Aliya Arman

This year has been a belter for live music. Our cities have come alive with pop comebacks, raging metal shows and some damn good dance tunes. We’ve fully embraced our tastes, however cringe they may be (there’s no shame in loving something). We’ve screamed out lyrics, two stepped to our heart’s content, moshed in a festival field and everything in between. Gen Zers bragged about ‘escape room pop stars’, veteran jazz fans stroked their chins to legends of the scene and some of us unleashed our inner teens by watching pop-punk superstars. Here are Time Out’s favourite live music moments of 2023 – taking in picks from all over our huge, juicy global network of editors.  RECOMMENDED: 🎬 The best movies of 2023🕺 The 23 best songs of 2023🎵 The 30 best albums of 2023

From head-spinning literary debuts to masterful novels from authors at the height of their power, big-name autobiographies to binge-worthy cultural histories, here are our editors’ favourite page-turners of 2023. Add these lot to your ‘to read’ pile, stat. RECOMMENDED: 🎬 The best movies of 2023📺 The best TV shows of 2023🎵 The best albums of 2023

Some year, eh? We’ve been blessed with some absolute crackers of albums over the last 12 months. We’ve had sad girl anthem after sad girl anthem (boygenius, Mitski and Lana Del Rey in the same year?!), breakthrough pop stars (hello: Raye and Olivia Dean), as well as dancefloor-ready K-pop, killer soundtracks and emo kid comebacks. It’s been a stand-out year for new music, and while it’s never fun to have to choose your favourite, yes, we’ve gone and done it. We asked Time Out writers and editors from around the world to choose the one record they had on repeat over the last 12 months. Without further a do, here are 30 of our favourite albums of 2023. RECOMMENDED:The best movies of 2023 (so far)The best TV shows of 2023 you need to streamThe 50 best podcasts to listen to in 2023

At the art’otel Hoxton, London’s newest skyline hotel, there’s art to be found at every turn – in the most literal sense of the word. The 26-storey tower stands where the old Foundry pub once was, an iconic East End hangout that became the cornerstone of the noughties’ Brit Art movement. These days, it’s fair to say that the hotel takes its name and alt-scene heritage with a seriously cool sense of pride. From the moment you arrive at the front doors, you’re greeted with not one but two original Banksy artworks: one of a giant rat and another of a TV set being chucked out the window. Subversive comic-strip style installations by resident artist D*Face are dotted around communal spaces. Head down to the basement level and you’ll discover an in-house gallery. And if the many, many murals have left you feeling inspired? You’ll find sheets of sketch paper and watercolour brush pens waiting in the room for you. The room itself is bold and slick, with plenty of chic touches — a Dyson airwrap, a retro record player, a Roberts radio – and eco-conscious Kevin Murphy toiletries there at the ready. And, as one of the few tall towers in the East End, the 357-room hotel features floor-to-ceiling windows in every suite. If it’s views you’re after, the London skyline is pretty hard to beat here.  Blending modern flair and convenience, art’otel Hoxton has got the whole ‘artsy without being pretentious’ vibe nailed. Neighbourhood Just a stone’s throw away from Old Street station, the hotel

London Fashion Week is just around the corner (September 15-19), and some brands are pulling out all the stops to make their mark – or tube stops, in some cases. Bond Street has officially transformed into Burberry Street, as part of the brand’s citywide takeover for one of the most stylish weeks in town.  The signage features one of Burberry’s new official colours, knight blue, which has been picked out by Chief Creative Officer Daniel Lee. Sure, TfL takeovers are nothing new. Southgate station was temporarily rebranded as Gareth Southgate station following England’s World Cup campaign in 2018 (we were robbed). It happens informally, too: just this summer, Barbican was jokingly renamed ‘Barbiecan’ to poke fun at the OTT marketing campaign for Greta Gerwig’s record-breaking ‘Barbie’. This time though, fun has been swapped for frustration, with spectators all saying the same thing: it’s confusing. In campaigns past you were unlikely to lose more than three seconds recalibrating your route. ‘Burberry Street’, however, could quite legitimately be plonked on the Monopoly board. Who knows how many Uniglo bag-donning tourists are currently flailing around the underbelly of the Jubilee line. One Twitter user, @castlefacts1, said: ‘The idea of signage is to be useful and informative, not some tacky marketing campaign.’ And it’s not just tourists that are baffled. Londoners have been left scratching their heads too. ‘Yes the Burberry takeover of Bond Street is cool but it also had me