Gorillaz are one of the few big pop projects that still sound like they should not have worked at all. A cartoon band with Damon Albarn hiding inside an animated universe. Records built out of guest verses, rap cameos, sad synths, punk energy, old soul, cheap electronics, high-concept visuals, and a permanent feeling that the…
I am not a classical music expert. That feels important to say right away, because classical music can trigger a certain kind of tone. Suddenly everyone’s speaking in very careful paragraphs about sonata form, motivic development, historically informed performance, and whether some conductor in 1978 took a repeat you apparently now need strong feelings about….
The Weeknd is one of those artists who can send you down a rabbit hole or two. You come in for the hooks, the falsetto, the expensive sadness, the red suit, the synths, the after-hours panic, the whole “what if bad decisions had immaculate production” thing. Then after a while you start wondering what, exactly,…
Merle Haggard is not hard to admire. The hits do their job beautifully. “Mama Tried.” “Sing Me Back Home.” “The Bottle Let Me Down.” “Working Man Blues.” “If We Make It Through December.” That already gives you the outline of the legend: the prison past, the Bakersfield snap, the working-class pride, the bruised romanticism, the…
Herbie Hancock might be the best artist to start with if you want to dive into the world of jazz. It’s not just that “he’s important,” though obviously he is. Or that “he’s influential,” though, again, that goes without saying. The thing is, plenty of important and influential jazz artists can still feel a little…
Once you get through the alternative R&B essentials, things get even more interesting. The first-wave picks make sense for a reason. Trilogy gives you the bruised after-hours fog. Channel Orange opens the door to genre drift and emotional openness. A Seat at the Table turns soul into self-definition. CTRL gives you modern romantic chaos with…
Jason Isbell is one of those songwriters people love to name drop. You know the usual praise. The craft. The detail. The literary lyrics. The emotional intelligence. The sober grown-man songwriting. The devastating line about a marriage, a bottle, a town, or a memory that lands so cleanly you have to stop what you’re doing…
There are worse fates than being remembered for “Don’t Dream It’s Over.” Plenty of bands get stuck with a novelty hit, or one accidental smash that barely sounds like the rest of their catalog. Crowded House got stuck with one of the most graceful pop songs of the 1980s. That’s a better problem than most….
If any discography deserves a ranking that feels slightly unstable, it’s P-Funk: two band names, one giant mutant organism, overlapping players, shifting labels and lineups, metaphysics, cartoon villains, liberation theology, and enough mythology to keep an entire comic-book imprint busy for years. Trying to turn all that into a neat ladder from worst to best…
1980s New York City certainly wasn’t tidy or coherent. It wasn’t one scene, one genre, one politics, one mood, one glamorous downtown myth lit just right for later documentaries. It was too loud for that. Too broke. Too ambitious. Too stylish. Too neglected. Too funny. Too angry. Too wired. Too full of brilliant ideas, terrible…