Music Features

Towards the end of Phoebe Bridgers‘ new track, “Garden Song,” she captures her songwriting prowess in just two lines: “Everything’s growing in our garden/You don’t have to know that it’s haunted.” Since her 2017 debut, Stranger in the Alps, Bridgers has garnered fans by skillfully blending beauty with darkness, and …

In 2019, the success of Lil Nas X‘s “Old Town Road” made every other single look puny in comparison. The track amassed more than 2 billion streams, 1 billion more than the runner-up. And even though no one buys music anymore, Lil Nas X sold nearly 1.5 million downloads — …

If you’re looking for a statement of intent on Fiona Apple’s second album When the Pawn…, which turns 20 on Saturday, it’s right there in the opening of the second track. Over the steadfast piano plunks and rolling drums of “To Your Love,” the then-22-year-old takes aim at her detractors …

The Black Keys knew expectations were high for their Let’s Rock tour, their first in years. So how did the band choose what songs to play? “We just went to the top 25 songs on Spotify,” jokes singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach. “We thought about ones that were fun to play live, …

Since January, Kanye West — one of the most influential rappers of the last two decades — has been publicly re-fashioning himself as a practitioner of gospel, hosting a series of “Sunday Service” events which feature him performing with a full choir. The crowning touch on this foray into inspirational …

Last August and September were fruitful months for the Black Keys‘ Patrick Carney: On August 28th, he and his now-wife, Michelle Branch, had a baby, and on September 5th, he and Dan Auerbach went into the studio to start work on the Keys’ first album in five years. That album, …

On a recent visit to New York from their home country Jamaica, the No-Maddz pop into a record store and seek out the reggae section — only to find a few scantly filled bins near the back. “They treat it like it’s niche,” sighs tall, lanky Sheldon “Sheppie” Shepherd. Everaldo …

Talking with Rolling Stone less than an hour after Woodstock 50 was cancelled, festival founder and co-organizer Michael Lang sounds surprisingly at peace. “I’m disappointed,” he says. “But I’ve been sort of prepared.” Many who have been following the months-long rollercoaster ride that was Woodstock 50 were probably also not …

“Did I really just forget that melody?” That’s the self-effacing first line in Y2K and bbno$’s frivolous hit “Lalala,” which shot to the top of Spotify’s Viral 50 on July 1st and has remained in the Top 5 all month. It’s bragging, tongue-in-cheek nonsense-rap with a touch of drugged-out nursery …

This story originally ran in Issue 632, published on June 11th, 1992. As a storyteller, every journalist strives for wholeness and symmetry, for a narrative that after all its circumnavigation returns to the beginning, as if to say, “Here, enclosed, is an entire world.” In both the subject and the …