leaving university the following year, he spent over two years writing for Melody Maker before commencing eight years at Time Out, interviewing artists as disparate as Prince, Radiohead, David Bowie, Cher, Pulp and Sting.
Recent years have seen him interview Paul McCartney, Kanye West, Arctic Monkeys, Mariah Carey, Billy Joel, Mary J Blige and – during an epic bender which culminated at Kebab Machine in Notting Hill – an encounter which saw Paul Weller ordering him to "Have a kebab – it’s your heritage, man."
102 articles
List of articles in the library by artist
Interview by Pete Paphides, The Guardian, 8 June 2002
People were often a bit sneery about Abba, born of Eurovision, duded out in satin and feathers, quintessentially pop. Only years after the group broke ...
Comment by Pete Paphides, The Times, 27 March 2009
IT TAKES SOME doing to instigate a backlash from your fans without actually releasing a record. Yet this month, by revealing that their record company, ...
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 4 June 2010
Sounding older and more confident than early, effortful works such as 'Genie in Bottle', the singer puts the X in Xtina. ...
Report and Interview by Pete Paphides, The Guardian, 8 March 2003
To some, the Here And Now Tour is a has-beens cabaret, to others it's a harmless trip down memory lane. Peter Paphides reports from the ...
Profile and Interview by Pete Paphides, Time Out, 20 December 1995
SOMETIMES IT'S hard to know where the marketing stops and the music begins. When Tori Amos's record company launched her first album, Little Earthquakes in ...
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 31 July 2010
"I WOULD LIKE to think that in ten years' time, if people were to greet a new Arcade Fire album with that sort of build-up, ...
Arctic Monkeys: Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 13 January 2006
GIVEN THAT there probably isn't a guitar-wielding teenager who wouldn't swap with them right now, it might seem strange to suggest that we should feel ...
Arctic Monkeys: Magna Centre, Rotherham
Live Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 24 April 2006
SPEND AN hour in the company of Britain's hottest young band and an inescapable irony heaves into view. How is it that a frontman with ...
India.Arie: Hammersmith Apollo, London
Live Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 22 March 2003
WHERE India.Arie is concerned, the journey to enlightenment will stop at nothing – not even hair. Shorn of her customary dreadlocks since her last British ...
Richard Ashcroft: Keys to the World (Parlophone)
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 20 January 2006
HE MAY BE "a million different people from one day to the next", but if recent form is anything to go by, only one of ...
Book Review by Pete Paphides, Medium, 4 September 2017
THIRTY-THREE YEARS have elapsed since the wildly prodigious Roddy Frame volunteered Aztec Camera's most impressive song to date for release on Alan Horne's Postcard label. ...
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 11 November 2005
HOW TONY PARSONS delighted in playing the contrarian on last Friday's Newsnight Review. Having lived with Babyshambles' long-awaited debut album for a week, the Mirror columnist took ...
Badly Drawn Boy: Born in the UK (EMI)
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 6 October 2006
JAMES BLUNT may have recently been voted Britain's fourth-biggest irritant, but he's found an unlikely ally in Damon Gough, the man who trades as Badly ...
Badly Drawn Boy: Brixton Academy, London
Live Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 14 December 2002
ON HIS arrival in 1997, Badly Drawn Boy was feted as a Beck-style musical polymath, but was then embraced as a traditional singer-songwriter. Lately though, ...
Comment by Pete Paphides, The Times, 12 August 2010
Modern pop stars are corrupting the young, says pop veteran Mike Stock. But isn't that what they've always done? ...
Beyoncé: Shy Big Sister by Day, Wild Girl by Night
Interview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 14 November 2008
Her partner wowed Glastonbury, her music sells millions and her private life keeps everyone guessing. We talk to an unusually demure superstar. ...
Asha Bhosle: Royal Albert Hall, London
Live Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 28 October 2002
POP STARS who complain about their workload might care to ponder the achievements of Asha Bhosle. Since she first stepped into a studio, aged ten, ...
Biffy Clyro on their moment in the Mercury sun
Interview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 23 July 2010
The builders' sons discuss their award nomination, a disastrous support gig for the Rolling Stones, and marital rows. ...
Report and Interview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 10 December 2008
SIX YEARS AFTER they last played together, 13 since their epic chart duel with Oasis and almost three decades after the band's dominant figures met ...
Report and Interview by Pete Paphides, Melody Maker, 21 August 1993
One day last week, THE BMX BANDITS — those hardy Scottish indie perennials — got caught up in a rather bizarre incident involving diminutive Antipodean ...
