As US pop-punk band Paramore claim the London band as the primary influence on their new album, we look at how Bloc Party bridged the gap with emo – and continue to inspire young artists today

Some viewed Wild Things Run Fast, which turns 40 next month, as a betrayal of her roots. Looking back, the reality is far more complicated

How did a middle-class white kid break into New Orleans’ feverish 1950s R&B scene and enjoy a wildly eclectic six-decade career? As a new release puts it: things happen that way

Harry Styles’s high-end lockdown album is surprisingly of a piece with other longlisted albums by artists as distinct as Joy Crookes and Gwenno

When a Zimbabwean Twitter account posted images of wedding guests moonwalking to Kenny Rogers, many were surprised. But the ties between US country and Africa reach back to its commercial outset

UK rappers are plundering 00s choruses to help their tracks up the charts. Whether a cheeky ploy or a failure of imagination, it’s a marker of how the scene has grown

MCR split but survived emo’s moral panic to leave a shining legacy for all outsiders – especially young people struggling emotionally or those who refuse gender binaries

Keen to re-establish the album in the age of the playlist, artists are peppering their work with voice notes and sketches – to profound and annoying ends

Tammy Wynette and Johnny Cash cancelled gigs in Belfast during the violent 1970s, but Pride played on – and, with his song Crystal Chandeliers, became a sensation in the north and the Republic

Comedy and music have always co-existed – but with artists from Dry Cleaning to Bo Burnham cleverly blurring the two, it’s hard to tell where the jokes begin and end

Perhaps longing for a more carefree era, artists such as Lorde, Billie Eilish and Haim are fondly looking back to when S Club 7 and Shania Twain frolicked in low-rise denim

Her first album since she split from her manager father, 4 marked the beginning of Beyoncé’s artistic freedom, creative control and business empire

The country star is not always remembered for his politics, but his about-face to withdraw support for Nixon and the Vietnam war may be his finest moment

Filled with product placement and advertising, the band’s newly reissued 1967 album put the pop in pop art, by showing how closely music was entwined with capital

It’s easy to laugh at hardcore patriots misunderstanding Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA, but such appropriation is increasingly widespread – and dangerously twisting the truth

The British producer’s debut album is a perfect simulacrum of gabber, hardstyle, trance and more – but it lacks the overdriven ferocity of the genres it imitates

One contributor is notably absent from the new film about Britney: herself. But from Rihanna to Beyoncé to Taylor Swift, female stars have always struggled to tell their stories

In his song Five Years, Bowie imagined a dying Earth. Five years on from his death, it seems to have come true – yet he continues to uplift us

Contrary to their dismissive framing as manufactured robots, South Korea’s BTS use social media, documentary and storytelling to make themselves into profoundly human stars

The two bands have variously clumsy and bracing things to say about class, race and Britain – but they are at least connecting to something bigger than themselves