When Greil Marcus published Mystery Train in 1975, it was hailed as the greatest book ever written about rock & roll. Fifty years after it came out, there’s a lot more competition — but no other book has come close. It’s a radically original portrait of America and its music, …
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As a teenage musician, Jon Batiste used to call himself “a new-age blues artist.” Now, many genre-jumps later, he’s taking a deeply enjoyable left turn towards roots music on his seventh studio album, Aug. 22’s Big Money — and reminding the world he’s always been a bluesman at heart. “I’m …
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John Mulaney can’t help but play favorites a bit discussing the different parts of his unorthodox weekly talk show Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney. “I have to say,” he told Rolling Stone via Zoom last week, “there’s no part of the show and there’s no part of the week that’s …
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Randy Newman returned to late-night television with a performance of his 1972 song “Political Science” on Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney. The legendary singer-songwriter also played a rendition of his oft-covered “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” on the Netflix show, Newman’s first late-night performance since a Covid-era virtual …
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When Craig Finn wants to make an L.A. album, he doesn’t mess around. He might be best known as the Minnesota-via-Brooklyn frontman of the Hold Steady, a punk bar-band wordsmith specializing in down-and-out tales with a Midwest flavor. But on his great new Always Been, he takes inspiration from Southern …
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The first day of the Los Angeles wildfires, Brad Paisley texted his friend Taylor Goldsmith of the band Dawes about the impact on the Pacific Palisades, where Paisley once owned a home. In one of his replies, Goldsmith told Paisley that the fire was now encroaching on Altadena, where Goldsmith, …
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Randy Newman‘s 1983 song “I Love L.A.” has more than a hint of irony in the lyrics, but the 67th annual Grammy Awards kicked off with a totally sincere, even moving, version of it from a one-time-only supergroup: Dawes backed by Sheryl Crow, Brittany Howard, Brad Paisley, John Legend, and …
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