Music Features

“It’s a new chapter in my life as a storyteller,” says Questlove, fresh from reinventing the concert movie with Summer of Soul. His directorial debut, which embedded much-needed Black-history lessons inside jaw-dropping, long-buried performances from Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, B.B. King, and many others, was one of 2021’s …

After years of performing around New York City, the Ronettes exploded in 1963 behind “Be My Baby,” a modern standard beloved by the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and pretty much everyone else with ears and a heart. During the recording of the song in Los Angeles, “All the musicians dropped …

Kool & the Gang, one of the world’s greatest living groove-based bands, have been playing more than 100 shows a year for longer than Robert “Kool” Bell cares to remember. He was already adjusting to the unfamiliar sensation of a long stint at home in 2020 when tragedy struck — …

There are more frequent solar eclipses than there are instant classics in rap. But back in 1994, when Nas courted unbelievable hype — after a planet-shifting verse on 1991’s “Live at the Barbeque,” followed by the red-hot “Halftime” a year later — then delivered with the Library of Congress–inducted Illmatic, …

“For once your timing wasn’t great/I must have missed you by a day.” This is quite a statement coming from the guy who’s waited four years to give us another Father John Misty album. Somehow the world that Josh Tillman described in “Bored in the USA” has become even bleaker, …

E lvis Presley had been dead for six months when the plastic-surgeon’s knife plunged into Dennis Wise. There Wise lay, on a table in an Orlando hospital, surrounded by photos of the King. He knew what was coming, but the reality of it didn’t really hit him until the doctor, …

Good night, Papa Nez. The music world is mourning today for the late, great Michael Nesmith, and celebrating his long, weird, beautiful life. He died today at 78, just weeks after the Monkees’ final show on Nov. 14. He was the coolest Monkee, the rock star of the band, the …

W elcome to Rolling Stone’s 2021 Musicians on Musicians package, the annual franchise where two great artists come together for a free, open conversation about life and music. Each story in this year’s series will appear in our November 2021 print issue, hitting newsstands on November 2nd. Willow Smith has …

In chaotic times, Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen found calm and comfort in what some would consider chaotic music: Bebop records by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were his pandemic soundtrack, and as he tells Rolling Stone, “It’s weird; a lot of people get anxious when they hear bebop, but it …

In September 2019, Mitski played a final show in Central Park (with Lucy Dacus as an opener, no less) before embarking on an extended hiatus and going completely dark on social media. Two years, 26 days, and a global pandemic later, she’s returned with “Working For the Knife,” a track …