Back in June, SPIN published The 30 Best Albums of 2021 (So Far), rounding up everything from mainstream rock to experimental hip-hop. Six months later, we’re back with our year-end recap — and it’s interesting how, even though the stylistic balance has stayed consistent, the picks themselves haven’t. While this list also covers a lot of […]
While it’s fair to say pop culture contains more Christmas songs than ones about the Festival of Lights, it’s also fair to say Christmas songwriters have seriously hit a wall, as almost all popular carols were penned during the 1700s and 1800s. Not the case for Hanukkah tunesmiths, who have only begun to flourish over […]
Sometimes you’re the windshield; sometimes you’re the bug. This bit of philosophical wisdom was imparted to me long ago by a guy whose name I don’t remember, nor can I recall the breakup. I suspect that in this case, I was the windshield. Indeed, sometimes a romantic breakup feels like ballast thrown overboard so your […]
The drummer is the job in a rock band with the highest turnover rate — a cliché lampooned memorably in This is Spinal Tap. And if it takes a few albums for a group’s definitive lineup to click into place, the drummer is often the final piece of the puzzle to arrive. But it’s often […]
Once upon a time, Steely Dan were hipsters. As frontman Donald Fagen explained in his 2013 book, Eminent Hipsters, he and Steely Dan co-founder Walter Becker grew up as aficionados of pre-rock ’n roll cool, studying jazz and Beat Generation writers. During the band’s original 1970s run, they were fixtures in the Village Voice critics’ […]
Leonard Cohen is the definition of a songwriter’s songwriter, the kind of artist you’d seldom hear on the radio, but was revered by countless musicians as one of the greatest lyricists in the world. An accomplished poet and novelist before he ever recorded an album, Cohen’s songs were vivid and literary, full of politics, dark […]
If it feels like the previous NBA season just ended, well, it sort of did. The Milwaukee Bucks triumphed over the Phoenix Suns, capturing the franchise’s second title in mid-July, and here we are in mid-October with the league ready to tipoff again. Once again, we polled music’s biggest NBA fans to give their takes […]
Deciding between the best James Bond theme song can be just as fun and, perhaps, controversial as deciding between the best James Bond film — or even best James Bond. A lot of the time you can judge a Bond film by its theme song, and vice versa. Every fan has a passionate take, and […]
1991 was a transformative year for rock music, a time when alternative rock and heavy metal entered a new era of commercial dominance. Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden ushered in the explosion of Seattle grunge alongside blockbuster albums by Metallica, R.E.M. and Red Hot Chili Peppers, to say nothing of influential indie classics by My […]
For 58 years, Charlie Watts manned the drum kit behind Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the unflappable bedrock of the Rolling Stones sound. Compared to his British Invasion contemporaries, he wasn’t a bombastic virtuoso like Keith Moon, and a gregarious personality didn’t shine through his playing like Ringo Starr. Instead, Watts was a drummer’s drummer, […]