Photo Credit: Zachary Gray The best, most beloved Paramore songs managed to meet listeners where they were and capture their collective feelings like lightning in a bottle. The snarling “Misery Business” captured desire in its most intense, brattiest, most unreasonable, most teenage form, while the lilting “The Only Exception” captured the ecstasy and anxiety of… Read more
Photo Credit: Nathan James Musicians have been writing love songs dedicated to the object of their romantic affection for millennia, but we honestly can’t remember the last time we heard anyone as out-of-their-mind in love as expressed in a song on a particular track from God Save the Teen, the latest album from rock drummer… Read more
Photo Credit: Tommaso Ottomano It can sometimes feel like whoever asked for the return of rock music to the mainstream, made their wish on a monkey’s paw. Rock music had its comeback, but its standard-bearers [?] ended up being the chronically unlikeable Machine Gun Kelly and TikTok phenomenon Gayle – whose breakout hit “ABCDEFU” wasn’t… Read more
Photo Credit: Bryan Kirks Quantity doesn’t equal quality is undoubtedly an adage born out by the ongoing pop/rock-punk revival – we’re getting more releases from the genre than at any time since its mid-2000s peak, yet whereas the genre’s standard bearers were once My Chemical Romance and Avril Lavigne, it’s now Machine Gun Kelly and… Read more
Photo Credit: Zackery Michael On their seventh studio album The Car, the Arctic Monkeys continue the musical road trip that they set out on with their previous release, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino (2018). The Sheffield, England quartet which became known (and renowned) for their brand of fast, kinetic, mile-a-minute Britpop delivered with a punk… Read more
Photo Credit: Richard Beland Since their debut in 1996, or at least certainly since their multi-platinum 2001 breakthrough Silver Side Up, Nickelback has generally been perceived as an unfortunate by-product of the early ’90s Seattle grunge sound. However, on their tenth album Get Rollin’, Nickelback seems to have more common with the dominating rock genre… Read more
Photo Credit: Jimmy Fontaine / Atlantic Records While the cover artwork and a couple of the song titles (“Blood Runs Red,” “Lawless Dream,” “Twisted Tongue”) might suggest that it’s a heavy metal album, Matt Maeson’s second full-length album Never Had to Leave is instead a tight and compelling collection of well-produced alternative rock and folk… Read more
Photo Credit: Helen Kirbo Surely you haven’t heard a more ambitious album concept in 2022 than this: a 105-minute concept album – the first installment of a trilogy – that traces the journey of a character escaping a fundamentalist home only to meet a gruesome end at the hands of a cannibalistic psychopath. All of… Read more
Like everyone else living on this planet, successful artists also know what it’s like to be rejected – some better than others. Here are ten musicians rejected by record labels, the Army, classmates, and audition juries. #10. Tori Kelly Photo Credit: Elizabeth Miranda The Californian singer auditioned on season nine of American Idol back in… Read more
Photo Credit: Paul Elledge During the early and mid ’90s, the Smashing Pumpkins (hailing from Chicago) became probably the most popular and influential band to come out of the alternative music boom who were not from (or connected to) the Seattle grunge scene. Lead singer/multi-instrumentalist/principal songwriter Billy Corgan dissolved the Pumpkins in 2000, but after… Read more