Hello, this is Everything Else, the culture podcast from The Financial Times.

Each week we discuss the things we're excited about and you should know about.

And in a week dominated by the president-elect, or the new president, depending on when you're listening,

we can promise you half an hour blissfully free of US politics.

I'm Griselda-Mari Brown and usually I'm joined by my co-host John Sunya, who this week is giving the

podcast his full support from a beach in India. Fingers crossed, he'll be back next week. On this episode,

you're going to hear from Wayne McGregor, one of the most inventive and influential choreographers working today.

But before that, we're going to be exploring the state of new music.

Did pop itself die along with David Bowie last year?

Or is it in fact constantly reinventing itself?

I'll be putting these questions to the FT's pop critic, Ludovic Hunter Tilney,

and to the paper's former arts writer, Peter Aspden.

Ludo, I'm going to start with you. You wrote a piece which was published a couple of weeks ago,

in which you said the felling of four major figures from several different

eras of music gave the impression of an entire tradition under threat. And I wondered, along with

the deaths of Bowie Prince Lennox Owen, George Michael that we had last year, do you think

that pop itself has kind of died a death? Well, Griselda, to take a roundabout route, not too roundabout,

but a roundabout route towards the answer to that, or what I think might be the answer to that.

I had to say that when I began writing about pop music for the FT in 1997, having taken over

from my fellow guest, Peter, I little thought that I would sort of end up becoming a trained

obituorist, but that is what I

basically have become over the years. They've mounted up, and 2016 was the sort of, the Grim Reaper's

...