Central Cee – Can’t Rush Greatness
Since the release of 2022’s Doja and the following year’s Sprinter, Central Cee has looked like UK rap’s biggest hope, not least because he’s achieved what no UK rapper has since Monie Love: genuine commercial success in the US. Both Doja and Sprinter went platinum there, and he’s been tapped by J Cole and Ice Spice for feature slots on their hit singles. It means expectations run high for Can’t Rush Greatness, a title that reflects this is his debut album, eight years after his first releases.
• Released 24 January
FKA twigs – Eusexua
As usual, FKA twigs’ first album in five years comes wrapped in a concept – Eusexua apparently suggests a state of ecstasy so intense that you transcend human form – while the singles so far released suggest a distinct dancefloor focus, inspired by the club scene of her adopted hometown of Prague. Given that it was co-produced by veteran DJ Sasha, the title track deals in trancey techno, while the Stargate collaboration Perfect Stranger throws a distinct UK garage influence (and huge pop chorus) into the mix, and Drums of Death offers dark-hued, potent electro.
• Released 24 January
Lady Blackbird
Ever since Marley Munroe took the stage name Lady Blackbird – from the Beatles song she recorded in the wake of George Floyd’s murder – her star has spiralled upwards. She’s a fantastic vocalist, whose background in jazz doesn’t preclude the influence of gospel, soul, folk and psychedelia. On her 2024 album, Slang Spirituals, she shifted away from the covers that dominated its predecessor, Black Acid Soul, and her self-penned material turned out to be great: that there’s no shift in quality between her own songs and the album’s solitary cover – an epic reworking of Bettye Swan’s 70s soul classic When the Game Is Played On You – tells its own story.
• Tour begins 29 January, London Palladium
Jpegmafia
The wilfully confrontational Jpegmafia exists on the fringes of hip-hop, his chaotic, head-spinning take on rap involving noise, punk, avant-garde electronica and – on his 2024 album I Lay Down My Life For You – 170bpm Brazilian funk. It’s an acquired taste, but he’s exceptionally good at what he does, a skilled MC and an inveterate risk-taker with intriguing, if occasionally contradictory, things to say about race: he is, after all, a Black artist with a predominantly white audience. And the fact that he’s playing a 1,500-capacity venue in London suggests his no-compromise approach is building a bigger fanbase than expected.
• Tour begins 4 February, London Roundhouse
Sam Fender – People Watching
Fender cuts an anomalous figure in current British pop. The charts aren’t exactly over-burdened with unashamedly political, working-class and Geordie-accented social-realist stadium rock: his biggest single, the triple-platinum title track of 2021’s Seventeen Going Under, was a vfestival-rousing anthem about toxic masculinity, violence, mental illness and his unwell, debt-ridden mother’s failure to access benefits from the DWP. It makes sense that he’s hooked up with the War on Drugs’ Adam Granduciel for his third album – the pair clearly share a love of Bruce Springsteen’s heartland rock – and the tracks released so far feel more subtle and opaque than those that made Fender famous.
• Released 21 Feburary
Clairo
Clairo first made her name with a succession of self-penned songs and homemade YouTube videos: Pretty Girl and Flaming Hot Cheetos more-or-less defined the latterday notion of bedroom pop. But for her third album, 2024’s Charm, she collaborated with various luminaries from New York’s celebrated Daptone label, crafting a slick, warm, sophisticated blend of soft rock, alt-pop and soul, with the occasional hint of Stereolab, that was one of the most appealing albums of the year. Following this brief tour, she’s also playing at the BST Hyde Park show headlined by Sabrina Carpenter, alongside Beabadoobee.
• Tour begins 13 March, London Eventim Apollo
Steven Wilson – The Overview
The slow but steady commercial rise of Steven Wilson’s career – from frontman of 90s prog rock outliers Porcupine Tree to a string of Top 5 solo albums over the last 10 years – is fascinating: his music is complex and unashamedly cerebral, balancing electronics and post-punk influences with an audible love of Pink Floyd and Yes. The follow-up to 2023’s acclaimed The Harmony Codex sounds like a full-blooded return to prog territory: two side-long tracks, based around a concept involving the transformative effect reported by astronauts who’ve seen Earth from space.
• Released 14 March
Tyler, the Creator
Once forced to cancel a UK tour after former home secretary Theresa May banned him from entering the country, Tyler, the Creator has become one of hip-hop’s most deep and expansive artists. His most recent album, Chromakopia, is an eclectic and hugely impressive exploration of memory, adulthood, celebrity and identity, and his first UK tour in five years comes after a spectacular headlining slot at last April’s Coachella, with support from Paris Texas, and Lil Yachty.
