Last July, Brandi Carlile had a provocation for her friend Jay Sweet, the head of Newport Folk Festival. “One year from now,” Sweet remembers her telling him. “I bet you we can bring Joni Mitchell to this stage.” The festival head was skeptical. A few years back, he had witnessed …
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After a long five-year absence, Kendrick Lamar has finally returned. Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers is the kind of dense, complex, contradictory, and thrilling journey into the mind of Pulitzer Kenny that we’ve been waiting for. With more than 70 minutes of music, there’s plenty here to process, enjoy, …
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Where is she? Where is Naomi Judd? I’m sitting in the CMA Theater at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. Wynonna and Ashley Judd are sitting up front with Wy’s son Elijah on one side and Wy’s husband and current musical partner, Cactus Moser, on the …
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Two of Twitter‘s top executives are receiving harassment and abuse from far-right trolls as a result of having been singled out by new Twitter owner Elon Musk. Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s legal, policy, and trust leader, has become the subject of invective on Twitter and on the encrypted messaging platform Telegram, …
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Last week, in the world of reggae, the unthinkable happened: two back-to-back tragedies within one iconic group. Days after the March 29 murder of Donald “Tabby Diamond” Shaw, 66, lead singer of venerable reggae vocal trio the Mighty Diamonds, the same outfit’s harmony vocalist Fitzroy “Bunny Diamond” Simpson, 71, succumbed …
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Rolling Stone interview series Unknown Legends features long-form conversations between senior writer Andy Greene and veteran musicians who have toured and recorded alongside icons for years, if not decades. All are renowned in the business, but some are less well known to the general public. Here, these artists tell their …
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At 5:30 pm on Jan. 6, police were in their third hour of battle with supporters of former President Trump on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Meanwhile, about a mile away in a suite at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel, Amy Kremer, a conservative activist who organized a major pro-Trump …
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In his new book, Sellout: The Major Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994–2007), author Dan Ozzi examines the fraught decision that’s plagued some of the world’s greatest punk bands for decades: Whether or not to sign that record contract? Sellout specifically examines the post-Nirvana goldrush as …
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When Kevin Chmielewski emerged from the FBI’s fortress of a headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C., his head was spinning. It was the fall of 2017. He’d just left a classified briefing about a matter of national security. As he walked back to his office at the Environmental Protection Agency, Chmielewski …
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As the world burns, it becomes easier to find joy in more innocuous moments. A niche literary dispute about a donated kidney. Cats hanging out in bodegas. Or a two-second clip of Ray Romano introducing the short-lived Billy Corgan side-project Zwan on a 2003 episode of Saturday Night Live. The …
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