Long ago, Beyoncé decided to let her music speak for herself. “I’m grateful I have the ability to choose what I want to share,” she told Harper’s Bazaar last year, in a brief, extremely rare interview that reads as if it may have been conducted via e-mail. “One day I …
Read More »Exclusive: Hit-Boy Produced Beyoncé's New Song 'Thique'… Eight Years Ago
One day in 2014, “N—– in Paris” producer Hit-Boy started working with Beyoncé on two songs. One of them, released later that year, became the hit Nicki Minaj collaboration “Feeling Myself.” The other was a track with a seductive house beat that would’ve been a major departure for Beyoncé at …
Read More »How Joni Mitchell Became a Millennial and Gen-Z Hero
In the continual reordering of the popular-music canon, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: Joni Mitchell‘s complex, emotive, cerebral, ever-evolving music is ranking higher than ever. Her 1971 album Blue landed in the Top Three on Rolling Stone‘s most recent ranking of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and …
Read More »Rodney Jerkins: How We Made Beyoncé's Greatest Song
Beyoncé‘s 2006 single “Deja Vu,” from her second solo album, B-Day, topped Rolling Stone‘s recent list of the 70 greatest Beyoncé songs — released to celebrate her seventh solo album, Renaissance. In the new episode of Rolling Stone Music Now, legendary R&B producer Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins — who’s collaborated with …
Read More »Beyoncé's Studio Secrets: Inside the Making of Her Best Songs
When producer Scott Storch spent a week in a South Beach studio with Beyoncé in 2002, he had never met her before, despite working on Destiny’s Child tracks. But as soon as she started singing some of the songs they wrote together, with the help of rapper EST, for what …
Read More »Justin Bieber Is Resuming His Tour — But Is His Career Back on Track, Too?
Justin Bieber just recovered from a scary bout of Ramsay Hunt syndrome, and is headed back on the road to finish his Justice tour, starting July 31st in Denmark. Before he had to postpone some of his U.S. arena dates, that run was fully sold out — a somewhat astonishing …
Read More »The Cult of Eddie Munson, The Metal Side of 'Stranger Things,' and the Real 1980s Satanic Panic
The unforgettable Stranger Things scene where fan-favorite metalhead Eddie Munson (played by Doja Cat crush Joseph Quinn) protects his friends from bat-monsters by grabbing his B.C. Rich guitar, cranking his amp, and playing “Master of Puppets” nudged aneight-and-half-minute long, 36-year-old Metallica song into the top 40 for the first time …
Read More »Celebrating — and Arguing About — the Best Pop of 2022 So Far
From the Weeknd’s Dawn FM to Omar Apollo’s Ivory to Sky Ferreira’s “Don’t Forget” and Lizzo’s “About Damn Time,” the new episode of Rolling Stone Music Now dives deep into the best pop songs and albums of the year so far. Staff writer Tomás Mier joins host Brian Hiatt for …
Read More »Did Elvis Presley Steal From Big Mama Thornton? The Real Story of 'Hound Dog'
Baz Luhrmann‘s box-office-topping new movie Elvis does manage to show the powerhouse singer Big Mama Thornton (played byShonka Dukureh)performing “Hound Dog,” a song she recorded in 1952, four years before Elvis Presley. But it leaves out two very significant players: songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who wrote “Hound Dog” …
Read More »Beyoncé Is Probably Not Your Anti-Capitalist Savior
“I just quit my job,” Beyoncé sings — in character, of course — on her new, house-influenced single “Break My Soul.” “They work me so damn hard/Work by nine, then off by past five/And they work my nerves/That’s why I cannot sleep at night.” Numerous fans on Twitter and elsewhere …
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