As a pandemic besieges the globe, hip-hop fans are the only group asking the important questions: Did Jay-Z wash Jay Electronica on the latter’s debut album? Last Friday, Jay Electronica finally released his debut album — it came after a decade of rap bloggers hailing “Exhibit C” as the second …
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At age 19, Chynna Phillips was just trying to get well. The singer, who formed Wilson Phillips in 1986 with Carnie and Wendy Wilson, had struggled with drug and alcohol addiction throughout high school. As the trio cultivated their sound, learning together how to turn beautiful harmonies into thoughtful, original …
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Near the end of a November show at Dallas listening room the Kessler, singer-songwriter Joshua Ray Walker threw the assembled crowd for a loop when he brought out his friends Ottoman Turks for a surprise three-song set of furious, fast-paced Texas punk. Walker plays lead guitar in the band when …
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Ozzy Osbourne will always be the quintessential heavy-metal maniac, but at heart, he’s an old-school song man. His new single — the nostalgic, bittersweet, Elton John–featuring title track off his upcoming solo LP, Ordinary Man — is the latest in a long line of tender ballads from the Beatles-worshipping singer, …
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In 1975, Lou Reed gave Andy Warhol a BASF C-90 cassette. One side was a mix of live Reed songs recorded at recent tour dates. The other was an apparently homemade demo of a dozen songs based on his friend and mentor’s newly-published The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A …
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“With Stop Making Sense, we brought everything onstage so people could see what it takes to put on a show, and with this, I’m taking everything away,” David Byrne says of American Utopia, his quasi-theatrical Broadway residency, which is scheduled to run into next year. “I wondered, ‘Can we do …
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Some bands reach greatness by inventing something new, others by reminding you of what you loved a long time ago. For Pip Blom, the 23-year-old sparkplug who leads the Dutch alt-rock band of the same name, the choice was clear. Growing up surrounded by peers who listened to Top 40 …
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In 1994, Ginger Baker released a jazz trio album that represented a radical but welcome departure from the heavy blues rock he had pioneered as a member of Cream. Yet the record — Going Back Home — was in many ways a return to form. Baker, the British drummer who …
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First-round Grammy voting is currently underway, and running through October 10th. For our 2020 Grammy preview, we asked a series of likely contenders to reflect on their past experiences at the ceremony, look ahead to the future, and break down the albums and singles that could earn them a statue …
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A month before Woodstock 50 was announced, the festival was already in deep trouble. Last December, Michael Lang, the co-founder of the original 1969 event who had become its bemused-hippie symbol in subsequent decades, was in talks with an upstate New York racetrack for a fest that would mark the …
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