Brodie Lancaster

Melbourne punk trio Camp Cope bring a hard-won sense of perspective to their new album.

For Melanie Chisholm global fame came at a high price, but she lived to tell the tale. At 46, she has just released her eighth solo album, which she says is her most vulnerable yet. “All of that time I spent searching, trying to find myself, trying to move away from Sporty, I felt like that’s what I had to do: to become an individual I had to leave her behind.”

As a dark comedy about self-absorbed millennial killers, Search Party focuses heavily on the lies that bind. In doing so, it also tells a lot of insightful truths.

Tame Impala’s long-delayed fourth album, The Slow Rush, reckons with the passing of time and the value of solitude. It’s well worth the wait.

Harry Styles’ second solo album, Fine Line, is at its best when the pop star reveals his vulnerable side, but the record needs some reining in.

As the first – and still only – woman to serve as an AFL club president, Peggy O’Neal is keenly aware of her role as a groundbreaker, and of her responsibility to the future of her beloved Richmond FC.

With their brilliant new album, The Center Won’t Hold, Sleater-Kinney’s defiantly feminist brand of punk remains vital as ever, 25 years after they began making music.

A bagel and a coffee with Holly Rankin, better known as Jack River.

On her fourth album, Dedicated, Canadian popstar Carly Rae Jepsen continues to explore heartbreak, love and infatuation against a backdrop of disco synths and catchy melodies.

Taking the journey from The Sapphires to Top End Wedding with Larrakia actress Miranda Tapsell.

The appeal of Dean Lewis’s debut album, A Place We Knew, is that the earnest musings on broken relationships can be moulded to anyone’s story. But what his formulaic songwriting gains in popularity, it lacks in depth and insight.

Tracking four boy-band-obsessed young women over several years, a new Australian documentary, I Used To Be Normal, turns the spotlight off the stars and onto the fangirls in an effective and sensitive paean to blind infatuation.

Troye Sivan’s album Bloom delivers polished, romantic pop music laced with an appreciation of longing and regret.

As the National Library raises funds to preserve 19th-century fan scrapbooks, the author reflects on giving herself over to fandom – and how its obsessiveness is both critical and self-reflective.