Mark Josephson, Executive Director of the New Music Seminar said back in 1988 that “alternative music has real strength, real quality, real excitement, and it has to be socially significant, as opposed to Whitney Houston, which is pablum.” That’s a great explanation of what started during the late-‘70s to early-‘80s as college radio features like Dead Kennedys… Read more
Photo Credit: Bryan Lasky One thing that’s impossible to deny, for better or worse, is that John Mellencamp’s voice is not what it once was. On his twenty-fourth studio album, Strictly a One-Eyed Jack, the veteran rocker’s singing sound deeper, rougher, and considerably more gravelly (part of this could be just aging, but probably has more… Read more
In the rock era alone, there have been many, many cover versions recorded and released. From live-only interpretations to deep album cuts, to #1 hits (even the Beatles, who we’ll get back to in a minute, started as a cover band). In some cases, artists’ cover songs are well-known just because the original already proved… Read more
Photo Credit: Beth Garrabrant Given half the chance, most of us would probably like to completely erase the memory of 2020; a year of illness, upheaval, and isolation. For Taylor Swift, however, the year could hardly have gone better (at least from an artistic perspective). Her indie-folk lockdown albums Folklore and Evermore earned her the critical acclaim that had… Read more
Photo Credit: Neil Krug Brandi Carlile, an artist who’s generally considered a folkie but also shows leanings towards both country and rock, has been impressing an increasingly large following ever since her 2005 debut. Her seventh studio album In These Silent Days is another powerful and heartfelt collection of original songs that will no doubt continue her… Read more
Photo Credit: MTV VMAs This year’s MTV Video Music Awards (which aired live on September 12th) tell us pretty much all we need to know about how the state of rock ‘n’ roll is 2021. Actually, we can even go all the way back to 1997: The award category that had once been “Best Heavy… Read more
Every now and then you might wonder what the ten biggest-selling albums of all time might be. As it turns out, it’s not an exact science: while we’re pretty sure a couple of people did buy Michael Jackson’s Thriller, different outlets have different ways of measuring overall album sales, say nothing of the fact that with the… Read more
Kenny Chesney’s ‘Guitars, Tiki Bars and a Whole Lotta Love’ Tour with Keith Urban & Dierks Bentley at the Wachovia Spectrum Center Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Dierks Bentley Keith Urban Kenny Chesney Photography by: Steve Trager
Photo Credit: Getty Images/Ringer illustration It doesn’t even take a million streams on Spotify or three sold out nights at Madison Square Garden to be labeled a “sellout”. Virtually any commercial success in music will inevitably invite claims that an artist has “sold out” and ironically enough, this label is most likely not to come… Read more
Photo Credit: John Shearer “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Florida Georgia Line found their comfort zone in 2012 with “Cruise”, and have seemingly lived by that motto ever since. The duo of Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelly offer up 16 “new” tracks on their fifth-studio album, Life Goes On. Out of these tracks,… Read more