Eve Barlow
I'm a journalist and I love words
Music, film, matters of cultural import. Sometimes I dabble in serious* investigations. (*pop)
PROJECTS
Entertainment Weekly
Bebe Rexha: Feature
Interview with Bebe Rexha on songwriting process for Entertainment Weekly
The Times
Jake Shears interview: the Scissor Sisters frontman on Kinky Boots, depression and going solo
He enjoyed meteoric success as the singer in the electropop troupe, but then he fell apart and retreated for five years. Jake Shears tells Eve Barlow how a Broadway show has put him back in the spotlight
You may wonder where Jake Shears went. Well, he’s in Times Square at 1am on a Friday night, both in person and on an enormous animated billboard. “Now starring Jake Shears of Scissor Sisters”, it says, next to a picture of Shears in a blazer, shirt and tie, boxer shorts, thigh-high lace-up bo...
Vulture
Lily Allen Won’t Be Shamed
It’s been over ten years since British pop star Lily Allen made her cheeky U.S. debut with 2006’s Alright, Still. Since then, she’s faded out of the national spotlight. Back in the U.K., however, she’s still incessantly under the tabloids’ microscope, scrutinized for her outspokenness on politics and the working class, and still making enemies. On her emotionally naked fourth album No Shame — out June 8, her first since 2014’s disastrous Sheezus — she speaks about the dissolution of her marri...
The Guardian
Lenny Kravitz on 30 years in music: ‘I did whatever I had to do to survive’
‘What’s wrong with people?” Lenny Kravitz wonders, when asked about the bad reviews he has had. “They talk shit: that’s OK.” The 53-year-old, whose success in soulful, funk-laced rock’n’roll has earned 40m album sales and four Grammys, is in a hangar at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, strutting in alligator boots to the sound of his band riffing Always on the Run. Today, he splits his time between the French capital and the Bahamas. You can see why the bad reviews don’t hurt. “This has be...
Entertainment Weekly
Bebe Rexha on 'Girls' backlash: 'People automatically went for the negative’
Last week, the release of Rita Ora’s “Girls” — which features Cardi B, Bebe Rexha, and Charli XCX — was pre-empted as the “Lady Marmalade” of a generation. But when the song dropped it was met by a polarized furor. Certain leading members of the LGBTQ+ community in music (notably Hayley Kiyoko and Kehlani) argued that the song was damaging and regressive, with its line “red wine, I just wanna kiss girls” presenting a clichéd trope about bisexuality as something women only participate in when ...
Q
James Bay: The Changing Man
James Bay live review and interview for Q Magazine at the Fillmore in San Francisco
The Guardian
Viva la diva! How Eurovision's Dana International made trans identity mainstream
She was tall, svelte and glamorous in a floor-length glitter gown, with luscious brown curls and the kind of dramatic arm movements that would put an ice dancer to shame. Plus, she had an unmistakable pronunciation of the word Cleopatra. Dana International cut a dazzling figure in May 1998 when she won Eurovision for Israel. Her song, Diva, had a lot to do with it: an earworm with a thick club beat and a karaoke-ready chorus that you could make up as you went along if you didn’t quite catch a...
GQ
Parquet Courts Are Here to Thrash
Mardi Gras in New Orleans puts every bachelor party in Vegas to shame. A cross between Halloween and SXSW, the sight is purple, gold, and green as revelers drape themselves over balconies in every street, throwing cheap necklaces to those dancing below who scream. One man's trash, another's treasure. The sound is of joy and jazz and the chinking of glasses large enough to hold a liquor cabinet. The smell is of stale ale. The touch is the feeling of crunching plastic beads beneath the feet, a ...
Billboard
LCD Soundsystem Vs. Yeah Yeah Yeahs Revives 2003's NYC Sound in Los Angeles
Spotted near the front of tonight's show: a man in a Hot Hot Heat t-shirt. Hot Hot Heat were Canadian, but their 2003 hit "Bandages" fit right into the pocket of a sound that co-existed with New York's Yeah Yeah Yeahs and paved the indie dance floors for what would come a little later with LCD Soundsystem.
At one point it would have been as unlikely that Hot Hot Heat would headline this venue as it would either of these two NYC mid-2000s luminaries. And the irony of this t-shirt is the type o...
Los Angeles Times
Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner has gone to the moon and has an album to show for it
Can we take a moment to talk about your notebook poking out of your pocket here? Alex Turner jumps. Too invasive a question.
"Oh! Uh heh," he mutters, burrowing his hand into his blazer. He shifts the notebook into his other pocket, out of sight of a journalist's X-ray vision. Turner, now 32, as the leader of Britain's Arctic Monkeys, is a man who believes in mythology. You don't ask him about his notebook. You don't ask Samson what shampoo he uses.
"It's a school trick," the current L.A. res...
Pitchfork
Primal Heart
It’s been four years since Kimbra released The Golden Echo, her audacious and futuristic second album, one that established her beyond just the other voice on Gotye’s 2012 hit “Somebody That I Used to Know.” That LP further ensconced the New Zealander born Kimbra Lee Johnson as a one-woman odd-pop machine; a producer, an arranger, a multi-instrumentalist, and a unique dynamo vocalist. Oddly, there has been little fanfare around the release of its follow-up Primal Heart.
Perhaps tellingly, thi...
GQ
Can Iggy Azalea Be Her Own Savior?
It’s been four years since the Australian rapper topped the charts with her song “Fancy.” Since then, her career has stalled: She’s canceled a world tour, scrapped an entire album, and undergone an acrimonious public breakup. But most of all, she’s refused to reckon with her place as a white woman making hip-hop. So how does she explain herself?
Iggy Azalea is lost. Running behind schedule, the Australian rapper drove straight past the photoshoot off Sunset Boulevard and now has to re-route. ...
Q
Mother Theresa: Feature with Theresa Wayman
Six page exclusive feature with Theresa Wayman of Warpaint on her solo project 'LoveLaws'
The Guardian
Coachella review – pop's new democracy creates uneven city in the desert
With a rumoured 40,000 extra attendees at the first weekend of Coachella 2018, the three-day festival is more congested than ever. It’s especially hard to move without stepping into the frame of an influencer’s selfie as they document outfits, record friendships and pray for a feature in a Twitter moment. This culture of validation and self-affirmation makes sense given that the festival’s culture is now predicated on reaction (reflected in promoter Goldenvoice recalibrating their booking in ...