Boomtown Rats: The Boomtown Rats
Retrospective and Interview by Pete Paphides, MOJO, May 2005
LONDON 1978. Flushed with the vindication that comes with two hit singles, Bob Geldof has decided its time for payback. ...
Kate Bush: Catch Her Drift: Kate Bush: 50 Words For Snow (Fish People/EMI) ****
Review and Interview by Pete Paphides, MOJO, December 2011
Snow as a metaphor for the fragility of youth or a woman with "a thing" for snowmen? Kate Bush's second album of the year is ...
Charlotte Church: Tissues and Issues (Sony BMG)
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 9 July 2005
DID YOU see her on Jonathan Ross the other week? Didn't she do well? Quick-witted, funny and worldly in the face of her interlocutor's ceaseless ...
Circulus, The Incredible String Band: Nowt so queer as acid folk
Report and Interview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 15 July 2005
In a parallel world alongside mainstream rock lies a folk revival. Pete Paphides enters the zone ...
Curve: Radio Sessions (Anxious)
Review by Pete Paphides, Melody Maker, 5 June 1993
THE TROUBLE WITH a lot of these session albums is that they don't appear to offer you anything tastier than slightly less slick versions of ...
Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga: Is Lady Gaga Corrupting Our Kids?
Comment by Pete Paphides, The Times, 12 August 2010
Modern pop stars are corrupting the young, says the pop veteran. But isn't that what they've always done? ...
Daft Punk: French Pop: A Long Way From Françoise Hardy To Daft Punk
Overview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 1 February 2003
IT IS no surprise that France has only just got around to its own equivalent of Top Of The Pops. In a country where philosophy ...
Kiki Dee: The way she came in: Kiki Dee: I'm Kiki Dee (Fontana 1968)
Retrospective by Pete Paphides, MOJO, June 2011
Rescued this month from the dank basement of underground music fandom, '60s pop splendor of uplift and emotional devastation. By Peter Paphides. ...
Cathy Dennis, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark: Songwriters: Musical Chairs
Special Feature by Pete Paphides, The Guardian, 21 September 2002
Today's pop stars, say their critics, aren't half as talented as their predecessors because they have little or nothing to do with writing their songs. ...
Dido, KT Tunstall: Dido et al: Music to Watch Girls Buy
Overview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 25 March 2005
Our correspondent casts a weather eye over the fleet of female singer-songwriters floating their sonic pedalos in the wake of Dido's mighty MOR steamship ...
Nick Drake: Stranger To The World
Retrospective and Interview by Pete Paphides, Observer Music Monthly, 25 April 2004
Nick Drake's rare talent was almost ignored in his brief lifetime. Since his suicide 30 years ago, his legend has grown and now the discovery ...
Nick Drake: Made To Love Magic
Review by Pete Paphides, MOJO, June 2004
The most anticipated Drake release since his death includes a gorgeous five-minute version of 'Three Hours', and the hitherto undiscovered 'Tow The Line'. ...
The Editors: Editors: The Back Room
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 16 July 2005
THE EDITORS' rapidly growing legion of fans sent the group's recent single, 'Munich', into the Top 30 — and by the time you read this, its ...
Interview by Pete Paphides, Melody Maker, 8 January 1994
PETER PAPHIDES thought he was on a simple assignment to secure an exclusive ELASTICA interview. Little did he bank on the whole of Essex wanting ...
Comment by Pete Paphides, The Times, 31 March 2006
We get the football anthems we deserve, says Pete Paphides. Can Embrace score a winner? ...
Emerson Lake & Palmer: Emerson Lake and Palmer: Victoria Park, London
Live Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 26 July 2010
"WE'VE ONLY been away for 12 years — you can make more noise than that!" said the drummer Carl Palmer towards the end of this ...
Example, Professor Green, The Streets: Professor Green and Example are Streets ahead as rap stars
Profile and Interview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 13 July 2010
With the two young London rappers enjoying mainstream success, they explain how they outgrew their mentor, Mike Skinner. ...
The Feeling: Shepherds Bush Empire, London
Live Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 6 November 2006
IT HAS BEEN less than a year since the Feeling released their first single, but in that time the London quintet have chalked up several ...
Review by Pete Paphides, The Word, October 2011
The ravishing, quasi-pagan soundscapes of Feist's third album connect most powerfully just before dawn. Prepare to be spooked. ...
