To celebrate the release of the film Mother Mary, starring Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel, in which a fashion designer creates a comeback dress for a pop star, we weigh up the best performative looks

“Dressed like a fabulously turned-out carrion crow,” is how our reviewer described the gothic, avian-like get-up PJ Harvey wore to perform her journalistic and theatrical ninth album, The Hope Six Demolition Project, in Brixton, south London, in 2016. The dress was the work of Harvey’s longtime friend, the Belgian designer Ann Demeulemeester, and epitomises the more dramatic stage looks – melodramatic but pared-back – that Harvey turned to for her later, darker albums. As she said of the clothes: “For me, it’s about the ability to meet the world. And it is a second skin, isn’t it? It’s protection, as well. It’s a very big part of clothing, the feeling of protection, particularly in Ann’s clothes.” Who would have thought that someone who earlier in their career took to the stage in Spice Girls co-ords and hot-pink catsuits would wind up in such serious Belgian high-fashion? Ellie Violet Bramley

Intimate monologue or performance art? The singer’s recent gigs give a tantalising idea of what a stage adaptation of her album might look like

‘This conversation’s too big for a phone call,” sings Lily Allen on her new album, West End Girl. Maybe those conversations are too big for its 14 tracks as Allen is in discussions about turning the album’s painful account of uncovering infidelity into a play. The singer has just completed a tour of theatre venues, performing West End Girl in its entirety, culminating in last weekend’s shows at the London Palladium. Those gigs give a tantalising idea of what a fully fledged stage adaptation could look like.

Allen’s semi-autobiographical album has theatre at its core – even the songs’ visualisers feature pierrot costumes and a St Martin’s Lane marquee with a tongue-in-cheek nod to The Importance of Being Earnest. The plot includes her being cast in a West End production (mirroring her assured debut in 2:22: A Ghost Story in 2021) and while she is hardly the first pop star to do theatre, it’s still refreshing to hear the line “I got the lead in a play!” on an album.

Day 2 of our Guardian analysis of more than a million Epstein emails exposes the child sex offender’s deep relationships with more high-profile figures

• Day 1: the prince, the billionaire and the politicians

The Epstein files have led to intense scrutiny over links between the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the rich and powerful. But the vast trove of information has made it difficult to assess the extent of some of those connections.

In this second of a two-part series, The Guardian has focused on Epstein’s links to high-profile people in business and the arts – including the renowned economist and former US treasury secretary Larry Summers, the New York film director Woody Allen and Jes Staley, the former head of Barclays.

The Oscar-winning star of Bullets Over Broadway and Hannah and Her Sisters has three major movies coming up. To mark her 78th birthday, we cast an eye over an (almost) immaculate back catalogue

Every great performer should have at least one baffling movie on their CV, and this curio, produced by Ismail Merchant, is Dianne Wiest’s. The plot is bananas: she plays an opera singer leading her gay teenage son to believe that his father (Simon Callow) is dead, by taking the boy to visit a fake grave each year. Guess what? He’s alive! Not for long, though: he’s soon murdered by his own gay pickup, with his son witnessing it all from inside a wardrobe. Wiest flails around Paris in a turban and a tizzy, while Jane Birkin is a fake therapist under the illusion that she is Vanessa Redgrave. The real Redgrave pops up briefly, as does Jerry Hall, because why not?

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Allen isn’t in the first act of her own show, only coming on after 45 minutes of a string ensemble to stiffly deliver her acclaimed album in full

When Lily Allen’s West End Girl was released in October 2025, it was an instant sensation. A raw document of marital betrayal and neglect, it was a new kind of divorce album for the post-tabloid celebrity, inspired by Allen’s own separation from actor David Harbour. It earned Allen rave reviews and a place alongside Miranda July’s All Fours in a contemporary canon of emancipatory, autofictional art for modern (heterosexual) women. The album’s structure as a narrative held rich potential for live staging, and Allen’s choice to play it in full on a tour of theatres – before returning for an arena run later this year – suggested she would make good on its theatrical promise.

