Music Features

When he was three years old, Jerry Douglas heard the groundbreaking banjo licks of Earl Scruggs on the turntable each morning during breakfast at his childhood home in northeastern Ohio. “And we’d hear the Flatt & Scruggs [Grand Ole Opry] radio show on WSM if there was clear weather between …

Like all artists of any note, Jimmy Buffett had more than his share of paradoxes: He was a laid-back lover of the tropics who became a business titan, a writer of heartbreaking story-songs who founded a tribe of Parrotheads. In our 2020 interview, posted here for the first time, Buffett …

I f there was one punk group that positioned itself as a leader of a movement for inclusivity, radical change, and allyship in the early 2000s, it was Anti-Flag. Co-founded by Justin Geever, a.k.a. Justin Sane, in Pittsburgh in 1993, members flitted in and out until the group solidified in …

For the past five decades, the incredible story of Elton John and Bernie Taupin‘s partnership has been told largely by Elton. That’s finally changing on September 12 with the release of Taupin’s memoir Scattershot: Life, Music, Elton, and Me. It’s a non-traditional work that leaps through time, focusing on the …

Country music is this summer’s streaming powerhouse. That fact was all but cemented on Monday when “I Remember Everything,” Zach Bryan’s duet with Kacey Musgraves, became the fourth consecutive country song over the course of six weeks to hold the Number One slot on Billboard’s Hot 100. With more than …

Electric Zoo returned to Randall’s Island Park this Labor Day weekend, but not without some conflict. The first day of the festival was canceled on Friday, hours before gates opened, due to incomplete construction of the main stage. Agitated crowds breached the gates Sunday after being informed the venue reached …

Few experiences in rock compare with seeing Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in New Jersey. That’s why fans from all over the globe descended on East Rutherford’s MetLife Stadium on Aug. 30, Sept. 1, and Sept. 3. Anticipation ran high because seven years ago they delivered some of …

Rolling Stone‘s interview series King for a Day features long-form conversations between senior writer Andy Greene and singers who had the difficult job of fronting major rock bands after the departure of an iconic vocalist. Some of them stayed in their bands for years, while others lasted just a few …

Although they both established themselves as leading summer-shed troubadours of the Seventies, Jimmy Buffett and James Taylor seemed to live in different parts of a harbor: Buffett the effusive showman, Taylor the introspective loner. In fact, the two had more in common than anyone would have expected. Both were sailors, …

Today’s country artists love to namecheck icons like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings in their songs and during interviews. But sonically, they owe their greatest debt to Jimmy Buffett, whose tropical vibes, beachy imagery, and ocean escapism has shaped the last two decades of mainstream country. Buffett died …