Tag Archives: music-features

As soon as the singer Ledisi earned a major-label deal more than a decade ago, she started to get calls from pop music legends. They had pointed opinions about her career path and didn’t mince words. “Prince was one of the people who used to tell me to go independent; …

Choosing and justifying a list of essential Grateful Dead shows — 20, 200, or even 2,000 — is treacherous work. Passionate challenge from fans, especially hardcore Deadheads and veteran tape traders, is guaranteed. Endless debate over set-list minutiae is inevitable. In fact, there is only one definitive list of the …

When Dave Hause and his brother and collaborator Tim decided to write “Your Ghost” in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, they knew they had to get it just right. Two white guys from Philly writing about racial injustice and police brutality could land with a thud. So …

The world might suck right now, but thankfully the Tom Petty estate recently released an unearthed 1993 demo of “You Don’t Know How it Feels,” the first taste of the long-awaited Wildflowers archival project. Petty recorded the sparse, acoustic take at his home studio, providing a more intimate, slow-burner feel. …

Over the last week, N.W.A‘s fierce indictment of racial injustice, “Fuck tha Police,” has become the anthem of a revolution, as thousands all over the world have taken to the streets in outrage over the wrongful killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. Protesters have scrawled the …

This is the 10th installment of Rolling Stone’sMusic in Crisisseries, which looks at how people all across the music industry are coping with thecoronaviruspandemic. At 64, Marty Hom is a rock star among tour managers — the people who handle the day-to-day logistics of a tour, from scheduling hotels and …

When Andre Harrell founded Uptown Records in 1986, he quickly honed the label’s musical approach. “Andre saw in the late Eighties how the hard-edged drama of rap music… was not incorporating all the rich cool smoothness and bright musicality that had built the house of R&B,” the longtime music executive …

Laura Marling‘s new album ends with a lullaby: “For You,” a sparsely strummed ballad with a harmonizing light-gospel quartet, neatly sums up the gentle folkiness of Marling’s new album, Song for Our Daughter, which arrives three years after her off-kilter roots experimentation with Blake Mills on 2017’s Semper Femina. “For …

Many contemporary albums arrive with less than a week’s notice, but Jhene Aiko started to roll-out her new full-length, Chilombo, months ago. She released four different tracks to stoke anticipation, only to find that when the album finally came out March 6, a brand new song immediately supplanted the lead …

Jack White had never formally endorsed a presidential candidate before this past October, when he performed at a rally for Bernie Sanders. “I’m not really politically affiliated too much,” White said during the performance at his high school alma mater in Detroit. “I just listen to the issues.” White was …