*** The last decade of Lizzo’s career has been a microcosm of the modern American fame arc. The Houston-raised MC/singer/songwriter/flautist has gone from Prince-cosigned cult phenomenon to bona fide pop star to full-on backlash recipient and workplace-harassment-suit defendant, a process given extra intensity by the always-on news cycle and the …
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There was a period in the late Nineties and early aughts when every blockbuster movie was seemingly accompanied by an equally-popular soundtrack, with the songs and A-list artists almost as inescapable as the action on screen. From Titanic and Twilight to The Fast & The Furious, the songs released from …
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Days before Lorde released her fourth album, Virgin, the pop superstar stood in the middle of Brooklyn club Baby’s All Right basked under a cerulean-blue glow as she shared song snippets from her new project and danced with fans. Dressed in a white, nearly see-through dress with glitter on her …
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Where exactly does an artist go after globe-spanning, stadium-size, record-shattering success? Karol G, the Colombian megastar whose career went completely stratospheric after her last album, 2023’s Mañana Será Bonito, made history, wondered the same thing. For a while, she played around taking a total departure from her previous work: “I …
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It’s not every day that Bruce Springsteen releases seven albums at the same time — 83 songs in all, going back over 40 years. But there’s never been an archival project with the same crazed ambition of his new box, Tracks II: The Lost Albums. His 1998 Tracks was a …
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Benson Boone has been unavoidable for well over a year now: His 2024 single “Beautiful Things” quickly became a monster success, first on TikTok and later everywhere else, debuting on Billboard’s Hot 100 the month after it was released and peaking at Number Two. And if it isn’t the music …
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The seemingly halcyon Nineties are sounding better than ever in 2025 — Fugazi-fathered hardcore, Liz Phair feminist-pop plainspeak, and in the able hands of Hotline TNT, steaming slabs of guitar noise, Dinosaur Jr. via Teenage Fanclub circa “Everything Flows” buoyed by oceanic waves of Cocteau Twins modulations. It’s enough to …
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“I am British, I am Jamaican, I am American. I am what I am,” says Slick Rick on “I Did That,” a track from Victory, his first album in twenty-six years. Born in Mitcham, London yet long considered a pioneer of ostentatious New York style and panache due to seminal …
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Time fades away, but Neil Young never does. He’s been on a like-a-hurricane live roll lately with his ferocious new band the Chrome Hearts, who make their studio debut on Talkin to the Trees. The band came together fast last year, after Neil’s amazing spring tour with his old outlaw …
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Things have never been easy for Metallica’s 1996 album Load, a multiplatinum record nobody ever admits to liking, especially the band’s most avid fans. In early 1995, Metallica had a “good problem”: how to follow up The Black Album, the 1991 smash that turned them from metal heroes into global …
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