Editor’s Choice

On 15 July 2006, YouTube was little more than an ambitious video-sharing website. Twenty years later, it has become the world’s biggest music video platforms, capable of turning songs into global phenomena that transcend language, geography and traditional record industry boundaries. One milestone, more than any other, has come to define that success: one billion

Music has always been shaped by the people who make it, by their experiences, their risks, their obsessions, and the particular ways they hear the world. Across decades and genres a remarkable number of those people have been queer. Their presence is neither a recent development nor a seasonal talking point. It is simply part

When Frank Sinatra’s Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! became the first ever Number 1 album on the newly created UK albums chart on 22 July 1956, nobody could have imagined what would follow. Published by Record Mirror, the inaugural chart contained just five albums, offering the first weekly snapshot of Britain’s music-buying habits. Seven decades later,

** information correct at time of publishing (17 July 2026) Getting to Number 1 once can define a career. Returning there again and again, across changing musical eras and generations of listeners, is something far rarer. Since the Official UK Albums Chart launched in 1956, more than 1,000 albums have reached the summit. In that