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
Sure, one could argue that being a household name within the music industry in any way should disqualify you from complaining. Still, there are plenty of groups out there that deserve way more appreciation than they get. Here is a list of ten groups – new and old – that we think should be talked… Read more
To have something important to say and to know how to say it – that’s the art of succeeding with your debut album. Some debut albums have such an important message that they change the world forever. Some of them are just incredibly well executed, burning with the energy of a new artist who finally… Read more
Photo Credit: Anton Corbijn As part of the new wave of young heavy metal bands at the start of the ’80s, Sheffield, England’s Def Leppard (whose oldest members at the time were no older than twenty), managed two successful albums mostly through word-of-mouth and touring before releasing Pyromania in 1983, which became not just a massive chart… Read more
Photo Credit: Chuck Berry via Universal Attractions (artist management) “Hail, hail rock and roll // Deliver me from the days of old.” – Charles Edward Anderson Berry Rock and roll always had a problem orienting itself from the beginning. It is the musical product of a dozen styles of American music blended through time and… Read more
Photo Credit: Mikael Eriksson You have to hand it to the Swedes. They have a preternatural ability to craft pop songs, in English, across any genre you could name. This phenomenon began, of course, with Abba who was able to take the disco they heard coming out of the States and turn it into something… Read more
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: Haris Nukem Creeper was formed in Southampton, England in 2014. From the beginning, Creeper created a type of rock that could be, and is occasionally, described as horror punk. Now, for me, if you aren’t from Lodi and you don’t have a one-rep max over 250 on the bench, you aren’t a horror… Read more
Photo Credit: Gabriele Giussani This deep into the 21st century, one could be forgiven if they felt as though rock and roll were now, finally, well and truly dead. Turn on the radio now, anywhere in the world, you will get a thousand examples of homogenized pop in almost as many languages, electronic dance music… 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