Tag Archives: music-features

The R&B veteran Kem hasn’t released a new album since 2014: He took time away to get married, have two kids, change management, and chase a life of domesticity rarely conducive to the rigors of being a working musician. After returning from that sort of hiatus, most singers would try …

Prospect Park is pandemonium. In the past month, I’ve witnessed a group of high school kids put on boxing gloves and fight each other for fun next to a couple shooting wedding photos, all while a DJ playing a dancehall remix of Shai’s 1992 hit, “If I Ever Fall in …

When the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent business lockdowns began in March, many owners of independent music venues knew they’d be hit hard. As some of the first businesses to shut down and last to eventually open, venues around the country quickly began looking at how long they could afford exorbitant …

Not far from where songwriter Emily Warren lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, there’s a dive bar with a weekly disco night. “It’s kind of a shit show,” she says. She had been attending regularly and invited collaborators Ian Kirkpatrick and Caroline Ailin to join her. It was early 2019, and …

“Yeah, it’s true that I was on the fence,” Jess Cornelius sings on “Body Memory.” “The future scared me half to death.” Cornelius is singing about miscarriage, a topic — with a few exceptions (see Lily Allen’s “Take My Place“) — that’s rarely addressed as directly as it is on …

In September 1978, soul producer extraordinaire Kenneth Gamble helped launch the Black Music Association, an advocacy group set on pushing the music industry to “recognize and celebrate the economic and cultural power of black music as well as those who made and promoted it.” “It was time for something new …

This story was originally published in the June 19th, 1975, issue of ‘Rolling Stone.’ “When I look out at an audience,” says Stevie Wonder, “all I see is beautiful people.” THERE WERE FOUR OLD ladies sitting in the lobby of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. They were four of the oldest …

As the world fights a pandemic, we’ve been reaching out to some of our favorite artists to get their takes on these unprecedented times. Here’s what Faith No More and Mr. Bungle singer Mike Patton — who just released Necroscape, an enveloping and unsettling avant-rock odyssey by tētēma, his collaborative …

In 1973, Herbie Hancock found himself at a crossroads. For a couple years, the keyboardist had been leading a band called Mwandishi — named after a Swahili word meaning “writer” — that played sprawling electro-acoustic jazz with an emphasis on trippy textures and unfettered improvisation. “I think of Mwandishi as …

The Beths‘ debut Future Me Hates Me was about as fun and free-feeling as emo-pop could possibly get, spinning anxiety into cotton candy, whether it was on the radiantly catchy single “Happy Unhappy,” the bouncing bubble-punk banger “Uptown” or the sleek self-doubting “You Wouldn’t Like Me.” The New Zealand band …