Leonie Cooper
Leonie Cooper is a music and culture journalist with over fifteen years experience writing for publications such as The Guardian and NME.
The Unsung: the trailblazing defiance of Poly Styrene
Punk heralded the arrival of trailblazer upon trailblazer, but none were more groundbreaking than the young woman in a vintage twin set and strands...
The Unsung: Jinx Dawson invented rock’s devil horns – but a man took all...
You think Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath invented Satan-summoning occult rock? Think again. A year before Black Sabbath’s doomy debut came Coven’s 'Witchcraft Destroys...
The Unsung: At 83, Alberta Hunter’s plucky, feminist jazz was still captivating crowds
I first came across Alberta Hunter while flicking through the $1 racks in the vast Hollywood branch of Amoeba Records on Sunset Boulevard. When...
The Unsung: How Wendy O. Williams became the anarchic darling of CBGBs
Since their inception, the unholy trinity of punk, metal and hardcore have been wildly male dominated. But it was in the early days of...
The Unsung: Revisiting Jessie Mae Hemphill’s leopard print-clad country blues, 40 years on
When blues pioneer Jessie Mae Hemphill finally found fame in the 1980s, she wasn’t hard to spot. By then she was almost 60, but...
50 years of Linda Martell: country music’s unsung hero
When it comes to country and western trailblazers, there’s one extremely special singer whose name has been unjustly forgotten in the 50 years since...
The country music stars getting stick from the genre’s trad fanbase – and coming...
You’d have hoped that the kind of fierce, reactionary backlash against the Dixie Chicks – now known as The Chicks – when they poured...
Sylvan Esso: “There’s a reason why humanity wants to dance – there are so...
This summer Amelia Meath – the lyric-writing, Buffalo boot wearing, cartwheeling half of Sylvan Esso – turned 32. Of course a party was impossible,...
Farewell Miss Mercy – one of life’s true originals
And so it goes that another magnificent pop cultural presence leaves us. Earlier this week, the woman known as Miss Mercy passed away at...
Succession’s Cousin Greg has just dropped a pop-punk Coronavirus banger
Every single character in Succession is a sinister, nasty piece of work – scumbags one and all. And yet, what you wouldn’t give to...