Photo Credit: Beth Garrabrant Taylor Swift wrote her third album entirely on her own. This was partly a result of Swift getting her “best ideas at 3 am in Arkansas,” as she would tell Songwriter Universe, but it also served as a rebuttal to critics and other commentators who had previously doubted teenage Swift’s creative… Read more
Photo Credit: Christian Tierney One Direction’s ‘nice guy’ Niall Horan has failed to have the big stand-out moment since the beloved boy band’s dissolution in 2016 that Harry Styles and, briefly, Zayn Malik enjoyed. If Horan’s newest album, The Show, is any indication, the 29-year-old seems to have made peace with this reality. A collection… Read more
Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen Even by the standards of Ruston Kelly’s previous heavy and confessional music, the task before him while creating The Weakness was particularly stark. Between finishing writing his previous album – 2020’s Shape & Destroy – and now, he endured a high-profile breakup with Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves and was continuing to… Read more
Photo Credit: Brian Bowen Smith Kelly Clarkson burst onto the music scene in 2002 as the winner of the first season of American Idol. Since then, she has become one of the most successful artists of her generation with four Grammy Awards under her belt. Known for her powerful voice and emotional performances, Clarkson has… Read more
Photo Credit: Danny Clinch We should begin by asking the obvious question: “Who’s playing drums?” After all, the Foo Fighters did experience the death of longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins last year, who not only appeared on the band’s last eight studio albums but emerged as the very heart of the band. So much so, that… Read more
Photo Credit: Jonas Brothers via SNL Nostalgia is a powerful tool, and one that arguably has more currency now than it ever has – the ’90s sensation Friends is the sitcom of choice for people who weren’t alive to watch it in real-time, while Kate Bush’s ’80s hit “Running Up That Hill” has found its… Read more
Photo Credit: Vincent Haycock Since Kesha sued Dr. Luke in 2014, her reputation has shifted from that of the party girl of pop to the genre’s survivor. In the near-decade that’s ensued, she’s alternately embraced and run away from that title; on 2017’s “Praying,” she offered a direct rebuke to her former producer in the… Read more
Photo Credit: Kurt Iswarienko When Taylor Swift decided to re-record some of her earlier albums (most recently, Red), she was a woman on a mission. “I do want my music to live on,” she told Billboard in 2019. “I do want it to be in movies, I do want it to be in commercials. But… Read more
Photo Credit: Anton Corbijn In music journalism, there’s a concept known as the five-album-test: any band that has released five consecutively great albums passes. The test is imperfect and controversial – rewarding consistency over irregular bursts of excellence – but the bands who pass it, undeniably, belong to the very highest echelons of music. Most would… Read more
Photo Credit: Freddie Stisted Surrey’s You Me At Six enjoyed modest commercial success in their home country during the late 2000s and early 2010s, with five Top 40 singles and two chart-topping albums to their name. If any mid-sized band should be set for a revival of fortunes, it should be this English quartet –… Read more