“Old Town Road” is so much more than a hit at this point — it’s like centuries of American music were all building up to these 113 seconds of genius. Lil Nas X’s yeehaw manifesto has been the great national obsession ever since it blew up in March, which feels …
Read More »The Summer of '85: Relive the Eleven Biggest Musical Moments
This year has been awash with nostalgia for the final year of the Sixties and the end of the 20th Century (a.k.a. 1999), but Stranger Things is bringing the Eighties back in a, like, totally major way. The upcoming third season of the hit Netflix series (set to premiere July …
Read More »Sparkles, Bows and Millions of Dollars: Inside JoJo Siwa's Glitter-Covered Empire
O n a nondescript, cactus-lined street in Sherman Oaks, California, it’s hard to miss the only house with a unicorn-drawn-carriage and a custom BMW painted like a rainbow race car on its curb. Inside the house, singer, actress, and YouTube superstar JoJo Siwa is covered in flour, sprinkles, and eggs, …
Read More »Heavy-Metal Auteur Trevor William Church Keeps It in the Family
In 1992, when Trevor William Church was 10 years old, his dad took him to see Van Halen. It was a typical father-son outing, except for the fact that the band’s then-frontman, Sammy Hagar, happened to be Bill Church’s former boss. That night, the elder Church, who played bass on …
Read More »How Charly Bliss Learned to Love Pop
Sam Hendricks was at an LCD Soundsystem show in 2017 when the idea hit him. Moved by that band’s dancefloor grandeur, Sam wanted to write something for his group, Charly Bliss, “in the same vein as one of [LCD’s] songs, where they take a basic idea and stretch it out …
Read More »Watch Tom Petty's Poignant New 'For Real' Video
Last year, Tom Petty’s daughter Adria was in the home studio of Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell, reviewing some of the material her father left behind. There, she first heard “For Real,” a plaintive, sparely arranged song written and recorded quickly in 2000 but never released. The song expressed her father’s …
Read More »The Last Word: RZA on Wu-Tang's Legacy, Turning 50 and Why He Prays Daily
Even for RZA, one of the Wu-Tang Clan’s most thoughtful members, 2019 is shaping up to be a particularly reflective year.Of Mics and Men, a four-hour documentary on the group directed by longtime hip-hop journalist turned director Sacha Jenkins, will premiere on Showtime May 10th. Getting every member to talk …
Read More »Craig Finn Just Wants to Make 'Smaller' Records
Ask a Craig Finn fan to picture the contents of the singer’s brain on a given day, and they might imagine a steady stream of the sort of first-pumping underdog tales he’s spent 16 years shouting onstage as frontman of the Hold Steady. But these days, the singer often fixates …
Read More »Flashback: Scott Walker Conducts a Meat Puncher in the Studio
“It’s very stark,” Scott Walker says of his music in a 2006 interview for the documentary 30 Century Man. “As I go on, things get starker.” Did they ever. It’s hard to think of a popular, or once-popular, musician whose work transformed more completely, or fascinatingly, than Scott Walker’s did …
Read More »Karen O and Danger Mouse on Time Travel, Female Energy, Pink Floyd and Beyoncé
Karen O and Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton started making noise around the same time, with a similar irreverent zest. In the early 2000s, when Karen was rampaging around the world with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, rocking fishnets-and-lipstick classics like “Maps” and “Y Control,” Danger Mouse rewrote the rulebook with his …
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