For years, Rule, Britannia! has had a divisive presence in the festival. It should make way for other anthems of national identity

Here we go again: Britannia will continue to rule at the Last Night of the Proms. Unveiling a wide-ranging programme for this year’s festival, Sam Jackson, controller of BBC Radio 3 and also director of the Proms, assured audiences that the jingoistic 18th-century anthem would take its customary place at the climax, despite calls for it to be dropped.

A dignified and unhectoring case for standing the song down was made on Desert Island Discs by the cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, a soloist in last year’s Last Night. Revealing that he had left the concert early to avoid it, he said: “I think maybe some people don’t realise how uncomfortable a song like that can make a lot of people feel, even if it makes [the people singing it] feel good.”

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Swift now has joint highest number of chart-toppers for a female artist, as The Tortured Poets Department earns biggest opening week in seven years

Taylor Swift has tied with Madonna to become the female artist with the most UK No 1 albums, earning her twelfth chart-topper with the global phenomenon that is The Tortured Poets Department.

Swift also dominates this week’s singles chart, with three songs in the Top Five including a No 1 for Fortnight, featuring Post Malone. It’s her fourth No 1 single, and her third chart double.

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Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
Two of Mendelssohn’s symphonies plus his second piano concerto were almost too much of a good thing, but not when played with such delicacy and spirit

Three nights, three concertos and five symphonies: the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is approaching its deep dive into Mendelssohn with the kind of intensity this still-slightly-underrated composer doesn’t often receive. András Schiff is both conductor and, in the two piano concertos, soloist. The Blüthner fortepiano he’s playing looks like it wants to be a modern concert grand when it grows up. It’s a big instrument for its kind and, in the Piano Concerto No 2 – which began this second concert of the series – its clear, bright tone was a good match for the orchestra. This wasn’t an overly lyrical performance, even though the song-like slow movement flowed beautifully; it was, however, charged with unflagging energy. Schiff picked out the melodies strongly, even while keeping the busy accompanying figuration brilliantly delicate – the finale was a reminder that Mendelssohn, who gave the premiere, was himself quite the virtuoso.

As an encore Schiff played the Variations Sérieuses, a heavyweight solo piano piece lasting well over 10 minutes, probably a meatier item than necessary at this point. Certainly by the time we got to the closing moments of the Reformation Symphony, which followed, the performance had taken on an end-of-evening energy, even though there was another whole symphony to come after the interval.

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SWG3, Glasgow
Delicately sipping a Red Stripe and accompanied by a seven-piece band, the Brit School grad loosens up her Mercury prize-nominated album with radiant star power

One hand raised to the heavens, the other fixed sharply on her hip, Olivia Dean is beaming. The 25-year-old musician is just three songs into her largest headline tour so far, and Echo – last year’s suave, soulful pop single about possibly misplaced trust – is a chic foil for her glamorous, Supremes-style choreography and her chemistry with her charismatic seven-piece band. With one flick of the wrist she summons a flourish of keys, a cymbal splash or a joyous trombone solo, and Dean looks both thrilled and in total control.

Still: “I’m quite nervous this evening,” she confesses, delicately sipping a Red Stripe. It’s surprising to hear from the Brit School graduate, a week after she delivered a stand-out Coachella set but, then again, Dean’s crowds are growing rapidly. Only last year she played to an audience a quarter of the size, down the road at King Tuts. She’s since been nominated for three Brit awards, and in June she’s bound for Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage.

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French singer dedicates top prizes at Les Flammes ‘to all the blacks’ after backlash over rumoured Paris show

The French pop star Aya Nakamura has won three big prizes at France’s Les Flammes awards for rap, R&B and pop, and she thanked fans for their support after a racist row over rumours she would sing at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.

“I’m very honoured because being a black artist and coming from the banlieue is very difficult,” Nakamura told the ceremony, which she opened with a medley of her songs. She dedicated her awards – female artist of the year, pop album of the year, and international star of the year – “to all the blacks”.

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(Ed Banger/Because)
The French producer duo attempt a return to their roots, but the results are a little too polished

With their self-titled 2007 debut, French production duo Justice – Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay – established themselves as promising Daft Punk successors. Combining arena-sized drum tracks with squealing guitars and a thundering dancefloor pulse, they delivered gargantuan melodic hooks with gut-thumping force. Yet subsequent releases have struggled to elicit the same sense of vitality. Audio, Video, Disco , from 2011, veered into the complicated world of prog, while 2016’s Woman attempted a disco-pop crossover; neither was fully convincing. On their latest album, Justice attempt a return to their club-oriented roots.

Across 13 tracks, the pair find their strengths in the heavier end of the musical spectrum. Generator shudders through raw synths and techno kick-drums, providing an apt soundtrack for a postapocalyptic dancefloor, while the tonal switches on Incognito are delightfully unpredictable, shifting from disco bass to cavernous melody. On softer moments, though, they’re on less steady ground. One Night/All Night drowns out guest vocalist Kevin Parker’s falsetto with a plodding backing, while Saturnine grates in its interplay of chopped guitar lines and high-pitch vocals. Justice are still capable of raw-edged excitement, but on Hyperdrama they find themselves too polished and bright.

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(x2/Parlophone)
The duo’s first LP in four years finds them refining and updating their late-80s heyday sound, with a new producer in tow

Cultural gravity makes certain events inevitable, such as Sean Lennon and James McCartney writing songs together. Or Britain’s most successful pop duo returning to refine and update the sound of their late-80s imperial era. Nonetheless is Pet Shop Boys ’s first album since 2020’s Hotspot , which concluded their Stuart Price-produced trilogy. New producer James Ford takes 1986 debut Please ’s simplicity and the lush orchestration of 1990’s Behaviour and applies both to this fan-pleasing collection.

For those who wish the pair’s albums came with a reading list concealed inside a clutch of club flyers, there’s Dancing Star, a lovely three-minute biopic of Rudolf Nureyev – the Russian joining the vast dinner party of historical figures, including Casanova, Debussy, Hitler and the Queen, featured elsewhere in Neil Tennant’s lyrics.

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As the boss of PC Music, the godfather of hyperpop confounded critics but won over Beyoncé and Charli XCX. Now, with a supersized new solo album, he’s continuing his mission to make pop more unpredictable

Everything about AG Cook is exhausting. As a producer of elasticated outre pop his output is as varied as it is frenetic, taking in everything from bass-rattling electronic workouts for cultural behemoths such as Beyoncé to celestial dreamscapes for underground newcomers, via collaborations with Caroline Polachek and longterm partner in crime, Charli XCX. Having initially steered clear of solo albums to focus on running his divisive yet hugely influential label PC Music, Cook’s debut, 2020’s 7G, featured 49 tracks and more than two hours of music ranging from face-melting dance experiments to a lo-fi Sia cover. Apple, a more streamlined, but no less polarising followup arrived a month later.

His hard drive somehow still not yet full, Cook is now back with his third album Britpop, a three-part, 24-song opus split into Past, Present and Future sections. As part of its promotion he’s been busy creating TikToks and launching his own parody website Witchfork , billed as “the least trusted voice in music”. “It’s obviously embracing some troll behaviour, which has always been a bit of a thread for me personally,” he laughs.

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Gary Roden resigns as general manager after tickets cancelled and gigs forced to reschedule in Manchester

The boss of Manchester’s beleaguered Co-op Live arena has resigned in its opening week after tickets were cancelled and gigs rescheduled because the venue was not ready on time.

Gary Roden quit as general manager of the new arena after also being criticised for saying some small music venues were “poorly run”.

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