Music Features

When journalist Caché McClay heard about a new job opening last fall, she set about constructing a persuasive video application. “I wouldn’t say I’m a part of the BeyHive, but I definitely speak the language,” she declared in her submission. She got the job as USA Today‘s first full-time Beyoncé …

As an Irishman living in London, Grian Chatten deals with a lot of bullshit. His name isn’t Paddy, but that doesn’t stop bullies from calling him that. Then there are the jokes about the IRA, the leering men asking him to say, “Top o’ morning!” when he’s just trying to …

Two years ago, Natividad Alonso was scrolling through YouTube when the algorithm suggested she listen to Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God).” At the time, Alonso — a photographer from Buenos Aires, Argentina — had been listening to a lot of Eighties pop, along with acts …

Hours have apparently passed since Taylor Swift dropped her “All Too Well” short film, but time won’t fly — it’s like we’re paralyzed by it. The video, which Swift wrote, directed, and starred in alongside Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien, features the expanded version of the Red track, included on …

A dele thought that maybe, just maybe, she could quietly slip news of her and her husband’s separation into the world without much notice. It was Good Friday, 2019, and their marriage had been over for some time. A holiday weekend, she figured, might deflect some of the attention she …

Like so many kids at the dawn of the new millennium, Michelle Maalouf knew the best place to get music was the internet. The then-teenager’s platform of choice was Kazaa, and her download list was filled with the classics of the day: boy bands, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Mariah Carey. …

Are Duran Duran ready to take on the music world? Is a wolf hungry? It’s been 40 years since these dapper British gentlemen dropped their classic 1981 debut, with hits like “Girls on Film” and “Planet Earth,” introducing a radical new style of art-glam punk-disco swagger. They were the wild …

A native of Glenarden, Maryland, Terry Goodwin’s friends and family know him as either TJ or Lil Black, two names he takes after his biological father, who he describes as a “real one” and the type of dad that “any kid would want to have.” But since around 2014, more …

There’s something about the way Lainey Wilson sings that brings to mind the great, weepy country queens of yore. In particular, there’s a trace of Tammy Wynette, whose intimate and wounded delivery could depict a steely façade hiding an unsatisfied interior life or say it all out loud for complete …

$ilkmoney’s “My Potna Dem” is slithery and blown-out, with a whispery, chanted hook, intricate, snappy verses, and a guitar-like loop that could’ve been lifted from an Eighties power ballad. It has soundtracked more than 1.6 million videos on TikTok, and for a time was earning 650,000 streams a day. This …