Florence and the Machine: What's Haunting Florence and the Machine?
Report and Interview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 19 June 2009
Florence Welch, of Florence and the Machine, was a macabre child. Now she's haunted by other fears — of success, mainly. ...
Franz Ferdinand: You Could Have It So Much Better (Domino)
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 30 September 2005
WHAT WOULD you give for a tenth of the confidence with which Alex Kapranos carries himself? With five singles taken from Franz Ferdinand's eponymous debut ...
Bob Geldof: Live Aid: The View From The Pitch
Memoir by Pete Paphides, The Observer, 17 October 2004
Nothing was going to stop a schoolboy fan of the Boomtown Rats making it to Wembley on that fateful day. Peter Paphides recalls every high ...
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 3 March 2006
OUT IN CYBERSPACE reunion rumours swirl with niggling persistence, but David Gilmour's perpetual half-smile masks an unyielding nature. Asked about a putative Pink Floyd re-formation ...
Live Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 27 April 2009
SOULLESS THEY may be, but modern leisure hangars are efficient places when it comes to meeting the needs of those who come to see their ...
Girls Aloud: The Trojan Horses of Pop
Interview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 20 October 2006
Girls Aloud can't write songs. So what? They turned pop on its head ...
Gogol Bordello: Careful with that act, Eugene
Interview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 10 March 2006
The name of Eugene Hütz's band is only part of his Ukrainian whimsy, Pete Paphides discovers ...
Profile and Interview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 11 April 2008
JUST BECAUSE Goldfrapp's new single is a sunny pop tune that goes by the name of 'Happiness', it doesn't mean that Alison Goldfrapp holds any ...
Ed Harcourt: From Every Sphere
Review by Pete Paphides, The Word, March 2003
IF THEY DON'T write songs like they used to, no one told Ed Harcourt. Before the 26-year-old former chef put out his first album — ...
Juliana Hatfield: No Fun Girl Three: The Juliana Hatfield Three: Become What You Are (east west)
Review by Pete Paphides, Melody Maker, 31 July 1993
SHE'S KIND OF complicated, our Juliana. Like in the way most people are complicated. ...
Robyn Hitchcock: Why Is Robyn Hitchcock Better Off Without Hit Records?
Interview by Pete Paphides, The Word, December 2004
ON FIRST impression, only the birds printed all over his shirt detract from Robyn Hitchcock's professorial air. It was his idea to rendezvous in Swiss ...
The Incredible String Band: A Goat of Many Colours: The Incredible String Band
Retrospective and Interview by Pete Paphides, Rock's Backpages, October 2008
Forty years ago this month, The Incredible String Band released their benchmark double album Wee Tam & The Big Huge, just one of many milestones ...
Michael Jackson: Child star Michael Jackson became a man with a rebel "Yeow"
Retrospective by Pete Paphides, The Times, 27 June 2009
THE FOOTAGE is grainy and has been replayed a million times, used on every programme ever made about Michael Jackson's life. ...
Michael Jackson: The Musical Appreciation
Overview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 26 June 2009
You didn't just like his music. You believed in him, whatever the distance between musical legacy and personal strife. ...
Bert Jansch: A Modest Man with an Immodest Talent
Obituary by Pete Paphides, The Guardian, 6 October 2011
"REMEMBER ASKING Bert, 'When you were doing it, did you know that you were like … heavy? Heavier than all those bands that were heavy? ...
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 24 July 2010
WHEN ASKED WHAT he does for a living, Simon Cowell says his job is to "guess what's going to be popular". In fact, the strange ...
Kaiser Chiefs... but Under Your Control
Profile and Interview by Pete Paphides, The Guardian, 3 June 2011
Burned by past leaks, Kaiser Chiefs release their new album today after exactly zero buildup – and it might well be the world's first bespoke ...
King Creosote, Tunng: Luminare, London
Live Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 3 August 2005
TUNNG'S percussionist has a range of shells, chimes and beaded items of Middle Eastern persuasion available to him. But for their second song, 'Kinky Vans', he ...
Lucky Luke, Trembling Bells: Lucky Luke: Travelling For A Living/Trembling Bells: The Marble Downs
Review by Pete Paphides, The Word, June 2012
Lucky Luke were the greatest folk band that never was. They live on in Trembling Bells — now with added Will Oldham. ...
