Yesterday was my sister’s birthday – not that I’ve had a chance to wish her happy birthday, she long since decided to cut herself off from much of the family. Her choice, I guess. To be fair, we’ve never really got on. We ended up part of a larger family, with two stepbrothers and twin stepsisters, and as we’ve got older we’ve naturally drifted apart somewhat (especially in distance).
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But not all siblings drift apart, and there are countless instances in music of siblings working together, either in short-lived side-projects or in much longer-lived bands. This week looks at ten such instances.
A quick explanation for new readers (hi there!): my Tuesday Ten series has been running since March 2007, and each month features at least ten new songs you should hear – and in between those monthly posts, I feature songs on a variety of subjects, with some of the songs featured coming from suggestion threads on Facebook.
Feel free to get involved with these – the more the merrier, and the breadth of suggestions that I get continues to astound me. Otherwise, as usual, if you’ve got something you want me to hear, something I should be writing about, or even a gig I should be attending, e-mail me or drop me a line on Facebook (details above).
Having looked this up, the Bee Gees are reckoned to be the biggest-selling siblings of all (with over 220 million sales), but not far behind them are Australian rockers AC/DC. AC/DC were founded by brothers Angus and Malcolm Young in 1973 – their family having left Glasgow after the big freeze in the early 60s for Australia – and their brother George Young produced some of their earlier releases alongside Harry Vanda – basically the prolific early period between High Voltage in 1975 and Powerage in 1978, which is no less than six albums. As well as that, of the other two brothers, Alex Young was also a musician, and wrote at least one song for AC/DC that didn’t end up being used, while Stephen Young’s son Stephen Young Jr. stepped into AC/DC when Malcolm Young was diagnosed with early onset dementia.
It’s a remarkable set of family links, and one that has enabled the band to overcome tragedy on more than a few occasions and continue to be one of the greatest, and most enduring, rock bands of all.
/INXS
Another Australian band featuring brothers was INXS, with Andrew, Jon and Tim Farriss forming a succession of bands across the seventies, going back to their schooldays, along with friend Michael Hutchence before becoming INXS in 1979. Their heyday was the MTV era of the late-80s and early-90s, with a succession of huge hits and striking videos (perhaps assisted by their photogenic frontman Hutchence). Like AC/DC, the band survived the death of their lead singer, although unlike AC/DC, INXS were never the same after Hutchence died in 1997, and they played their last show in 2012 and disbanded.
A more complex one starts with Boston indie stalwarts Throwing Muses. Kristen Hersh was best friends with Tanya Donnelly at school, and they became step-sisters when Hersh’s mother married Donnelly’s father. Being both into music as children, it was perhaps unsurprising that they formed a band together (in 1981, when still at school). By 1986, when they toured the UK, they were supported by a young band called Pixies, which featured Kim Deal on bass.
Tanya Donnelly later left Throwing Muses, but before that, in 1989 formed The Breeders with Kim Deal, who was already frustrated with her lack of input to much of the work of Pixies. Kim Deal’s identical twin Kelley Deal joined The Breeders in 1992 (having previously auditioned for Pixies herself, without success!), and Donnelly then left to concentrate on her own nascent band Belly: which amazingly also included brothers, Tom and Chris Gorman…
Oasis are one of the few bands in this list to have played out pretty much their entire career in the public eye, catapulting quickly to fame with their much-hyped first releases and swaggering through the Britpop era and beyond with a sound that could be charitably described as having cribbed the notes of the Beatles and a number of their other forebears: and just recently, announced as 2026 inductees into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame, arguably ahead of a number of rather more important artists.
The band was formed initially by four friends in south Manchester, with Liam Gallagher replacing the original vocalist, before his older brother Noel Gallagher (previously a roadie for the Inspiral Carpets) was invited to join the band, and I think it’s inarguable that it was his input, drive and songwriting that got the band noticed, signed and released so quickly.
Things snowballed so fast that it’s almost unthinkable these days: Definitely Maybe was the fastest selling debut album in British music history, and then follow-ups (What’s The Story) Morning Glory and Be Here Now both broke records for their first week sales in the UK – the latter a mind-boggling 696,000 copies in a week. A shame that compared to the focus of the first two albums, that it was overblown tosh and many listeners quickly discovered as such.
The relationship between the Gallaghers, though, provided much of the entertainment. A fractious relationship at best, their arguments and disagreements were often aired in the press, on the radio and on TV (Noel Gallagher in particular was often a hugely entertaining interviewee), and things finally came to a head in 2009 when Noel left the band. Both had moderately successful solo careers, but they eventually bowed to the inevitable and reunited for a 2025 world tour that they did complete – playing to over two million people, and grossing around £400 million, more than enough to cover the animosity, I’m sure.