Split into two acts, West End Girl Live certainly begins with theatrical flair. A string ensemble – named the Dallas Minor Trio after one of the album’s standout tracks – takes to the stage for a version of Allen’s 2008 hit The Fear. The crowd enthusiastically sings along to karaoke-style lyrics on a screen behind the trio. It works as a prelude: the song’s minor key paranoia translates well to the arrangement and its themes of existential crises are relevant to the album we’re here to see.

She also smeared teen victim of former congressman Anthony Weiner as ‘despicable and disgusting’ , files show

Soon-Yi Previn, the wife of the film director Woody Allen, sent emails to Jeffrey Epstein telling the convicted sex offender that the #MeToo justice movement “has gone too far” – and smearing an underage girl at the center of a sexting case as “despicable and disgusting” rather than the former US congressman who went to prison for illicitly messaging the minor, according to recently released government files.

At one point, Previn also wrote about how her half-brother Ronan Farrow received more “prestige … than he deserves” in a New York Times article published months after his journalism about Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie mogul and now-convicted sex offender, won a share of a Pulitzer prize and kicked off the #MeToo movement.

The Brooklyn townhouse is filled with spectres of her ill-fated marriage to David Harbour. But perhaps the buyer has some creative ideas

How long a minute is depends which side of the bathroom door you’re on. Now it appears that how much a $1m loss matters depends how eager you are for your business to be concluded.

That’s pretty eager apparently – and unsurprisingly – if you’re Lily Allen and David Harbour. The former couple have just accepted $7m for the Brooklyn townhouse they listed for $8m in October.

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Singer-songwriters each receive five nominations at British music industry’s flagship awards – where Jarvis Cocker will return 30 years after Michael Jackson incident

Olivia Dean and Lola Young have cemented their breakthroughs to the front rank of British pop by topping the nominations for the 2026 Brit awards.

The singer-songwriters earned five nominations each. Dean is nominated for artist and album of the year, pop act, and has two chances at winning song of the year for Man I Need and Rein Me In, the latter thanks to a guest spot with Sam Fender.

Raye, Deftones and Yungblud do UK tours, Jill Scott returns for more neo-soul, and the classical world gears up to celebrate Hungarian composer György Kurtág at 100

• More from the 2026 culture preview

Seventeen years on from the release of her debut single, Florence Welch finds herself in an intriguingly strong position: while most of her early 00s indie peers are forgotten or in reduced circumstances, she is a major influence on pop, from Ethel Cain to the Last Dinner Party to Chappell Roan. Her recent album Everybody Scream was a strong restatement of her theatrical approach – with more light and shade than you might expect – but it’s on stage that she really comes into her own.
• UK tour begins 6 February at the SSE Arena, Belfast

Did you watch KPop Demon Hunters? Have you listened to Rosalía? And do you know who ‘fedora guy’ is? If you answered yes to all these, this is the quiz for you

Notable figures in batch of images include Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Woody Allen and Bill Gates

• The latest tranche of Epstein evidence – in pictures

House Democrats have published a new tranche of what they called “disturbing” photographs from the estate of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, featuring among others Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and the British former royal Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

The 19 photographs in the initial drop – some of which have been seen before – plus another 70 released later Friday afternoon represent a small number of the almost 100,000 images released to the House oversight committee, which is looking into the conduct and connections of Epstein, the disgraced financier who died by apparent suicide in a New York jail cell in 2019 after he was charged with sex-trafficking offenses.

Oversight Democrats have released a new batch of photos from the Jeffrey Epstein estate, including images of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Woody Allen, the former Prince Andrew, Steve Bannon and Bill Gates

• Warning – contains sensitive material

• House Democrats release Epstein photos with Trump, Bannon, Clinton and others

• US politics live – latest updates