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: 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: Douglas Dahlström Still jet-lagged at the second stop of her In Holy Flux-tour, Natalie Mering – professionally known as Weyes Blood – certainly made Stockholm’s hearts aglow. Under the huge crystal crown inside of the big saloon at the sold-out, historical Berns Hotel & House of Entertainment in central Stockholm, Sweden, a crowd… Read more
Photo Credit: Aaron Rapoport/Corbis/Getty Christine McVie, the longtime keyboardist, and vocalist for Fleetwood Mac died on November 30th at age seventy-nine. The first of her three non-consecutive tenures with the band lasted for a quarter-century beginning in 1970, which made her the first woman to join, and a few years later an integral part of… 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: Kizzy O’Neal Jack Johnson has already amassed a huge following (which has directly translated to chart success) over the past two decades. On the surface, he’s probably easy to compartmentalize, the epitome of a singer-songwriter who works largely either acoustic or with minimal accompaniment, creating laid-back and mellow grooves (as suggested by a… 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
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: Pooneh Ghana Faye and I were born in the same year, we have grown up with the same musical influences, we are both convinced that the pedal steel is an amazing instrument, and I connect with everything she has the say about being sad, being happy, and just being. Releasing her debut album Run… Read more