I think uniquely this week, too, the band’s greatest song happens to be about the relationship between the two brothers: the mighty Acquiesce, amazingly tossed away as a B-side like so many of the best Oasis songs were…
Brazilian metal titans Sepultura are unusual, but by no means unique, for ending their time – they are disbanding this year, once they complete a final world tour – as an active band with no original members. They were formed by brothers Max and Igor Cavalera in 1984, and rose from another thrash metal band to a forward-looking metal band that was deeply intwined in Brazilian culture and struggle, and began to feature more and more musical elements from their homeland into their sound (the album Roots in particular being a frankly spectacular album.
Deep rifts emerged when tragedy struck the Cavaleras, as Max’s step-son was killed in a car accident, and the rest of the band wanting to fire their manager – who was Max’s wife. Max left the band, replaced by Derrick Green, and Igor remained – and the two brothers didn’t speak for a decade before eventually reconciling and playing together again, but not as Sepultura, a band both made clear they had left behind. Max found much success in his Soulfly project – and still playing some of the old Sep classics – while Igor has been exploring all kinds of wild sounds and reminding every time how good a drummer he is.
Incidentally, that final show is earmarked to be in São Paulo at some point this year, but sadly it appears that Max and Igor will not be involved, despite hopes that they might be.
Tragedy also struck UK alt-rock band Headswim. Formed by brothers Daniel and Tom Glendining, they initially emerged with a synth-led, trippy alt-grunge sound that genuinely sounded different to their peers…and then they seemed to vanish. It transpired, when they eventually returned with the dark, thoughtful single Tourniquet in 1997, that their brother Matthew had died from leukaemia, and they understandably needed time to deal with it. That death genuinely changed their outlook, and second album Despite Yourself was very different, preoccupied with mortality and imbued with a deep sadness that was hard to shake.
The band members moved on, but thanks to a fan campaign and a small label, the albums were lavishly reissued and the band reunited for one memorable show at the Underworld in October 2022, where they played all of Flood and a few other songs to a sold-out crowd, and the feeling seemed to be that the band were surprised and overjoyed at the outpouring of love for their music. It was worth it, I can tell you.
French metal band Gojira took their current name in 2001, and have been the same fourpiece since 2001, with brothers Joe and Mario Duplantier on vocals/guitars and drums respectively. Like many others, I first heard them on their third album From Mars to Sirius in 2005, where their environmental activism and considered lyrics made an interesting counterpoint to their ferocious sound. Nineteen years later, they became the first metal band to feature in an Olympics opening ceremony, as they collaborated with opera singer Marina Viotti for the spectacular Mea Culpa (Ah! Ça Ira), the band performing on balconies of the Conciergerie overlooking the River Seine, and gaining themselves a whole new legion of fans along the way.
Probably the longest-lived creative partnership between siblings that’s still extant is that between the Mael brothers in Sparks. Ron and Russell Mael have been working together since 1968, have gone through pretty much every style possible since, breaking through with glam rock-ish This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both of Us in 1974 and having been important outliers in pop ever since. They’ve collaborated with others – most notably their outstanding FFS album with Franz Ferdinand – but their sound is so distinctive that their style always shines through.
Of the various groups of the sixties that shaped popular music since, The Beach Boys are one of the most important. Initially founded by Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love and their friend Al Jardine – and managed by the Wilson’s father Murry – the family affair resulted in some of the most iconic pop songs of all time, some of the most extraordinary pop production ever put to tape (Good Vibrations, obviously), proved young bands could write and produce their own material with great commercial and critical success, and perhaps helped shape the Californian coast as a place to surf, pick up girls and have a great time without a care in the world.
Sadly none of the Wilson brothers survive. Dennis drowned as long ago as 1983, Carl died from lung cancer, and Brian, long separated from the rest of the band after struggles with mental illness and his health, died last year, aged 82.
By some distance the youngest siblings featured this week are the duo that make up ALT BLK ERA. Nyrobi and Chaya Becket-Messam are sisters from Nottingham whose work attracted the attention of local metal label Earache. When they started in 2020, both sisters were teenagers (I think one still is), and their music is a chaotic mix of alt-rock, drum’n’bass, trap and hip-hop, a product of their influences that these days are often far wider-reaching than ours were when we were teenagers. They were an unexpected and enormously entertaining – and popular – booking at Resistanz last year, and are touring relatively regularly, so if you’ve not seen them live yet, get on it.