Music Features

From the beginning of her career, Nicki Minaj has taken the moments as they’ve come. When her debut album Pink Friday arrived in 2010, she was navigating somewhat unpaved terrain. Breaking through the barriers of hip-hop’s boy’s club meant defending her craft to people who perceived her femininity as a …

From singing backup at Elvis Presley’s 1968 comeback TV special to writing Michael Jackson‘s “She’s Out of My Life” to arranging the vocals on Billy Joel’s An Innocent Man, longtime Quincy Jones collaborator Tom Bahler has had an improbably jam-packed music career. But as he sees it, the peak of …

Billy Joel sent shockwaves through his fan community earlier this month by announcing plans to release a new single, “Turn the Lights Back On,” on Feb. 1. He hasn’t put out new material of any sort since 2007’s “Christmas in Fallujah,” and River of Dreams was his last album of …

It’s a fascinating and complicated time to be an Afropop lover, with so many people outside of Africa joining the ranks. Consider Afrobeats, a broad subgenre under the even broader umbrella of African pop, which earned 2.5 billion streams by the midpoint of 2023, per Luminate, an entertainment analytics company. …

Melinda Wilson, wife of Beach Boys‘ Brian Wilson, mother of his five youngest children, and the key architect of his comeback, died Tuesday of unknown causes. She was 77. “My heart is broken,” Brian Wilson wrote in a statement. “Our five children and I are just in tears. We are …

The sessions started at Hollywood, California’s A&M Studios the night of Jan. 28, 1985, and didn’t end until well after sunrise the morning of Jan. 29. By that point, it was clear that nothing quite like “We Are the World” could ever happen again.The Greatest Night in Pop, a new …

When the Key Western Fest kicks off Tuesday in Key West —the third music festival in as many weeks centered around the town’s Coffee Butler Amphitheater —it’ll feature a lineup that is unique among its country music peers. The bill is an all-women showcase of predominantly Nineties country stars. “I’m …

Art Garfunkel Jr.’s first memory of singing onstage with his father is pretty hazy, but he knows it took place in Japan sometime before his third birthday. “I believe I was pushed out in a wheelbarrow, wearing a traditional Japanese kimono,” he tells Rolling Stone. “My parents picked me up …

As a subgenre of music film, tour documentaries naturally have a solid boundary – the tour. This clear and limited objective seems fitting for Lil Nas X, who looks a bit uncomfortable with the premise at points in his first feature-length doc, Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero. Streaming on …

Mike and the Moonpies are changing their name. After 16 years of recording and performing under that moniker, singer Mike Harmeier and his barnstorming Texas five-piece are rebranding as “Silverada.” Harmeier announced the overhaul during an intimate performance moderated by Rolling Stone at Key West’s Mile 0 Festival, a prestige …