Photo Credit: Annie Leibovitz In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Ed Sheeran confessed that he no longer saw the need for music critics in the age of streaming. However, his most recent album, – (Subtract), suggests otherwise – its slow, restrained, tasteful ‘adult’ sound reading as a deliberate attempt to win over critics. After… Read more
Photo Credit: Michael Bailey Gates When Sam Smith first rose onto the music scene in 2013, they were marketed as yet another inoffensive, vocally impressive, soulful crooner – the sort that Britain has long excelled at generating. Smith, who then went by he/him pronouns, was seen as a sort of male equivalent to Adele –… Read more
Photo Credit: Bryan Bedder (All Photos) You would be forgiven for forgetting that the VMAs are actually about music – discussions around this year’s ceremony focused on Yung Gravy’s surprising choice of date and a controversial, somewhat anticlimactic comeback by Johnny Depp as Moonman. But this year’s award show saw nominations and live performances by… Read more
Photo Credit: Getty Images for The Recording Academy (All Photos) Award show attendance has been reliably falling year-on-year and this year, the Recording Academy seemed less concerned than ever about doing anything to revert that trend, with an overlong, self-indulgent ceremony that ran for a seemingly never-ending 2 hours and 33 minutes. Beyond making a… Read more
Photo Credit: Dan Martensen Ed Sheeran’s debut album + (Plus) – which boasted four Top 10 hits in the singer-songwriter’s home country of the UK – made him an easy target for critics; who saw him as a banal, guy-next-door writing forgettable by-the-numbers love songs. For the most part, however, Sheeran’s debut album has aged surprisingly well;… 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: Collages via Billboard Most people will tell you that the only success that translates financially is “success.” In music, certainly, it’s thought to be almost entirely mathematical: the more records an artist has sold, the more “successful” they are (of course, in recent decades the number of downloads and streams would also have… Read more
Taylor Swift at Lincoln Financial Field 7/19/13 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Photography by: Steve Trager
iHeartRadio Jingle Ball 2012 Wells Fargo Center Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Bridgit Mendler Cher Lloyd Ed Sheeran Justin Bieber Olly Murs Psy One Republic The Wanted Photography by: Steve Trager
Photo Credit: rag & bone X Eminem Music To Be Murdered By from hip-hop honcho Eminem begins as you immediately hear something being peculiarly shoveled in the background of the Dr. Dre produced “Premonition” introduction track. Em then goes on to lyrically assassinate a two-minute tirade of a welcome. Reminding everyone, he’s back! And it’s… Read more