On his breakout mixtape, 2019’s Die for My Bitch, rapper-producer Baby Keem chants “I am 50 Cent” over and over in an almost-monotone fashion, bringing in the disorienting beat-switch on “MOSHPIT.” Though he claims to have been “just randomly saying it,” in a Complex interview after the mixtape’s release, his references and similarities to the […]
By late 1969 the Beach Boys were in deep trouble. The sunshine surf rock sound that skyrocketed the band to international fame was now firmly out of fashion, replaced by harder rock. Their long-running distribution deal with Capitol for their Brother Records imprint was over. It had been three years since their last big hit, […]
ABOUT THE FESTIVAL The highly anticipated, multi-weekend festival in Palm Springs is fundamentally a giant pool party. Mix in sold-out hotels, after-hours parties, and world-class electronic headliners and you get Splash House. The colorful, sun-soaked weekend event spanned the Renaissance, Saguaro, and Margaritaville hotels and festival-goers took over the pool areas and booked out the […]
The National and Bon Iver are two of the biggest names in indie music, and they rose to prominence around the same time. The National cemented themselves as mainstays with their 2007 breakthrough, Boxer, and Bon Iver released their storied debut, For Emma, Forever Ago, just a couple of months later. It only makes sense […]
In 2019, Halsey released the fiery “Nightmare,” an urgent, industrial anthem that aptly captured the universal “female rage” amplified by the patriarchal doom of the Trump era. The song, a stark departure from her pop-centric releases in the past, was noticeably left off of their third album Manic. The track, however, was never written off […]
What the fuck are perfect places, anyway? Those were the biting last words, the closing lyrics to Lorde’s Melodrama — an album that magnificently captured the blissful madness of being 20 years old: liquor-soaked limes and parties ‘til dawn; identity crises and cataclysmic breakups. That record, released in 2017, was addictively urgent, a work of […]
Pressure Machine, The Killers’ audacious new concept album, is so foreboding and grim — how foreboding and grim is it? — that Brandon Flowers may soon receive a cease-and-desist letter from Utah’s department of tourism. The band’s seventh studio LP (and second in 12 months) is a jarring departure from the maximalized arena-rock of 2020’s […]
I admit it, I bought three box sets of Beatles bootleg material when I was in Singapore two decades ago. What I liked most in that treasure trove were the Liverpudlian’s takes on the songs that would eventually emerge in George Harrison’s first true solo album. When it appeared as a triple-disc set, All Things […]
Pink Siifu’s latest release, GUMBO!, is another sprawling Afrocentric vision from one of the boldest voices in contemporary rap. Following up on 2020’s NEGRO, a genre-bending exploration of Black rage in the face of racist oppression, the album’s songs are as rich and varied as its titular stew. Siifu’s boundless style makes for an unpredictable […]
“Last year, when I was at my lowest point during the tour in Europe, I was worried I was going to have a breakdown and shave my head,” Billie Eilish confessed in a 2020 Vogue cover story. The price of Eilish’s hard-won path to pop stardom has not been lost on her. It’s long hovered […]