Tag Archives: music-features

Since its inception in 2008, Record Store Day has occurred annually on a single Saturday in April. But due to the ongoing pandemic, things are going to look a little different this year. The event that celebrates independent record shops around the world will be spread out in “drops” over …

In the fall of 2018, Angel Olsen left behind her life in Asheville, North Carolina, and traveled across the country to the most remote place she could find. To hear her tell it, there wasn’t much to leave: She’d just gotten out of a five-year relationship, which also spelled the …

At the beginning of March, the National’s Aaron Dessner traveled back to the United States from Paris, where he’d been living with his family, to shack up at Sonic Ranch Studio in Tornillo, Texas to work on the next Big Red Machine album with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. Those plans …

James Bay is no stranger to sappy love songs, but something about his latest release, “Chew On My Heart,” hits a little differently. With his first new release of 2020, the singer-songwriter gravitates away from his usual distant longing and jumps right into infatuation. The track starts off subtle, but …

With concerts indefinitely shut down thanks to COVID-19, musicians who’ve spent much of their lives on tour are stuck at home this summer, and pondering an uncertain future.“I just don’t even know what is realistic at this moment,”says Cheap Trick’s Tom Petersson. Buddy Guy I haven’t picked up the guitar …

Noah “40” Shebib wants to show me his brain. The producer grabs a yellow Post-it Note from an island in the middle of his studio and sketches out two ovals. He leaves the first oval empty; it represents 2007. He drags a harsh charcoal line through the center of the …

Roger Waters once wrote an entire rock opera about the dangers of isolation, but life in self-quarantine seemed to be suiting him as he hung out in his home studio in mid-April. He was spending time continuing to prep for his postponed-until-2021 This Is Not a Drill Tour, recording music …

In January, the rapper Westside Gunn found himself in the front row at a show at Paris Fashion week, sitting near stars like J Balvin. Much to the rapper’s surprise, his own gruff voice started blasting through the speakers — “Perfect Plex the brick, broke it down, it got me …

John Waters will always remember how an interview he conducted with Little Richard crashed and burned. The Polyester and Hairspray filmmaker had met the Architect of Rock & Roll — Waters’ idol to the point that he modeled his mustache after the singer — in a shockingly normal hotel room …

When Nelson George sat down to write about the state of R&B for The Village Voice in the late Eighties, two super-producers were frequently on his mind: Teddy Riley, who helped invent a vicious new fusion called New Jack Swing in New York City, and his rival Babyface, a melodic …