Music Features

Thirty years ago this month, Madonna released one of the most fascinating records in her catalogue, I’m Breathless. Attached to her role as the nightclub singer/femme fatale in Warren Beatty’s 1990 film Dick Tracy, I’m Breathless wasn’t necessarily a proper solo album, but one of those “Music From and Inspired …

September 12, 2013, Issue 1191, of Rolling Stone ‘I JUST THANK GOD FOR BEING ALIVE,” LITTLE RICHARD says. “I never knew that I would live to see 80. I’m the only one in my family who ever got to that age.” A year ago, it didn’t seem like Little Richard, …

In March, Steven Wilkin was among the millions of American who lost their primary source of income. Wilkin makes music under the name Adult Bodies; he supplements that money by working for Uber and Lyft, as well as doing other odd gigs. When wide swathes of the economy started to …

Although Sonic Youth has been largely dormant since 2011,the band has begun digging into its vaults, and its latest excavation — Blastic Scene, a 1993 live tape from Lisbon — dropped Monday on Bandcamp. Archival releases have been few and far between since the band’s dissolution in light of Kim …

Arriving the day after Donald Trump told us all we’d all feel better if we just went and shot some bleach into our bodies, here’s a little anti-Trump invective we definitely need right now. Roots-rock icon Lucinda Williams just released Good Souls Better Angels, arguably her best album since her …

It was just one day after Testament returned home from a five-week European tour earlier this month that the thrash-metal band’s frontman, Chuck Billy, started to feel ill. “I had an achy body, headaches, coughing, tight chest, I lost my sense of smell and taste — the whole thing,” he …

After scoring a Best New Artist Grammynomination, Black Pumas had a lot of big plans coming up. The Austin, Texas psych-soul band were scheduled to be on the road this month and next, both here and in South America. But, of course, all those shows have been postponed, and the …

Stephen Malkmus has been on quite a creative roll as of late. In 2018, he released Sparkle Hard, one of his best albums to date with his backing band, the Jicks, and last year, he took a detour into synth-pop with Groove Denied. Now, he’s putting out another solo set, …

In our new series, we look at eight cities where live music has exploded — from legendary hubs like New Orleans and Nashville and Chicago, to rising hot spots like Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Portland, Maine. Our latest: Detroit, where pressing plants, innovative studios, and offbeat festivals make it one of …

L izzo knows that security guard was checking her out. It’s a crisp November evening in downtown Los Angeles, and she just breezed through a Sam Ash music store to see if they had a flute-studies book by Danish composer-flutist Karl Joachim Andersen; she wants to get back to practicing …