Music

Over the course of a four-plus decade career as pop's premier parodist, "Weird Al" Yankovic has sold more than 12 million albums, earning five Grammys, four gold records, and six platinum. But this month, he's receiving the ultimater recognition of…

Thanksgiving week is upon us again, and you know what that means: it’s time to start thinking about some gift-giving. (Or maybe not! Things are tight all over, that’s undeniable, and if the holidays have always been overtly commercialized, they seem…

In Begin the Begin: R.E.M.'s Early Years (out now from Verse Chorus Press), author Robert Dean Lurie turns back the clock to the formative years of the wildly influential group, tracing their origins back to the fertile Athens, Georgia rock scene,…

The performance starts at 20:25, if you’d like to bookmark it – and to be clear, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese is worth watching in its entirety, but the part we’re here to talk about begins at 20:25, Bob Dylan…

I love Prince. Who doesn’t? As an avowed Prince fan, I sure would love to own the black Taylor 612-CE acoustic guitar that he used on his 2004 Musicology tour, and good news: now I can buy it, thanks to “Rock Icons” from Julien’s Auctions, with…

The music industry has suffered from the splintering of the monoculture for years, but 2018 was especially slow in terms of hits from world-conquering pop stars. Nicki Minaj, Drake, and Cardi B all released albums, sure, but they served more as…

“Can’t mess with a 69-year-old broad!” announces Patti Smith in her new concert film Horses: Patti Smith and Her Band, and though it’s a follow-up to rather a devastating burn on an audience member who dares holler “take it off” when she futzes with…

The art of the album cover is a precise one; the artist must choose the photographer that puts across exactly the persona they wish to convey, entrusting them to work up a concept, style, and message that fits smoothly with the music inside. By the…

I mean seriously, just look at them. Here’s the clip for “Make Me Feel,” in which Monáe decides that the only way to top the absolute banger of a Prince riff she’s put on wax is to make the greatest Robert Palmer video he never made. Maybe there’s…

Radiohead has announced a swing of North American tour dates this summer, beginning in Chicago on July 7 and wrapping in Philly on August 1. The group did a handful of U.S. dates last spring; this summer’s shows will hit several cities they didn’t…

Janelle Monáe has been so busy starring in movies and classing up red carpets and generally being awesome that we hadn’t really noticed she hadn’t put out a new albums in… Jesus, five years. Luckily, she’s rectifying that, and doing so in her…

Frank Ocean sent out a truly lovely late-night valentine, surprise-releasing a moody and moving cover of the romantic standard “Moon River” on his Tumblr page late last night. Captioned simply “in the late nite,” the embedded YouTube link features…

All right, you’ve heard enough about it, the day has arrived – Kendrick Lamar’s much ballyhooed soundtrack to Black Panther is here, and is ready to stream on your service of choice. While the album only includes five songs credited to Kendrick…

One of the many, many exciting things about Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther – which, by the way, is currently sitting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes after the first blast of rhapsodic reviews hit yesterday – is the Kendrick Lamar-crafted soundtrack, which…

One of the many mini-controversies of Sunday night’s Grammy Awards was the shafting of Lorde, who was the only female nominee for Album of the Year, and yet also the only of those nominees not invited to do a solo performance at the ceremony. The…

The 60th annual Grammy Awards were handed at last night at Madison Square Garden, and it turns out, they really like Bruno Mars. He took home the trophies for Album of the year (24K Magic), record of the year (the title track), and song of the year…

If you’re a film soundtrack nerd, you probably love composer David Shire, who created the scores for greats like The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The Conversation, and parts of Saturday Night Fever. You may also know him as the guy who got fired…

English new wave icons Duran Duran released their first self-titled album in 1981, but it was “Girls on Film,” their third single, that caught the attention of the MTV generation thanks to its fetishistic music video and charismatic singer Simon Le…