To paraphrase a saying attributed to Buddha, when the student is ready, the Leonard Cohen song will appear. Philosopher king and ladies’ man, poet and ordained Buddhist monk, aesthete and pilgrim — in his nearly 50-year musical career, Cohen embodied contradictions and sang his story-songs in a trademark sandpapery voice in the pursuit of beauty […]
COVID-19 brought the concert industry to a screeching halt in 2020. But all that disposable income music fans generally spend on concert tickets and tour merch has been redirected to the retail front: supporting artists and labels by shopping online during quarantine. And this holiday season brings an overwhelming amount of worthy box sets, books, […]
For a year that made no sense, it’s only fitting that 2020’s best songs make strange neighbors on a mixtape. You can’t recap 2020 without mentioning Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP,” a sex song so dirty that even the edited version leans toward an R rating (“wet and gushy,” anyone?). But on this […]
After a deluge of canceled or delayed tours, drive-in experiments, Bandcamp Fridays and bedroom livestreams, we’re finally here. Yay? It’s hard to celebrate much of anything in 2020. But one encouraging sign from the music industry has been the number of artists innovating on the fly — figuring out ways to sustain their careers through […]
SPIN has always highlighted the under-heralded, but an uncountable number of amazing songs have fallen through the cracks since the publication’s 1985 launch. It’s hard to scratch the surface in a list of this size, but consider this chronological mixtape a fun attempt. Many of these selections are personal — cherished, semi-obscure tracks that deserve […]
We know, we know — the best concert of all-time is your friend’s obscure indie-punk band playing a sweaty neighborhood basement back in ‘94. We admit that one slipped through the cracks. Maybe it’s a fool’s errand, but this list is our attempt to narrow down three and a half decades of worthy live music events […]
When the Van Halen brothers started playing music together in Pasadena in the 1960s, Alex played guitar with younger brother Eddie on drums and it was Alex’s growing prowess on drums that led them to switch instruments. From those humble beginnings, the duo formed their eponymous band with Eddie Van Halen becoming one of the […]
Saturday Night Live is back! The late-night sketch comedy returns to NBC for the start of its 46th season on Saturday. After spending half of last season shooting at-home episodes due to the pandemic, promos for the show have revealed the cast is back at 30 Rock’s Studio H8 and ready to put on a […]
Contrary to popular belief, Britpop was not a subgenre. It was also not a catchall for every bit of culture being manufactured in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. (That would be “Cool Britannia,” and like Britpop it almost exclusively applied to English entities.) Instead, Britpop was originally a press-driven crusade to champion domestic talent […]
In the 1980s, music and film collided for cross-promotional blockbusters both transcendent (Purple Rain) and transcendently cheesy (Footloose). In the ‘90s, soundtracks continued to sell in the millions, capturing cultural moments like the Seattle grunge of Singles or the Britpop and electronica of Trainspotting. Auteurs like Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson reached deep into their […]