Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ Is a Sprawling, Endlessly Entertaining Tour de...
What does “going country” mean to Beyoncé — musically speaking? That’s a mystery that really had to wait until this week to be solved. We’d already picked up a good idea of what country means to her...
View ArticleVampire Weekend Reinvents Its Sound (Again) With ‘Only God Was Above Us’:...
A major problem with early success is getting past it — case in point, the cheerful bop of Vampire Weekend’s first two albums and their image as peppy college boys who’d studied Paul Simon’s...
View ArticleKhruangbin Brings It Back to Basics With the Low-Key Majesty of ‘A La Sala’:...
Few would have predicted that one of the biggest alt-rock breakthroughs of the last decade would be a mostly instrumental trio from Houston with a name that seems dauntingly difficult to pronounce. Yet...
View ArticleVegyn Serves Heavenly Electro-Pop on ‘The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good...
One element that distinguishes the music of artists like Jamie XX and Fred Again is that, unlike many other DJ-producers, they tend to come at their songs and even their DJ sets from a songwriter’s...
View ArticleDrahla Brings Post-Punk to a New Generation With ‘Angeltape’: Album Review
Over the years “post-punk” has become nearly as vague a term as “post-modern,” but it generally refers to a brittle, guitar-heavy sound with choppy rhythms as practiced by such late-‘70s British...
View ArticleTaylor Swift Renews Her Vows With Heartbreak in Audacious, Transfixing...
Would you be surprised to know (or be reminded) that Taylor Swift hasn’t really released a breakup album in a decade? For a gal who’s never really shorn that as her songwriting reputation, it’s funny...
View ArticleDua Lipa’s ‘Radical Optimism’ Is a Joyous Blast of Pop Savvy: Album Review
In the promotional blitz running up to her third album, “Radical Optimism,” Dua Lipa continuously waxed intellectual about self-realization and the freedom that comes from growth, spurred by situations...
View ArticleChildish Gambino’s Brilliant ‘Atavista’ Finally Gets Its Day in the Sun:...
It’s hard to think of an album with a more confusing backstory than Childish Gambino-aka-Donald Glover’s “Atavista,” which was first released stealthily — with little notice, promotion, cover artwork...
View ArticleBillie Eilish Keeps Up Her Winning Streak With the Surprising and Intimate...
What a great season for music this is, if you’re someone who has an old-fashioned thing for albums that really feel like albums. And it’s not because of any wave of old-timers ganging up with each...
View ArticleZayn Lets His Guard Down on ‘Room Under the Stairs,’ but Teeters Between...
When Zayn Malik introduced himself as a member of One Direction — one of the most popular boy bands in history — he did so under the guise of being the broody and mysterious one. The Bradford-born...
View ArticleVince Staples Searches for Light on ‘Dark Times,’ His Most Vulnerable Project...
Vince Staples never did optimism, and he’s never been Mr. Sensitive. Dating back to his maiden mixtape, 2011’s Shyne Coldchain Vol. 1, the West Coast rhymer used irony and a poet’s perceptual lens to...
View ArticleArooj Aftab Follows Grammy-Winning ‘Vulture Prince’ With the Haunting,...
Arooj Aftab’s dusky and sonorous voice — not to mention the Arabic and Asian-inflected melodies in her songs, which are sung in Urdu and English — tend to make people think she’s playing a form of...
View ArticleCharli XCX Launches an Exhilarating New Chapter of Pop With the Innovative...
Charli XCX has been one of pop music’s leading innovators for more than a decade, and like so many innovators, she’s long since moved on by the time most of the world reaches the place she just was....
View ArticleTom Verlaine’s Brilliant Final Three Records Finally Come to Streaming...
Tom Verlaine — the guitar virtuoso, cofounder and “frontman” of the pioneering New York group Television, who died last year — might be the most low-key guitar hero in rock history. If he had only ever...
View ArticleNormani Prioritizes Vibe on Long-Awaited Debut ‘Dopamine’: Album Review
It’s been a very long, very arduous road for Normani to release her debut album “Dopamine.” On social media, the Nation — her anointed fandom name — pleaded for the record for so many years that when...
View ArticleThe 20 Best Albums of 2024 (So Far)
The erstwhile Year of the Woman keeps looking like it’s turning out to be the Century of the Woman, as popular music goes … and there’ll be no complaints about that when we have a surfeit of superstar...
View ArticleJames Blake and Lil Yachty Make an Odd but Unexpectedly Strong Couple on ‘Bad...
As this album’s cover artwork suggests — it appears to show a restaurant table with one man drinking tea and eating baked beans, and the other drinking syrup — a full-length collaboration album between...
View ArticleNeil Young Unveils ‘Early Daze,’ a Companion to His Classic ‘Everybody Knows...
One of the biggest challenges for any artist is knowing when a creation — a song, a story, a painting — is finished and ready to be shared with the world. More than many, Neil Young has shown a...
View ArticleZach Bryan Brings In Bruce Springsteen for a Feature on ‘The Great American...
In the title track of “The Great American Bar Scene,” the 19-track album Zach Bryan is putting out for the 4th of July, the singer-songwriter name-checks a Bruce Springsteen song, “State Trooper,”...
View ArticleArtemas Builds on the Smash Success of ‘I Like the Way You Kiss Me’ With...
It’s hard to imagine that anyone who clicked on this article isn’t familiar with “I Like the Way You Kiss Me,” the song by fast-rising 24-year-old British singer-songwriter-producer Artemas that has...
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