NPR

5 min read

The current rap capital thrives on a thrilling contradiction: Its best music is at once hyperlocal and globally accessible, true to its roots but built for scale.

The Atlantic

9 min read

The story of dance music in America is a story of boom and backlash. As Beyoncé and Drake turn to house-inspired sounds, will the cycle happen again?

The Atlantic

8 min read

As pop stars time-warped back to the ’70s and most nightclubs remained closed, dance music’s tensions felt oddly relevant.

NPR

7 min read

The culture of electronic dance music has long been seen as a safe space for the marginalized, but over the past decade it took a sharp turn towards the mainstream.

Los Angeles Times

5 min read

Gordon Lightfoot, the Canadian singer-songwriter whose graceful and literate songwriting made him one of the most respected folk-rooted musicians to emerge in the 1960s, died on Monday. He was 84. His publicist, Victoria Lord, confirmed his death to

TechLife News

4 min read

At my son’s fourth birthday party, a classmate presented him with a toy recycling truck. Atop it was a button that, when pushed, uncorked a familiar tune with the words: “To the dump, to the dump, to the dump dump dump!” An adult nearby heard the mel

Global Voices

5 min read

"Jamaica has lost the rhythm and soul of a prolific music icon who has inspired many. Perry was one of the most important creative figures to come out of Jamaica."

AppleMagazine

4 min read

At my son’s fourth birthday party, a classmate presented him with a toy recycling truck. Atop it was a button that, when pushed, uncorked a familiar tune with the words: “To the dump, to the dump, to the dump dump dump!” An adult nearby heard the mel

Los Angeles Times

3 min read

Dick Dale played electric guitar like he was more interested in the electricity than in the guitar. Listen to the way he starts his signature song, "Misirlou," with the sound of his pick slicing against a quivering string - a power line, basically -

The Saturday Evening Post

8 min read

Musical movements never happen overnight. Before a new style catches popular attention, it's typically spent years growing and developing under the cover of darkness until it's ready to take its moment in the spotlight. The early 1970s were a potent

NPR

3 min read

Trumpeter Hugh Masekela and producer Stewart Levine organized the 1974 festival and produced the new album Zaire 74: The African Artists, which captures performances by Miriam Makeba, Franco and more.

The Critic Magazine

3 min read

It’s not often that cameras capture the exact moment a musical subculture implodes, but if you watch the Netflix documentary Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99, you can see it happen during Limp Bizkit’s set from day two of the festival. Singer Fred Durst is

Choice Magazine

4 min read

ALTHOUGH THEY weren’t the group to fuse traditional folk music and rock – Fairport Convention’s Liege and Lief is widely regarded as the key breakthrough album in that regard – Steeleye Span were by far the most successful. By focussing on rhythm, th

UNCUT

4 min read

AFTER the amiable twang of their 1995 debut A.M. and the more ambitiously conceptual rock’n’roll of 1996’s Being There, Wilco went straight-up pop on 1998’s Summerteeth, trading the pedal steel for an orchestra and treating The Beach Boys as their ne

NPR

4 min read

Smithsonian Folkways archivist and Pete Seeger expert Jeff Place talks about Pete Seeger: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection, due out on what would have been Seeger's 100th birthday.

Los Angeles Times

5 min read

LOS ANGELES - Nearly 60 years ago, surfers flocked to the waves along Newport Beach to try mastering the new craze. When the sun set, they needed some place to dance and Dick Dale delivered it at Rendezvous Ballroom on the Balboa Peninsula. Nearly ev

Guitar World

21 min read

A GREAT LIVE moment can mean so many different things. It can be an experience that forever binds the minds of those on stage with the audience in front of them — the perfect setlist matched by the right atmosphere and sonic treatment. A formula that

All About History

8 min read

LLOYD BRADLEY With 40 years’ experience as a music journalist and cultural commentator, Bradley is a celebrated music writer and author. His best-selling books include Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King (Penguin), a definitive work on the history of

Prog

22 min read

It was almost as unbelievable as a storyline on one of their early albums. In October 1982, Genesis reunited with their mercurial co-founder and original lead singer Peter Gabriel for a one-off concert in an act of generosity that underlined the grou

Prog

22 min read

It was almost as unbelievable as a storyline on one of their early albums. In October 1982, Genesis reunited with their mercurial co-founder and original lead singer Peter Gabriel for a one-off concert in an act of generosity that underlined the grou

Los Angeles Times

3 min read

Queen Latifah, Super Mario, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Daddy Yankee and mariachi music are the latest additions to the U.S. National Recording Registry, which means a selection of their recordings have been dubbed "audio treasures worthy of preservation"

The Rake

6 min read

In 1932, a nine-year-old boy from a devout Muslim family living in London — his father was a diplomat and legal adviser to Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Turkish republic — was taken by his elder brother, Nesuhi, to see the Duke Ellington and Cab Call

NPR

9 min read

In August 1973, an 18-year-old DJ Kool Herc played his sister's back-to-school fundraiser in the rec room of their apartment building. But he and his friends sparked something much bigger.

NPR

7 min read

An Oklahoma country station made news this week when it briefly refused to play a Beyoncé song. It's a resonant tale for the Black and women musicians who have tried to crack the format for decades.

Literary Hub

13 min read

“All you need to write a country song,” according to the late Harlan Howard, “is three chords and the truth.” And if anyone knew what it took to write a country song it’d be Howard, a guy responsible for many now-classic hits—”I Fall to Pieces,” “Bus

Metal Hammer UK

5 min read

Half a century on from the birth of heavy metal, heavy music faced challenges unlike anything before. Well, the planet faced challenges that changed life as we knew it; first it was rescheduled/cancelled gigs, then festivals and eventually even venue

The Independent

7 min read

It’s usual to be taken aback at The Masked Singer’s big reveals, but the season that aired in February this year was a much-needed reminder of one of the most distinctive voices in British music history. Under the Harlequin costume, a singer with cri

Stereophile

6 min read

It’s déjà vu all over again in New York City. 1988: The bankrupt Fear City NYC of the 1970s had given way to the go-go ’80s, with many missing the fruits of the Wall Street boom. AIDS ravaged the city, unabated, and a rash of violence and crime fuele

North & South

5 min read

AT A TIME when re-releases by major artists have become so grandiose the Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder tour of 1975 has spawned a 14-CD boxed set that runs for more than 10 hours, it’s a slight shock to realise one of New Zealand’s most iconic bands, Her

Los Angeles Times

4 min read

When the Prodigy's third album, "The Fat of the Land," arrived on American shores in 1997 and topped the charts, it represented a new genre that gleefully terrified the country. The Prodigy - fronted by the dual-mohawked, whirling dervish of dancer-s