Music Features

For most artists, the likelihood of writing a major hit diminishes over time — pop success is often synonymous with youth. But at the end of January, Panic! at the Disco‘s “High Hopes” was comfortably ensconced at Number Four on the Hot 100, making it the biggest hit of the …

Yola was at home in Bristol in December of 2015 when she realized her kitchen was beginning to fill up with flames. “I was walking around burning like a human torch, and my first instinct was, ‘Ahhh!’” says the British singer-songwriter, who had accidentally set a new kitchen appliance on …

Jimmy Page kept himself pretty busy in the Eighties. In addition to co-founding the short-lived supergroup XYZ, he composed the soundtrack to Death Wish II, launched the Firm with Free and Bad Company vocalist Paul Rodgers, reunited with Led Zeppelin for a couple high-profile one-offs, and guest-starred with everyone from …

On May 7th, 2018, Richard Swift posted a black-and-white image of his recording studio, National Freedom, to Instagram. Situated in a converted barn behind his home in Cottage Grove, Oregon, the studio was full of the tools of his trade: a triple stack of keyboards, the custom C&C drum kit …

For Jacquees, “king of R&B” is a mantra, a statement of purpose, and it bears repeating. He’s a confident man, and to have a conversation with him is to have many sentences end with the punctuating “I’m the king of R&B.” Discuss the growing controversy around his grandiose assertion, he …

Benny Blanco is an absurdly successful writer-producer for pop stars: Britney Spears’ “Circus,” Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite,” Katy Perry‘s “Teenage Dream,” Maroon 5‘s “Moves Like Jagger,” Ed Sheeran‘s “Don’t” … the list goes on. When it comes to anticipating the whims of pop radio in the last decade, perhaps only Max …

Fifteen years ago, in the midst of a creative rut and middle-aged ambivalence, Jay-Z made a great album. It was built on an idea never happened: Jay-Z was supposed to retire after The Black Albumand, spoiler alert, did not follow through on that. No one with a shred of common …

By her own admission, Carole King is consumed with writing these days more than music. After publishing her memoir A Natural Woman in 2012, the enduring singer, songwriter and pianist is at work on her first-ever novel. But earlier this month, she returned to a piano — and even her …

It’s a Monday afternoon in August, and Steve Perry is cheerfully belting out the Backstreet Boys’ “As Long As You Love Me.” Perry is visiting a buddy at his house in San Francisco, and the singer — who grew up on Sam Cooke, Otis Redding and the Kingston Trio, and …

Matthew Houck’s studio is located at the back of a warehouse complex in East Nashville, the sort of place that looks like a quirky crime family in a Showtime drama might store a suitcase of unmarked bills there, hiding their stash in one of the pinkish-gray structures that border a …