Times get tough, and country music gets tougher. The tumult of the late 1920s is the backdrop for songs of solace by early stars like the Carter Family. Peaceniks and hippies responding to the unrest of the ’60s assumed the trappings of country music to vent in tunes like the Band’s “The Weight” and Crosby, […]
For over a decade, Hayley Williams sold gale-force emotional reckoning as the lead singer of Paramore, one of the most successful bands on the forefront of the mainstream emo revolution of the middle aughts. Hard-charging riffs carried her sweeping vocals and incisive lyrics across the country, building the band’s profile through endless touring. Paramore stayed […]
Drake is the patron saint of passive aggression. You burn his candle when you’ve been wronged, when you’ve been dumped, when you feel like you get more attention for mistakes than accomplishments. In exchange for your devotion, he gives you protection against the hordes of doubters and haters, real or imagined, that stand in the […]
TRL was always a war. Fans of *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys battled for the run of the MTV music video countdown show in its early years, as did fans on opposing sides of the long-simmering (and overhyped) beef between Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. Hip-hop heads and nu-metal outcasts rejected the neatness of the mass-marketed […]
It is possible to be born too early for the world to develop a language to understand the way that you move, and to be made to feel, throughout your formative years, like the difference between you and everyone else is a crime that warrants punitive action, an errant behavior or belief system you must […]
Talk to a person of a certain age about the state of R&B for long enough, and you’re likely to hear them say the genre’s changed. It isn’t what it used to be. The singers are getting more and more reckless and raunchy. They’re right and wrong. The era that’s spawned songs like Jhené Aiko’s […]
The Grammy for Best New Artist is something of a curse. It’s keen on capturing artists in a breakout year but not so good at guessing what happens next. For every good call — like the Beatles winning in 1965, or Mariah Carey in 1991, or Adele in 2009 — there’s another that veers left. […]
So, Donald Glover did … something this weekend … maybe? At around 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, an hour’s worth of new music appeared on a website called “Donald Glover Presents,” using the same font and titling that accompanied the release of the musician and actor’s Adidas sneaker collaboration last spring. The music streamed on […]
A lot of rappers say they love anime, but Lil Uzi Vert is the rare artist who deserves a series of his own. The Philly star is short in stature with a massive personality, a shit talker who’s also in touch with his feelings, a sharp dresser with a flair for colorful hair. Like a […]
In a week, the ongoing contract dispute between Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion and 1501 Certified Entertainment, the Texas indie record label that signed her in 2018, has rapidly devolved into one of the most lurid rap-label tiffs in recent memory. On Sunday, Megan told fans that 1501 was attempting to block the release of […]
Bad Bunny is cruising down lanes that not too long ago didn’t quite exist. The Puerto Rican singer/rapper has done American late night, Coachella’s main stage, the Super Bowl halftime show, and collaborations with the likes of Drake, Nicki Minaj, and Cardi B without singing in English. Bunny’s 2018 debut X100Pre is a landmark Latin […]
Grimes is the archetypal modern internet citizen. She’s heard all the right records. She’s seen all the right films. She has great taste in video games and anime. She reads a lot and studies language and history. She has lofty ideas about where tech is headed. She got serious about wokeness and poptimism early on, […]
Five years is an eternity. In the fictional Earth of David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, it was enough time for the entire planet to die. Here on Earth Prime, it has been enough time for everything to go kind of awry, for hurricanes, wildfires, diseases, and […]
Fuck with Kesha, and you’re in for the fight of a lifetime. That’s the message of “Tik Tok,” “Die Young,” “Warrior,” and “We R Who We R” — hits about going to war with the night and coming out the victor — and of many of the singer-songwriter’s endeavors since then, including her protracted battle […]
Over the last year or so, through chance or subconscious ambition or some cosmic provenance, I’ve gotten to speak with a number of people who knew and worked with Mac Miller in his lifetime. They all give a similar account. Earl Sweatshirt compared his friend to a pirate ship on the go: “He was moving […]
The path to Selena Gomez’s third album has been beset on all sides by hardships. Gomez has fought a battle with lupus that led to intensive therapy, kidney transplant surgery, and cruel internet speculation about fluctuations in her weight. There were makeups and breakups with high-profile exes Justin Bieber and the Weeknd, whose Purpose and […]