Music Features

At the height of Live Nation and Ticketmaster‘s latest controversy over the disastrous ticket on-sale for Taylor Swift’s upcoming “Eras” tour — a kerfuffle that once again brought into question what some have called the anticompetitive nature of tickets and the live music business — few politicians were as vocal …

When Mia Berrin was a teenager in Florida, Nada Surf’s “Popular” was one of her favorite music videos. The 1996 alt-rock hit’s sarcastic perspective spoke to her, as did its subtly subversive gender politics, and seeing it all played out was exciting. “It was around the time I was starting …

Shawn Everett will never forget the first time he worked on a recording mastered by Greg Calbi. Everett, an engineer-producer who’s since worked with Calbi on albums by Kacey Musgraves and Hozier, had already spent years tinkering with the War on Drugs’ 2017 song “Thinking of a Place” by the …

Beloved internet comedian Rickey Thompson returns as a narrator on Aminé’s TWOPOINTFIVE (out today) after serving as the connective tissue of the Portland rapper’s last project-in-between-albums. “Fuck all the bullshit you going through right now,” Thompson urges stringently at the start of Aminé’s latest release. “Fuck that! It’s time to …

This piece is part of Rolling Stone’s second annual Grammy Preview special issue, released ahead of the start of first-round voting. We spoke to some of the year’s biggest artists about the albums and singles that could earn them a nomination — or even a statue come January — and …

This piece is part of Rolling Stone’s second annual Grammy Preview special issue, released ahead of the start of first-round voting. We spoke to some of the year’s biggest artists about the albums and singles that could earn them a nomination — or even a statue come January — and …

Talk to musicians who have worked with Anthony Hamilton — the singer who has been responsible for a slew of exquisitely torn-up, craggy-voiced SouthernR&B tracks since 2003 — and they tend to return to a single theme. “Anthony is one of the last of the soul singers that had an …

There will never be a world without Charlie Watts, because his backbeat changed how the world sounds. The Rolling Stones’ legendary drummer got away with nothing but boss moves, for just about 60 years. For me, the Charlie mystique is all there in his five-second drum intro from “Let It …

It’s 8:30 p.m. at Madison Square Garden, and the crowd of people outside is restless. They’re here to see Dipset and the Lox’s Verzuz battle, and some members of Dipset’s entourage aren’t being allowed in. Security is telling everyone to move back, encountering issues with holding down a crowd of …

One minute, Yola is talking about the barriers she’s encountered as a black British woman in the music business. The next minute, she’s demonstrating how she’s knocking them down. On a Zoom call from her temporary digs in Madison, Tennessee, wearing a brightly striped turtleneck that matches her effervescent mood, …