The Maccabees: The Maccabees May Yet Become Greats
Interview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 29 January 2010
The NME tour's latest headliners may be the next big thing, but they remain modest enough to doubt their No1 potential ...
Profile and Interview by Pete Paphides, Time Out, 18 March 1995
IT'S BEEN a long ascent for Kirsty MacColl. Over 15 years, she's toiled away unassumingly in pursuit of that elusive beast, the perfect pop song. ...
Shane MacGowan: Roamin' Catholic
Interview by Pete Paphides, Time Out, 22 September 1994
It's a long way to Tipperary. Ask Shane MacGowan, who staggered out of The Pogues to spend two years exploring his home town and re-examining ...
John Martyn: May we never forget the genius of John Martyn
Obituary by Pete Paphides, The Times, 30 January 2009
FOR MANY MUSIC fans, one lingering image of John Martyn, the British singer-songwriter who has died at the age of 60, remains preserved in the ...
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 10 July 2010
"I WANT TO be an outsider," she said, eating a truffle-flavoured French fry. A feature in the New York Times on the Sri Lankan-born, London-raised ...
Midlake get set to take Glastonbury
Interview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 18 June 2010
MIDLAKE'S TIM SMITH is hunched over the small sink beside his Bristol dressing room. Possibly because an overnight trip from Belgium has left him bereft ...
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 1 October 2005
FUNNY WHAT mainstream appeal can do to an artist. Ms Dynamite has never sounded like someone who strived too hard to achieve it, but her ...
Paolo Nutini: Paisley's Own Caped Crusader
Profile and Interview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 16 February 2010
SEVERAL MONTHS have elapsed since Paolo Nutini got the idea for his performance at the 2010 Brit Awards. If he remembers the moment well, that'll ...
Live Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 1 July 2005
THESE DAYS, the Zeitgeist might prefer to be seen on the town with the likes of Coldplay – but for a band shadowed by past ...
Plan B on overcoming his anger
Interview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 17 July 2010
His hit 'She Said' is the song of the year so far, and half a million people have bought his critically acclaimed album. But if ...
Plan B: Who Needs Actions When You Got Words
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 16 June 2006
AS EUREKA moments go, Ben Drew's was so obvious it seems perverse that he didn't think of it before. ...
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss: Raising Sand
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 26 October 2007
OUT OF THE BLUE, Jo Bartlett, the co-organiser of the small folk festival, Green Man, received a phone call one day from someone purporting to ...
Prefab Sprout: Why Prefab Sprout's return with 'America' is a whim and a wonder
Report by Pete Paphides, The Guardian, 6 March 2017
Paddy McAloon surfaced on Friday with a new track that is heartbreaking in an entirely unexpected way. ...
Interview by Pete Paphides, MOJO, July 2004
PANNED ON ITS RELEASE, STEVIE WONDER'S JOURNEY THROUGH THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS MADE PREFAB SPROUT'S PADDY MCALOON A SONGWRITER. ...
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 17 March 2006
IN THE SIXTIES, when record companies thought nothing of squeezing two albums a year from their artists, the music industry benefited rampantly productive artists. As ...
Live Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 10 December 2008
IN 1996, WHEN Keith Flint – the face that soonest springs to mind when people think of the Prodigy – shovelled on the kohl and ...
Interview by Pete Paphides, Time Out, 11 October 1995
Captain's log, chartdate 1995: Pulp, Britpop's most militant misfits, are set to trounce rivals with a new zeitgeist-friendly album of caustic lyrics, hum-me tunes and ...
Pulp, Saint Etienne: Saint Etienne, Pulp: Mayfair, Glasgow
Live Review by Pete Paphides, Melody Maker, 6 March 1993
WHAM BAM, THANK YOU, GLAM! ...
Queen: Mercury Rising: We Will Rock You
Comment by Pete Paphides, The Guardian, 11 May 2002
A new West End musical, We Will Rock You, plunders Queen's back catalogue for tunes. But, says Peter Paphides, it misses the chance to tell ...
Profile and Interview by Pete Paphides, MOJO, August 2003
Depression, dysfunction and near-dissolution – Radiohead have spent the last few years in the wilderness. In a series of astonishingly intimate interviews, Peter Paphides charts ...
Radiohead: 93 Feet East, London
Live Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 17 January 2008
IT STARTED AT 10am yesterday and by mid-afternoon reached epidemic proportions. Radiohead fans all over London complained that they felt unwell — well, that's what ...
