Three minutes
Club Song – the Pussycat Dolls
Remember the Pussycat Dolls? They’ve just announced they’re reuniting after 17 years for a world tour with the release of a new single: Club Song. The last time they tried to reunite in 2019, Covid and a disagreement over creative control got in the way. Nicole Scherzinger is now a theatre star, with an Olivier and Tony under her belt, but she was reportedly the main driving force for the band to give it another go. Ashley Roberts told the BBC, “I’m just really excited to get back on stage and swing these hips around in some latex, hun!”
One hour
The Missing Voice – Janet Cardiff
In 1999, the Canadian sound artist Janet Cardiff composed a beautiful 50-minute walk through Shoreditch and Whitechapel, called The Missing Voice. Cardiff specialises in sound installations, listened to through headphones, that transform the place you’re walking through. They’re not audio guides but something much more mysterious and unsettling. Her east London walk is particularly interesting because the area has changed so much since she made it. Beginning in the Whitechapel Library, now the Whitechapel Gallery, you experience tales of Jack the Ripper, the vintage shops on Brick Lane, an imaginary revolution, and a lost love.
Listen at whitechapelgallery.org
An afternoon
This is the last week you can see Isaac Julien’s All that Changes You. Metamorphosis at Victoria Miro in London. These five video installations are a mix of ecological philosophy, light, mirrors, poetry, and build to something intangible. Julien cites varied inspirations including the sci-fi novelists Octavia Butler and Ursula Le Guin, and the physics professor Carlo Rovelli. Sit down, take it in, and let it all wash over you.
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A day
It’s not St Patrick’s Day until next week, but this Sunday, there’s an annual parade through London. Tens of thousands of people show up – decked out in green – and walk from Hyde Park corner, through Piccadilly, Whitehall, Pall Mall, all the way to Trafalgar Square, where there’s lots of fun waiting. If that sounds like a bit too much to handle, you could take part in my favourite St Patrick’s Day tradition of watching the incredibly stupid but delectable romcom Leap Year.
An evening
Friday the 13ths are famously unlucky, but this one is blessed by the return of Gorillaz, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s cartoon band. Albarn will be on tour from 20 March, but he’s starting with a warm-up gig in Bradford. He’ll be testing out new material and playing old classics. The band’s new album, The Mountain, came after the deaths of Albarn and Hewlett’s fathers: it’s ghostly and beautiful, filled with the voices of departed friends and sitar, with some dancey synths mixed in too.
Tickets available here.
Illustration by Charlotte Durance