Stephanie Phillips

Hannah Reid, best known as the vocalist of indie-pop trio London Grammar, casually reveals a major lockdown achievement as she chats from her West London home. “One positive is that instead of going out on the road, we’ve carried our creative process on,” says the 31-year-old singer, “so we’ve been writing loads and working on a fourth album.”

The life of the singer Tina Turner has been one of the most pored over in music. She is known as much for the abuse she suffered at the hands of her ex-husband Ike Turner as she is for her role in rock history.

The hypnotising industrial punk trio Joy speak to Stephanie Phillips about their hometown of New Orleans, being an anti-capitalist feminist punk band, and why they see themselves in the Spice Girls

In April 2020, I wrote a batch of articles for the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries website. These were SEO-driven, advice-based articles aimed at young people (14–15) and their parents, explaining the industry and why it might appeal as a career.

Named by Bob Dylan as a contemporary great, the versatile songwriter straddles folk, R&B, bluegrass, soul and more – and her creative freedom has been hard-fought

Rachel Aggs takes Stephanie Phillips through the albums that made her the musician she is today, from Smokey Robinson to Robyn, Mahotella Queens to Sleater-Kinney.

The past six months have been a difficult period of processing for George C Wolfe. The director’s film Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom was a huge hit over the new year and yet it’s been six months since its star, the actor Chadwick Boseman, died from colon cancer. “For the longest time I could not speak of him in the past,” says Wolfe solemnly, about coming to terms with his leading man’s death. “My brain just wouldn’t let me do it. But in the past two weeks or so I started to do that.”

Steve Diggle guides Stephanie Phillips through the records that shaped him, from the girl across the road who introduced him to The Beatles and Bob Dylan to the sensual allure of late era Supremes.

As pop stars go, Rina Sawayama belongs to the old school. She’s a high-energy entertainer with in-your-face melodies, signature dance moves and undeniable glamour. Most often seen in music videos and on stage decked out in futuristic club kid chic, she has an ever-changing array of hair colors to fit her mood. But while Sawayama’s music is indulgently sweet and otherworldly, her lyrical content hits much closer to home, tackling consumer culture, racial microaggressions and hereditary trauma....

Netflix’s recent star-studded release, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, adapted from the Pulitzer-winning dramatist August Wilson’s 1982 play, brings one of the US’s first professional blues singers back into the cultural sphere. The larger than life, gold tooth-wearing Ma Rainey, famed “Mother of the Blues”, is played with regal poise by Viola Davis, who fires off pointed retorts from beneath an impenetrable mask of make-up.
Known for her thunderous, moaning voice, sharp comic timing and compelling...

This is Unsung – a Crack Magazine podcast on Sonos Radio where the world’s greatest artists reveal their heroes who never caught the spotlight. This episode Samuel T Herring, frontman and songwriter for Future islands, joins journalist Stephanie Phillips to speak to his unsung choice - Morphine. The American, punk-blues, low rock led by Mark Sandman formed in 1989 was embraced by the indie community but never found mainstream success.

In all of Netflix’s festive programming, a film that reimagined a Black female blues pioneer is the most talked-about of the season. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, an adaptation of August Wilson’s Eighties play, captures early blues icon Rainey as she and her band prepare to record in 1920s Chicago.

Black British talent has never shone brighter, but at every level the UK music industry can be a difficult maze to navigate with many additional roadblocks along the way for artists of colour.

VICE UK staffers Hannah Ewens, Emma Garland and Lauren O’Neill discuss Dua Lipa’s ‘Future Nostalgia’, the first big Lockdown Album of 2020, released on the 27th of March, with music critic Stephanie Phillips.

Though you may not realise it, an unusual occurrence is taking place right now – Bob Mould is not on tour. As the frontman of 1980s punk pioneers Hüsker Dü and 90s trio Sugar, and a successful solo artist, Mould has spent his 40 year career in a cycle of writing, recording and touring the world. For the first time in a long time, he has stopped, just when he needed to be out there the most.