Profile and Interview by Pete Paphides, Time Out, 5 November 1997
It's hard to believe, but only four years ago no one really knew who Radiohead were. Now, with OK Computer lodged firmly in the Top ...
Live Review by Pete Paphides, Melody Maker, 23 January 1993
TRANSISTOR LOVERS ...
Corinne Bailey Rae : Corinne Bailey Rae: Corinne Bailey Rae
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 24 February 2006
LEST WE FORGET, this isn't the first time that a new artist has been propelled into the spotlight to massed cries that she's the new ...
Live Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 10 May 2010
IF 2008 WAS the year in which Rihanna consolidated her status as a global pop phenomenon and 2009 the year that she came back stronger ...
Alasdair Roberts & Friends: Too Long in This Condition
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 14 August 2010
The folk musician, Alasdair Roberts, has a preoccupation with death. ...
Mark Ronson, Amy Winehouse: Record Shopping with Mark Ronson
Report and Interview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 24 September 2010
He may have fallen out with Amy Winehouse but the A-list producer finds a soulmate in a fellow vinyl obsessive ...
Saint Etienne: Lives Of The Saints (And Their Kids)
Interview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 3 June 2005
Saint Etienne have produced a concept album and a set of children's songs. But they aren't Yes ...
Profile by Pete Paphides, The Guardian, 5 October 2002
They raced from zero to inner-city heroes in one summer, then stalled in scandal. But don't write off So Solid – there's a serious business ...
Candi Staton: How tragedy makes the diva
Retrospective and Interview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 13 February 2009
WHAT IS CANDI Staton doing on Valentine's Day? With hindsight, it seems an indiscreet question to ask a single 65-year-old woman. ...
Stereolab: Space Age Bachelor Pad Music (Too Pure)
Review by Pete Paphides, Melody Maker, 20 March 1993
"BASICALLY, I want to change the world. I want to make people think about how they live every day, shake them a bit." ...
The Streets: The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 7 April 2006
DOES IT SIGNAL the beginning of the end when an artist casts around for inspiration and can think of nothing to write about other than ...
Sway: This Is My Demo (Dcypha)
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 3 February 2006
IF THIS is the moment that Derek Asafo — aka Sway — crosses over, you can hardly blame him for exercising a little caution. For ...
Profile and Interview by Pete Paphides, The Guardian, 10 February 2011
June Tabor's new album draws inspiration from the sea. But dogs, cows and a margarine ad also featured when Pete Paphides met her. ...
The Thrills: Filesharing etc.: Money Pit
Comment by Pete Paphides, The Guardian, 11 October 2003
Who are the victims of music filesharing? Peter Paphides reveals the real band of thieves ...
Tinie Tempah, The Prince Of Grime, Hits The Big Time
Interview by Pete Paphides, The Times, 2 October 2010
Tinie Tempah, our new rap superstar, talks music, fashion and royal hobnobbing ...
The United States Of America: The United States Of America (Sundazed)
Review by Pete Paphides, MOJO, August 2004
James Coburn dug their insurrectionary space rock; Paul Simon hated it; no one else cared until decades later. An era-defining underground album resurfaces with 10 extra ...
Dennis Wilson: Pacific Ocean Blue (Legacy Edition)
Review by Pete Paphides, Uncut, July 2008
A lost career collected: his solo masterpiece, plus its follow-up. ...
Retrospective and Interview by Pete Paphides, The Word, April 2004
When the police found him howling at the moon in a mud-stained Santa suit after calling his mother the worst word imaginable, it was another ...
XTC: Andy Partridge: English Settlement
Report and Interview by Pete Paphides, MOJO, February 2003
BEARING IN MIND his back catalogue, it may not be too surprising to learn that Andy Partridge is an assiduous recycler. ...
List of genre pieces
Farewell, Smash 'Makes Mash' Hits
Obituary by Pete Paphides, The Times, 3 February 2006
Paying tribute to the mag that had its finger on the pulse, but now has no pulse at all ...
Comment by Pete Paphides, The Times, 11 June 2005
Songs about conflict and warfare are guaranteed to destroy a musician's credibility ...
Comment by Pete Paphides, Observer Music Monthly, 18 July 2004
Will iTunes really kill off the record shop? Perhaps not – after all, digital information isn't something you can have and hold. And, says Peter ...
Report by Pete Paphides, The Guardian, 16 November 2002
For adolescents, it was a thrill – the first music they owned. Singles survive in the CD age as bootlegs and indie specials. Their covers ...
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