When Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham released Buckingham Nicks in 1973, they were just a couple of nobodies. Two hippie kids lost in L.A., doing an unfashionable folk-rock flower-child record. Nobody bought it. Nobody cared. Some might have heard it as a promising debut, others as a flop. But it’s …
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Mikaela Straus’ third album as King Princess is the product of a tumultuous period — the 26-year-old broke up with her relationship, her label, and her residence in Los Angeles in a short period of time, resettling in Brooklyn before diving in to process what she’d been through and prepare …
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On the bubblegum-pink cover of his eighth studio album, Play, Ed Sheeran clearly lays out his goals for the project in a written message. “Play is leaving the past behind. Play is colorful. Play is dancing. Play is nostalgic,” the mission statement reads. Can an album leave the past behind …
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Jade Thirlwall didn’t just make her solo debut at the BRIT Awards earlier this year: The former member of the X Factor-formed girlband Little Mix made a statement. Showcasing “Angel of My Dreams” — her fever-dream launch single that interpolated Sandie Shaw’s Eurovision winner “Puppet On A String” and took …
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Korean Australian singer-songwriter Hannah Bahng’s lushly lowkey music combines yearning and heartache with a Gen Z sense that any genre is ready for use, be it melancholy indie-pop or introspective alt-rock. Since debuting last year with her excellent The Abysmal EP, she has headlined a sold-out tour and performed at …
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In terms of wide appeal and commercial success, Saint Etienne always deserved better. The U.K. trio emerged in the early Nineties with a cosmopolitan sound that thrived on a subtle tension: their appetite for clubby anthems contrasted an obsession with the silky contours of retro British pop – think Dusty …
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Sometimes in life we all overswag. Two months ago, Justin Bieber shocked the world with his excellent Swag, his first album in four years. It was the artistic comeback he needed — sweet validation after all his celebrity meltdowns, troubling headlines, paparazzi battles, and social-media disasters. So there’s something perfect …
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Thanks to A Complete Unknown and the forthcoming Bruce Springsteen biopic Deliver Me from Nowhere, the concept of musicians intentionally throwing their audiences for a loop is back in the national conversation. But as Joni Mitchell would be the first to tell you, no one made a fan base engage …
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By now, fans see David Byrne as more than a quirky dude in a beloved legacy rock act. He’s a plainspoken public intellectual; an advocate for civic improvement and multi-cultural cooperation; a neurodiverse poet of the modern condition; an artistic éminence grise with fingers on multiple cultural pulses. In some …
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Early in the sixth album from Big Thief, the band’s singer-songwriter, Adrianne Lenker, misses a flight. For most of us, this wouldn’t be anything but a hassle. She turns it into a dream: “Driving with my lover,” she sings against distant guitar shimmer and agile, circular drumming, “We added up …
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