Photo Credit: Zachary Spangler The debut album of supergroup L.S. Dunes was always going to be met with impossible-to-fulfill expectations – how could a collaboration between the Circa Survive lead singer Anthony Green and My Chemical Romance guitarist Frank Iero among others not? This sense of high expectations, and an eagerness to fulfill them, come… Read more
Photo Credit: Savanna Ruedy There’s one track tucked in the middle of Gryffin’s 2019 debut Gravity that suggested the then 31-year-old could be EDM’s next great hope. “If I Left The World” begins, seemingly, as a traditional song about lost love, but in its second verse evolves into one about crushing isolation and even suicide… Read more
Photo Credit: RCA Records Gashi is the sort of musician you can’t help but root for. He has a deeply inspiring backstory; having turned to rap music for a salve as a refugee child struggling to adapt to the English language and life in New York. Moreover, his vision of rap music is a deeply… 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
Photo Credit: Harry Langdon / Bettmann Archive Singer, actress, and Oscar-winning songwriter Irene Cara died on November 25th at age sixty-three. Although she would only have a few major hits over a relatively short period, those songs would leave an indelible stamp on the early part of the ’80s and have since proven to be… 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: Travis Shinn Chicago’s Disturbed is already one of the most successful heavy metal bands to debut (on record) in the twenty-first century, boasting among other accomplishments four consecutive studio albums going to number one in the U.S. since Believe in 2002 (even Immortalized topped the charts in 2015, despite the band taking an… 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
Photo Credit: Max Montgomery In 1994, Nasir “Nas” Jones burst onto the frontiers of hip hop seemingly out of nowhere with Illmatic (though, in reality, his first major break occurred when he featured on Main Source’s 1991 debut LP). Now considered the “gold standard” of conscious, boom-bap rap, it captured something profound, incredibly timely, and… Read more