Sounds of the City is finally back at its Castlefield Bowl home with bigger lineups than ever before.
The inner-city music concert series is taking over the open-air venue for six special gigs starting in just under three weeks-time.
Since 2013, Sounds of the City has been bringing the UK’s most acclaimed artists right here to Manchester, making it somewhat of an institution here in the city.
Over the years, they’ve treated us to one-off gigs from the likes of Arcade Fire, The Kooks, James, New Order, Rag’N’Bone Man and Catfish And The Bottlemen.
Yet this year’s comeback is set to be the biggest series to date. Huge names like Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott, The Streets and Hacienda Classical will each headline a night.
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But Irish powerhouse Dermot Kennedy is responsible for opening the show on 21 September. The fast-rising international star has already racked up more than 1 billion streams. Not to mention a Brit Award nomination for Best International Male.
The singer rocketed to fame following the release of his debut album ‘Without Fear’ in 2019 which sat at #1 in the Irish charts for an astonishing year and a half.
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The following day on Wednesday 22 September, the insanely successful Kaiser Chiefs will be heading up their own concert at the Bowl.
With 21 years in the business, the band are still riding the peak of success with their seventh album ‘Duck’ hitting wide critical acclaim in 2019.
The band will be supported by none other than Razorlight and Manchester’s own PINS.
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Wrapping up the 2021 edition on Sunday 26 September will be the Grammy, BRIT Award and Mercury Music Prize nominated Snow Patrol.
Another band with decades of experience, Snow Patrol have accumulated more than 17 billion album sales, five UK Platinum Albums and more than a billion global streams over the years.
They’ll have support from singer Lucy Blue, plus Wigan band The Lathums who have recently become the most talked about Manchester band. They’re pipped to become strong contenders for the city’s next big indie outfit.
Their headline tour at O2 Victoria Warehouse sold out within a matter of days. Meanwhile the announcement of their debut album ‘How Beautiful Life Can Be’ has been met with much anticipation.
Dates for Sounds of the City 2022 have already been set, too. This time, taking place earlier in the year across multiple dates in early summer.
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Foals, Crowded House and Lewis Capaldi are already confirmed to headline their own shows between 29 June and 6 July 2022.
So with lineups of this calibre, now is your time to book! Click here for tickets.
Featured image: SOTC at Castlefield Bowl by Sam Neill
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Sankeys shares sneak peek at new venue as legendary Manchester nightclub gears up for return
Daisy Jackson
Sankeys has given Mancs a glimpse inside its new venue as the legendary nightclub gears up for its return.
The club was one of Manchester’s top nightlife spots for years, before shutting down seemingly for good almost a decade ago.
Set within Beehive Mill in Ancoats, Sankeys was a true icon of Manchester’s global nightlife scene.
And while the old Sankeys Soap nightlife space is now full of co-working spaces, the spirit of Sankeys is about to be reborn.
The exact location of the new club is still being kept under wraps ahead of its reopening at the end of January, but new renderings have been released to give us a glimpse of how it will look.
Sankeys is promising ‘A reimagined space. New energy. Same legendary nights’.
The new Sankeys Manchester will be a 500-capacity venue, designed to ‘capture the raw underground energy that made Sankeys one of the most iconic club brands in the world’.
It will feature an LED matrix grid installation that will immerse clubbers in ‘light, sound and atmosphere’.
Sankeys Manchester officially opens on 30 January – you can see a glimpse of how it will look below and grab tickets HERE.
The most annoying songs of 2025 according to ‘science’ have been revealed
Emily Sergeant
A list of the most annoying songs of 2025 according to ‘science’ has been published.
Music fans have already been sifting through their Spotify Wrapped, which came out earlier this month, with searches for it surging an astonishing 5,000% in recent weeks, proving that 2025 has been a memorable year for music.
We’ve had record-breaking releases, viral TikTok hits, and artists pushing creative boundaries across genres.
Despite the hits though, some tracks have sparked debates over how irritating they are – from repetitiveness to ‘harmonic dullness’.
Interested to discover the most annoying song releases of 2025, the experts at SeatPick analysed the most popular songs of 2025 according to official top charts, then measured their repetition, shrillness, harmonic dullness, and filler lyrics to calculate the percentage chance that listeners would find the song to be so-called ‘annoying’.
The most annoying songs of 2025 have been revealed according to ‘science’ / Credit: Jonas Leupe | Ketut Subiyanto (via Unsplash and Pexels)
Unfortunately for one artist – one very popular artist, it has to be said – they have claimed both the top and second spot, and that artist is pop royalty Sabrina Carpenter.
SeatPick’s findings revealed that Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Sugar Talking’ and ‘Tears’, which were both featured on her latest album Man’s Best Friend, are the most annoying songs released in 2025, as the data metrics indicated that nearly half of listeners (46%) are likely to find these songs irritating due to they’re repetitiveness.
Lady Gaga’s ‘The Dead Dance’ ranks as the third most annoying track of the year, scoring high on the ‘annoyingness index,’ with repetition, brightness, and lyrical filler contributing to an overall 45.8% likelihood that listeners would find it irritating.
Rounding off the top four most irritating songs of 2025 is ‘Who’ by BTS member, Jimin, with there being a 45.5% chance that listeners would find his song irritating due to its repetitive hooks and bright, high pitched tones.
When it comes to the list of most irritating TikTok trending songs of 2025, that title went to ‘Dame Un Grrr’ by Fantomel and Kate Linn, with a 45.7% likelihood of being found irritating by listeners, closely followed by ‘She Twerkin’ by Ca$h Out in second, with a 44.1% likelihood of being found annoying by listeners.
One song we’re sure many of you won’t be surprised to find on the most irritating list is ‘Hold My Hand’ by Jess Glynne, which, of course, initially gained popularity through its use in a Jet2Holiday advertisement, and then later became widely featured in more than 3.4 million TikTok videos.
So, what do you make of these results then? Do you agree? What do you think the most annoying song that came out in 2025 is?
Hannah Starkie -
1st September 2021 
