Elizabeth Aubrey

Freelance arts and culture journalist/lecturer. My work is regularly found in NME, Evening Standard, The Guardian, Empire, The Quietus, GQ, The Independent, MixMag, Crack and more.

Evening Standard •

Lykke Li interview: ‘It’s hard to balance art and motherhood’

“I’d been on the road for so many years and I have so many health issues,” she explains of “destructive” touring cycles. “I found [touring] very difficult and I still don’t know how to balance that with art,” she admits. “Just travelling itself is [hard], I’m very introverted and sensitive and I always get sick. It’s just not very helpful for the body in general: I struggle with it a lot.”…
Evening Standard •

Kam-BU: the London rapper on racism, Grenfell and cleaning out rivers

“Music’s cool, I love music and I love doing shows, but I feel like there’s more to do with my time and looking after the environment is one of them.” When we speak, with him Zooming from his dad’s home in Richmond, he’s on a rare day off in between recording his next project and his volunteering work, both with the London Wildlife Trust and at Twickenham’s Crane Park. This is not your average music interview, it’s fair to say...
Evening Standard •

Baby Queen: The music industry puts female artists against one another

The Hole frontwoman posted about her love of Lathum’s music on social media and the pair started to message each other online. Soon after, Love asked Lathum to meet, and she flew out to America to Love’s home. “I went there and was like ‘who knocks on Courtney Love’s door?! It was absolutely f**king ridiculous,” she laughs, saying standing on Love’s porch, waiting for her to answer, was a surreal experience. She offered Lathum some “inspiring” advice – something she says she could have done with…
Evening Standard •

Linton Kwesi Johnson: ‘Racism’s still very much in the DNA of the UK’

Johnson arrived in Brixton, aged 11, after travelling from his home in rural Jamaica to be with his mother. She was a part of the Windrush generation and Johnson recalls how colonialism still propagated the idea of Britain as Jamaica’s idyllic motherland. “I thought England was this splendid place, this wonderful place, the mother country with castles and palaces and all this sort of thing.” What did he find when he got here? “Disappointment,” he says with a sigh. “Racial hostility was pervasive…
Flaunt Magazine •

Elizabeth Debicki | How Might We Direct Your Call? —

It’s been a breathless few months for Elizabeth Debicki and it shows no sign of slowing down. The Australian converses from her apartment in Brooklyn, where she’s having a momentary break from learning lines for her next role. She’s just finished filming on one of her biggest roles to date—playing Diana, Princess of Wales, in the upcoming season of The Crown— and next week, she’s back on set with James Gunn, filming the third installment of Guardians of the Galaxy…
Rolling Stone UK •

Dua Lipa live in Manchester: UK pop queen proves why she's a world-beater

“We’ve been waiting so long, so long, to put this show on,” an emotional Dua Lipa tells 21,000 fans in Manchester on the opening night of her UK and European tour. She isn’t wrong: this tour was first announced in late 2019, just months before the pandemic hit. Several more cancellations and postponements would follow over the next two years. “Finally, we’re here”, she tells the cheering crowd, “…and it means the world.” That sense of unadulterated joy at finally being able to dance together ag
Evening Standard •

Johnny Flynn: ‘Play James Bond? I can barely get out of the house’

“I can barely get myself out of the house to go for a run once a month,” he laughs. He’s not sure he’d be up for the “very intense” physical demands of the role. “Never say never”, he laughs some more, but whoever the next Bond is, “at this point in history... it’s perhaps problematic to have another white man playing the part. There has to be a chance to look at how we create more diverse casting in some of these iconic franchises.
NME •

'Derry Girls': what to expect from the "epic" final season

When filming wrapped on the third and final season of Derry Girls, out next week on Channel 4, it was an emotional moment for creator Lisa McGee. Inspired by her own experiences growing up in Ireland, the hit sitcom’s last day of shooting felt like closing a door on her childhood. “People always say you don’t get to go back to your youth,” she tells NME during an afternoon Zoom chat, “but with Derry Girls, I did just that every day for six years. It’s been wonderful.”
Evening Standard •

Nova Twins interview: the hottest London rock band of the moment

While they’re now the rock act of the moment, when the duo kicked off in 2014, they were largely ignored by a music industry unable to understand why two mixed race women wanted to make genre-defying rock music that fused punk, metal, hardcore, rap and grime. “We had a lot of rejection”, Love recalls of the time. “The industry was like ‘What is this? Where do we put this band? When we showed up to festivals, we’d be the only women and people of colour on those bills.”
NME •

'Mood' is the new music drama for fans of 'Fleabag' and 'Chewing Gum'

New music drama Mood sees actor, writer and singer-songwriter Nicôle Lecky bring her critically acclaimed play Superhoe to TV. Already earning comparisons to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag and Michaela Coel’s Chewing Gum, it’s a heartfelt and humorous look at the life of Sasha (Lecky) – an aspiring rapper who is thrown into poverty after being chucked out of her home by her mum (played by Jessica Hynes from Spaced) and stepdad (Game of Thrones’ Paul Kaye)...
NME •

Kavinsky on his return and a new collaboration with The Weeknd: “It’s happening soon"

Kavinsky has spoken to NME about what to expect from his long-awaited second album, ‘Reborn’ – as well as news that a new collaboration with The Weeknd is on the way. The French electro-pop pioneer, real name Vincent Belorgey, announced details of his first album in nine years last week along with the single ‘Zenith’. Kavinsky will now release ‘Reborn’ on March 25 via Fiction / Virgin Music France, marking his first…
EMPIRE •

Can spoofs make a comeback? David Zucker and Jim Abrahams

SPOOF MOVIES USED to be everywhere. In the ’80s and ’90s they dominated the comedy landscape (The Naked Gun 2 1/2 and Hot Shots! made the box-office top ten in 1991); in the ’00s the landscape became oversaturated and spoofs became a watchword for cheap knockoffs. Lately, they seem to have disappeared. But the genre looks to be making a comeback, with a new Netflix series entitled — deep breath — The Woman In The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window...
Evening Standard •

The Smile review: a stunning preview of tantalising Radiohead spin-off

It was his new band The Smile’s first performance in front of a live audience since their unveiling at Glastonbury’s virtual event last summer. Made up of Radiohead bandmate Jonny Greenwood, Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner and produced by long-term collaborator Nigel Godrich, the group delivered three separate gigs throughout the night in the intimate setting, all scheduled so fans around the world could tune in via livestream…
The Quietus •

Album Of The Week | The Vanity Project By Iceboy Violet

The White Hotel in Salford, Greater Manchester, is at the centre of one of the most exciting artistic scenes in the UK. There, you’ll find a flourishing group of fearless artists who frequently twist noise, grime, dance, rap and electronica into new and unfamiliar shapes – often with rich and evocative lyricism. One of the most prolific of this collective is emerging artist, Iceboy Violet. They’ve made a name for themselves as the venue’s resident MVP and through support slots with the likes of Loraine James and Moor Mother - amongst many others.
NME •

Romola Garai on Hollywood after #MeToo: "Acting is still a dirty game"

For actor Romola Garai, it all changed when she snagged her dream role in 2004’s Havana Nights, the sequel to ‘80s classic Dirty Dancing. Aged 17, she played lead Katey Miller in her first big blockbuster role. But the experience was so terrible that she left Hollywood soon after (as well as acting) and returned to university. In a 2017 interview, Garai described the production as “a cesspit of horrific misogyny.” She was weighed daily and assigned a dietician to ensure she remained underweight...
Load More Articles