• Tour begins 17 May, Birmingham Utilita Arena
Lana Del Rey – The Right Person Will Stay
The pivot towards country music was one of US pop’s more intriguing trends in 2024, involving everyone from Beyoncé to Post Malone and Dua Lipa, and making stars of Shaboozey and Dasha. That Lana Del Rey’s forthcoming album continues the trend makes sense: “All my albums are somewhat rooted in Americana,” she said. “If anything, it will just be a little lighter lyrically, and more pointed in a classic country, American, or Southern Gothic production.” It’s not a huge leap to imagine her dramatic, storytelling songs about bad boyfriends and worse luck bedecked with acoustic guitars and pedal steel: an interesting prospect. She’s also scaling up to UK and Irish stadiums on a six-date summer tour.
• Released 21 May; tour begins 23 June, Cardiff Principality Stadium
Linkin Park
Two huge gigs this summer from major figures in what was once called nu-metal: Deftones take over Crystal Palace Park on 29 July – supported by Weezer – while Linkin Park bring their reconstituted line-up, with vocalist Emily Armstrong replacing the late Chester Bennington, to Wembley Stadium for a one-off show. Recruiting Armstrong was a gamble, but last year’s acclaimed album From Zero, preceded by a Top 5 single, suggests it has paid off. Support comes from both sides of their rap-rock blend: fast-rising metal band Spiritbox alongside the aforementioned Jpegmafia, reaffirming Linkin Park’s longstanding good taste in hip-hop.
• 28 June, London Wembley Stadium
Fontaines DC
Who could fail to be cheered by Fontaines DC’s ongoing ascension? They’ve got bigger while sticking to their own idiosyncratic path and declining to repeat themselves, shifting from clipped punk to the more expansive,poppy sound of last year’s album Romance. If the latter was more straightforwardly melodic, it doesn’t necessarily mean its follow-up will sound the same. Still, its critical acclaim and commercial success has led to the band’s biggest shows to date: vast outdoor shows in Newcastle, Cardiff, Manchester and London.
• Tour begins 5 July, Finsbury Park, London
Billie Eilish
It’s a hugely impressive feat to impact on a tween/teenage audience quite as dramatically as Billie Eilish did in 2017, but it’s quite another thing to hang on to that audience: pop music moves fast, teenagers grow up, tastes change, and yet Eilish’s third album Hit Me Hard And Soft was one of 2024’s critical and commercial smashes. It boldly shifted direction yet again – subtle, enigmatic and experimental – while spawning one of the year’s biggest singles, Birds of a Feather: 1.6bn streams on Spotify alone, plus three separate Grammy nominations. These huge shows should be a riot.
• Tour begins 7 July, Glasgow OVO Hydro
Coldplay
Coldplay’s last two albums have been the lowest-selling of their career – merely shifting hundreds of thousands rather than millions – but they’ve never been a bigger live act: this tour contains a staggering 10 consecutive nights at Wembley Stadium. Whether one thinks their pivot towards Max Martin-produced pop is a pragmatic response to shifts in musical climate or a faintly desperate attempt to court a younger audience, their live shows have become increasingly incredible: eye-popping, hit-stuffed exercises in relentless visual maximalism that’s both infectiously euphoric and a little overwhelming.
• Tour begins 18 August, Hull Craven Park Stadium
Sex Pistols ft Frank Carter
It’s obviously not the first time the Sex Pistols have had to manage without Johnny Rotten – for their 1978-79 run of hits everyone from Sid Vicious to Ronnie Biggs deputised for their absent frontman – but there’s something strikingly bold about recruiting former Gallows singer Frank Carter. The band have been a heritage act since they reformed in 1996, but Carter – 30 years younger than his bandmates – seems to have brought a fresh energy and rabble-rousing physicality to their repertoire and live shows. He doesn’t try to sound like Rotten, nor, with his penchant for crowd-surfing and stage-diving, is he much like him on stage. It works unexpectedly well.
• 23 August, Margate Dreamland
Jalen Ngonda
Early in December, Jalen Ngonda’s debut album Come Around and Love Me unexpectedly reappeared in the UK charts after 18 months: the US-born, UK-based singer had appeared on Later With Jools Holland and Graham Norton’s chatshow, presumably finding himself a new audience in the process. That isn’t, in itself, surprising: if you see Ngonda perform, you’re immediately aware you’re in the presence of the real deal: a powerful-but-subtle soul singer in the classic style – David Ruffin is an obvious comparison – equipped with a set of fabulously listenable songs. You can’t imagine him not getting bigger over the course of 2025.
