Music Features

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 …

In January, Danny Kang was stranded in chilly London, waiting to meet the individual responsible for @world_record_egg, the Instagram account that had turned a simple photo of an egg into the most-liked post in the history of the social media platform. Kang is a talent manager, and he was hoping …

At her best, Kesha can skillfully balance irreverence and savagery. Songs like “Blah, Blah, Blah,” “Sleazy” and “Woman” have shown her at the pinnacle of that talent, with the punk of pop meshing biting lyrical jabs with a brilliant sense of humor about herself and whomever or whatever she’s roasting. …

Rob Thomas is well aware of the journey that “Smooth,” his 1999 collaboration with Carlos Santana, has taken during the past two decades. “It went through the, ‘Hey, this is a good, cool summer jam,’ and then the, ‘Hey, we’re all sick of this song and never want to hear …

In the six years between 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City and their new LP Father of the Bride, one of the best ways for Vampire Weekend fans to get their fix was to listen to frontman Ezra Koenig’s Beats 1 radio show, “Time Crisis.” The show provided a unique …

Not long after the London-based singer Nilüfer Yanya signed with an American label in 2017, she ran headlong into a creative wall. “Knowing that whatever I wrote might be on the album, that put a block on my head,” she explains. At first she responded to the pressure with perverse …

You haven’t truly lived until you’ve been on the business end of a David Lee Roth zinger. “Can you do a drum sound, like in dance music? Everybody has their own version,” he asks mere seconds into our phone call. After a few oomph-oomph-oomphs, he cuts me short. “All right, …

On Friday night, the Zombies will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and deservedly so. Few keepsakes of the British Invasion sound as non-musty as “She’s Not There,” their first hit, or “Time of the Season,” their last. Colin Blunstone’s singing, which seems to float above …

Blueface never stops performing. As soon as the iconoclastic Los Angeles rapper enters Rolling Stone‘s office, phones begin buzzing with notifications asking who he is and why the men’s bathroom smells like freshly rolled blunts. Strolling out of the restroom, he does an elaborate crip walk, even though his only …

On Saturday, February 2nd, a made-up DJ played to more than 10 million made-up characters in a made-up world. And the real-life music industry gasped in unison. The fictional DJ has a name: Marshmello. No one truly knows his identity, thanks to his white bucket helmet with an unambiguous painted …