Lily Allen, West End Girl (2025) Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ In five months’ time, I will be turning 22. These double digits are sold to young women as our most fun and frivolous age, the last hurrah of our girlhoods before reality kicks in. Think Taylor Swift, her girl squad, and that bloody black fedora. It is an image that I aspired to for a long time, an image promising freedom, spontaneity, and messiness. And it was okay to indulge this fantasy because, when the clock struck twelve

Photograph by Isabel Beiboer (@ibfilmforyou) From the outside, the Edinburgh music scene appears a close-knit and impenetrable community. I was unsure about how to get my foot in the door and this column off the ground. However, through mutual friends, I was recently and happily introduced to Daisy Casemore. I first met Daisy at an intimate evening of music and poetry she organised in her living room, to fundraise for Medical Aid for Palestinians, but I had heard her name man

On Tuesday night at Home Bar, four performers made it their home and graciously welcomed us inside – or down below, I should say. The brainchild of Edinburgh students Daisy Casemore and Sasha Mansfield, the October 21 gig was a magical offering. On descending into the basement club, I was enveloped in an orange glow around the lamps, stage and anticipating guests. The poster did not lie!  Image by Isabel Beiboer The ceiling was low but spirits were high. My eyes were drawn to

Illustrations by Grace McKenna There is something quite petrifying when attempting to write about music. Revealing your music taste, after all, feels like a strangely intimate act. A favourite song cannot be compared to something as prosaic as a favourite colour, food, or season. A favourite song can transport you, in mere seconds, to the deepest, darkest corners of your brain that hold those wonderfully specific memories, some of which you may even have tried to forget. A fi