‘We get a lot of requests for it to be used in sex scenes’: how Goldfrapp made Ooh La La

‘I couldn’t think of a line for the chorus – but we had just been to France. I got Baudelaire into the lyrics somewhere, too’This song was an ode to glam rock. My older sister was really into Marc Bolan and her passion for him and his sound really rubbed off on me. I love the vocal effects and drum sounds on those old records.I couldn’t think of a lyric for the chorus, though, and I thought to myself: “What do I need?” We’d just been to France, hence the “Ooh la la”, but we wondered if it was sufficient

Blurry rats and coyotes with mange: the oddly thrilling subreddit dedicated to identifying wildlife

I spent the first decade of my life in Vancouver Island, Canada, in an area rich with parks, lakes and forests. Deer would occasionally wander into our neighbourhood and nibble on the blossoms in our front yard. In that neck of the (literal) woods, mountains and deer also mean cougars.My sister and I would play at a local park, then walk home along a track parallel to a dense forest. My older sister, being three and a half years ahead of me in life and therefore lightyears ahead of me in wisdom, would helpfully declare that if we encountered a cougar it would attack me, not her, as I’m the smaller prey

‘She was a bitch in the best possible way’: the life and mysterious death of drag queen Heklina

The performer was found dead in ‘unexpected’ circumstances in her London flat in 2023. Why are her loved ones still waiting for an explanation?In commemorations and memorials after her death, the view was unanimous: Heklina had been a bitch. In the world of San Francisco’s drag scene, where she made her name, this wasn’t meant as an insult. Heklina had been a legendary performer whose stage persona was equal parts raunchy and abrasive, slinging insults known as “reads” in fine drag tradition. “Yeah, she was a bitch,” recalls her longtime collaborator Sister Roma, “but she was a bitch in the best possible way

‘I don’t go around telling people I love the Spice Girls’: Mo Gilligan’s honest playlist

The first single I bought Rollout (My Business) by Ludacris from HMV in Lewisham Shopping Centre. I played it over and over.The first song I fell in love with I grew up listening to a lot of reggae – my dad was a Rastafarian – so Get Up, Stand Up by Bob Marley was always playing in the house when my mum was dishing out the chores. It’s ironic that it’s a song about redemption when you’re being told to clean the house.The song I do at karaoke You need to have a song that everyone knows, so they can help you sing along, so I’d go for Angels by Robbie Williams or Wonderwall by Oasis

My cultural awakening: A Queen song helped me break free from communist Cuba

Listening to Brian May’s multi-tracked epic on a battered cassette player when I lived in repressive Havana inspired lit a spark of rebellion inside meThroughout my childhood and teenage years growing up in 80s Cuba, Fidel Castro’s presence, and the overt influence of politics, was everywhere – on posters, on walls, in speeches that could last four hours at a stretch. The sense of being hemmed in, politically and personally, was hard to escape.I had been raised to believe in communism, and for a long time I did. I even applied twice to join the Young Communist League, only to be rejected for not being “combative” enough: code for not informing on others. Friends were expelled from university or jailed for speaking too freely and my family included people in the military and police, so I had to be careful not to endanger them

The Guide #227: A brain-melting sci-fi movie marathon, curated by Britain’s best cult film-maker

Few directors currently working merit the title of ‘cult hero’ more than Ben Wheatley. Over a 15-year-plus career, the British film-maker has dabbled in just about every cinematic genre and style imaginable: psychedelic horror (A Field in England, In the Earth), grimy video nasty (Kill List), stylish, gun-toting thrillers (Free Fire), murderous Mike Leigh homages (Down Terrace, Sightseers), literary adaptations (Rebecca, High-Rise), and even a whopping great studio monster movie (Meg 2: The Trench).Wheatley’s latest film further cements that cult status. Bulk is a defiantly DIY sci-fi-noir-paranoid-thriller hybrid, starring Sam Riley as an investigative journo tasked with rescuing a scientist from his own malfunctioning multi-dimensional creation. With its handwritten title cards, overdubbed dialogue, sticky-back-plastic special effects and general vibe of formal experimentation, Bulk exists a world away from most modern film-making