Compared to the last couple of years, 2022 has been a bonanza of incredible rock record releases. It seems like every week there are two or three projects just begging for proper time and attention. Many artists who were kept off the road due to the pandemic and were inspired to write during their forced, […]
The man born David Jones adopted the stage name David Bowie in 1966, avoiding confusion with The Monkees’ Davy Jones. But then he just kept on adding more aliases to his roster of identities: Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Halloween Jack, The Thin White Duke, the list goes on and on. Had he not been rock’s […]
“First Class,” the second single from Kentucky rapper Jack Harlow’s album Come Home The Kids Miss You, is one of the biggest songs of 2022 so far, reaching No. 1 on the Hot 100 twice since its April release. One reason for the quick ascent: the familiarity of the chorus, which samples Fergie’s vocals from […]
“Give me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald There’s an image of Tony Soprano, the patriarch of the North Jersey crime family, that is embedded into my brain: crouched in a swimming pool, gold necklace dangling around his neck, with a big cigar sticking out of his mouth, his […]
Roxy Music gave us Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno, influenced punk and new wave, and charmed a legion of musicians with their sonic collage art: David Bowie, Chic, Grace Jones, Sex Pistols, U2, Duran Duran, Siouxie and the Banshees, Radiohead, Scissor Sisters, Franz Ferdinand, and more. So why the hell did it take decades for […]
The following acts released quality albums in May 2022 alone: Radiohead off-shoot The Smile, Kendrick Lamar, Wilco, Arcade Fire, Sharon Van Etten, The Black Keys, Florence + the Machine, Harry Styles — we’ll stop there for space reasons. It’s been such a wild music year so far, only some of them made the following list. […]
It’s almost absurd how much good music — universally acclaimed, big-ticket, year-end contender music — came out in 2022’s first five months. It’s hard to imagine the next seven matching that pace. We’ve heard soul-bearing rap songs (Kendrick Lamar), future windows-down rock classics (Momma), loads of elite-level Thom Yorke (The Smile) — the list, literally, goes […]
The Clash were “The Only Band That Matters.” But more to the point, they were the only band who’s ever gotten away with calling themselves something so self-aggrandizing, because it felt close enough to the truth. They formed in early 1976 out of the ashes of Joe Strummer’s pub rock band, The 101ers, and Mick […]
In some ways, U2 have had a fairytale existence unheard of in rock music. Paul “Bono” Hewson, David “The Edge” Evans, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. began making music together, with two more friends, when they were 14 or 15. And that core quartet has remained together for over four decades, with no lineup […]
Last year, when helping assemble SPIN‘s 50 Best Albums of 1971, I wondered if that year could have been popular music’s absolute peak. Now I’m asking myself that same question all over again. As I built a spreadsheet for 1972, gathering our writers’ votes alongside my own weird choices, I was once again struck by […]