Music & Entertainment Blog

Son to two musical parents – his father, David was a light music pianist and his mother, Evstolia was the daughter of a chorus master – Vladimir Ashkenazy has enjoyed broad influence in the musical world, successfully working as both a pianist and conductor.

A famously eccentric figure during the Modern era, Erik Satie (1866–1925) was a French composer, pianist and writer. His pieces are at once nostalgic and playful, simplistic and strange, and his own disposition was well-matched to his radical musical style. Sometimes described as ‘anti-emotional’ and ironic, Satie’s work was a response to and escape from German (in particular, Wagnerian and Romantic) models. He is also famous for the unique titles of his works (such as Genuine Limp Preludes (For a Dog)), and his bizarre performance directions (for example, instructions that a section be played ‘as dry as a cuckoo’), as well as his humorous miniatures for piano, where bar lines, time signatures and even keys were removed. Having once referred to himself as someone who ‘measures sounds’, Satie is often identifiable by his strange, unresolved chords; his most well-known works include the 'Gymnopédies’.

For those who still don't know, Taylor Swift won the 2015 MTV VMA for Best Music Video for Bad Blood. The kick-ass video shows off all the reasons we love the pop superstar. She even used the platform to promote an awesome message for tolerance, which you can watch here. 

This got us thinking. Taylor's been in a lot of great videos, is it really possible to whittle them down to a top five? Well, we've given it our best go. Read on for our say on the top five Taylor Swift music videos ever.

The MTV video music awards took place on 30^th August, and as usual there were all manner of outfits and personalities sparking excitable conversation on Twitter. What with One Direction's recent announcement about splitting up, there was already a flurry of interest in the music industry's most recent news, but how interested were the people in the music video awards? TV ratings would suggest not very, with an all-time low, so positive reports are choosing to focus on Twitter ratings instead, which by contrast rocketed: Nielsen reports that the VMAs this year was the most-tweeted non-sports program since 2011 (when Nielsen first began tracking Twitter TV activity). The 2014 awards generated 12.6 million tweets, which this year’s far surpassed with more than double that figure: US stats show 21.4 million tweets from users. As usual, the music videos seemed to take a backseat in the night’s affairs, with the drama all happening with the figures onstage. We'll do a quick run-down of the highlights of this year's awards.