• Tour begins 16 October, Newcastle City Hall
Classical music and opera
Love Life
Opera North revives Kurt Weill’s musical, first seen in 1948. With lyrics by Allan Jay Lerner and described as a “vaudeville”, it follows the fortunes of the Cooper family, as they travel through 150 years of American history. The Leeds production will be conducted by James Holmes and directed by Matthew Eberhardt, with Quirino de Lang and Stephanie Corley as the Coopers.
• Grand Theatre, Leeds, 16-18 January
Hush
Kaija Saariaho’s trumpet concerto, her final work completed just weeks before her death in June 2023, receives its UK premiere. Verneri Pohjola, for whom it was composed, is the soloist with Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, who frame it with the Adagio from Mahler’s unfinished 10th Symphony, and Vaughan Williams’ Toward the Unknown Region and The Lark Ascending.
• Barbican, London, 24 January
Boulez @ 100
The centenary of Pierre Boulez’s birth is celebrated at the Barbican by the two London orchestras most closely associated with the great composer-conductor. At the end of January, Maxim Pascal conducts the London Symphony in a programme that pairs Debussy with Boulez and a handful of premieres, as well as a concert of his ensemble pieces, while in March the BBC Symphony’s day-long tribute ends with a performance of his orchestral masterpiece, Pli Selon Pli.
• Barbican, London, 26 & 27 January, 30 March
Philip Glass festival
The Hallé and the Royal Northern College of Music present three days of concerts devoted to the great American minimalist. Angélique Kidjo sings the Ifé Songs and Robert Ames conducts his 11th Symphony, while Colin Currie conducts 1981’s Glassworks and the score that Glass composed for Frans Lanting’s multimedia symphony, Life: A Journey through Time.
• Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 13-15 February
Bruckner’s Skull
Maxim Emelyanychev and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra give the performances of a commission from the SCO’s associate composer Jay Capperauld. It’s inspired by Bruckner’s obsession with the exhumed skulls of Beethoven and Schubert, which he touched and even kissed in front of astonished onlookers.
• Easterbrook Hall, Dumfries, 19 February; Queen’s Hall Edinburgh, 20 February; City Halls, Glasgow, 21 February
Festen
With a libretto by Lee Hall, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s latest opera is based on Thomas Vinterberg’s celebrated movie, a black comedy in which a family’s grisly secrets are revealed at its patriarch’s 60th birthday party. The premiere production is conducted by Edward Gardner and directed by Richard Jones, with a stellar cast led by Allan Clayton, Stéphane Degout, Gerald Finley and Rosie Aldridge.
• Royal Opera House, London, 11 to 27 February
Peter Grimes
Welsh National Opera continues its series of Britten operas with the best known of them all. Melly Still’s production of Peter Grimes will feature Nicky Spence in the title role, with Sally Matthews as Ellen Orford, David Kempster as Balstrode, Dominic Sedgwick as Ned Keene and Sarah Connolly as Auntie; Thomáš Hanus conducts.
• Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, 5, 8 & 11 April, then touring to 7 June
Multitudes
The SBC’s ambitious multimedia series promises “orchestral music reimagined for all the senses”. All the centre’s resident orchestras and ensembles are taking part: the Philharmonia plays Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony to a film by William Kentridge and Tom Morris stages Mahler’s Eighth Symphony for the London Philharmonic; Chineke! joins forces with George the Poet; the Aurora Orchestra and Frantic Assembly reimagine Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals.
• Southbank Centre, London, 23 April to 2 May
Parsifal
The grail comes to Glyndebourne as it presents its first ever staging of Wagner’s final opera in its the new summer season. The production is conducted by Robin Ticciati and directed by Jetske Mijnssen, with designs by Ben Baur; Daniel Johansson takes the title role, with John Relyea as Gurnemanz, Kristina Stanek as Kundry and Ryan Speedo Green as Klingsor.
• Glyndebourne Opera House, Lewes, 17 May to 24 June
A Visit to Friends
The Aldeburgh festival opens with the premiere of Colin Matthews’ first opera. With a libretto by William Boyd, based on a short story by Anton Chekhov, A Visit to Friends is, says Matthews, an “opera within an opera, with music influenced by Scriabin”. It’s directed by Rachel Hewer, with Lotte Betts-Dean and Marcus Farnsworth leading the cast.
• Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh. 13 & 14 June
