Some music fans will spend their entire lives mourning the concerts they were never able to attend. Concert films have remedied this slightly, but Janelle Monáe has discovered an even better solution: time travel. In conversation with Lucy Dacus for Rolling Stone‘s Musicians on Musicians series, Monáe recalled her experience …
Read More »Read Lady Gaga's Starstruck Letter to David Bowie
Among the many treasures now on display at the just-opened David Bowie Centre in London is a letter Lady Gaga wrote the legendary musician in the early 2010s. The short note wasn’t dated, but it was likely sent around late 2012 or early 2013. Gaga mentions having received an “advanced …
Read More »David Bowie's 15 Favorite Songs Revealed in Unearthed Document
In just two days, the David Bowie Center will open at the V&A East Storehouse in London, giving the public access to a vast archive of 90,000 items from the singer’s life and career. One of the more intriguing artifacts is a list of Bowie’s 15 favorite songs from a …
Read More »David Bowie Was Secretly Writing a Musical About 18th-Century London Before He Died
David Bowie secretly began working on a musical set in 18th-century London in the months leading up to his death in 2016, according to new notes discovered locked in his New York City office. As the BBC reports, the project was tentatively titled The Spectator and not even Bowie’s closest …
Read More »Eric Church's 'Evangeline vs. the Machine' Is Dazzling, Challenging, and a Masterwork
“Play your own fucking songs!” a bearded man yelled at Eric Church during the country singer’s headlining performance at 2024’s Stagecoach festival. Church, seated on a stool with his guitar in his hands and a gospel choir behind him, was midway through a freewheeling set — of hymns, covers of …
Read More »Djo Is Anything but Basic on 'The Crux'
If you look closely at the cover of the third album singer-songwriter-actor Joe Keery has released as Djo, you can see him hanging out a window, his back turned to a busy, sunny street scene in which no one seems aware of his precarious situation. The self-obscuring image can pretty …
Read More »So Long, Marianne Faithfull: The Woman Who Refused to Go Quietly
Here’s a toast to Marianne Faithfull, a true rock & roll legend. Nobody was ever better at being an old rock star, except maybe Leonard Cohen. Yet the difference is that Cohen didn’t release his debut album until he was 33 — he was never young in public. Faithfull was …
Read More »After 'A Complete Unknown': Springsteen, the Beatles, and More
Now that the box-office success of A Complete Unknown has achieved the seemingly impossible feat of turning at least a few Gen-Z viewers into Bob Dylan stans, Hollywood’s biopic wave is about to turn into a tsunami. Next up is the Bruce Springsteen movie Deliver Me From Nowhere, starring Jeremy …
Read More »Luther Vandross Doc: Five Things We Learned
Nearly 20 years after his death, it’s easy to forget the ways that R&B legend Luther Vandross impacted pop music. His suavely rhythmic hits, many from the Eighties, don’t get the same amount of airplay as New Wave classics of the same period. It’s also easy to forget how complex …
Read More »David Bowie Now Has a Number One Country Music Hit
During his lifetime, David Bowie managed to score Number One hits in two different genres: the sleazy glam of “Fame” reached the top in 1975, followed by the dance-pop of “Let’s Dance” eight years later. One thing he never attained, though, was a chart-topping country hit. But now, eight years …
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