Much like their English-language predecessors One Direction, CNCO were assembled from a hodge-podge of contestants on a televised singing competition — but instead of The X Factor, it was the first season of La Banda, the Spanish-language show helmed by Simon Cowell and Ricky Martin, which aired in 2015. Comprised …
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Sheryl Crow has enjoyed a quietly consistent third decade as a singer-songwriter, earning a Top Ten for her 2013 country debut Feels Like Home and a flurry of critical acclaim for her most recent effort, 2017’s aptly-titled Be Myself. Threads, a sprawling, star-studded seventeen song album featuring everyone from Chuck …
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With his 2017 album Flower Boy, Tyler, the Creator set out to answer a simple, burning question: Who dat boy? The result was nothing short of a revelation. Tyler bloomed almost literally, burrowing into his past and emerging from the closet amidst naturalistic motifs and a sun-drenched landscape of woozy …
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Sleater-Kinney‘s Corin Tucker titled the second album by Filthy Friends — her side project with former R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck — after a nickname for her hometown of Eugene, Oregon. She makes it sound like a desperate place on Emerald Valley, where wealthy insurgents have pushed out the area’s farmers …
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Life changes after you see Pink live in concert. For one thing, every time you hear a new Pink song you can’t help but wonder: “Will this be in the flying portion of the show or is it more of a slow-dance martial arts number?” On her eighth album Hurts …
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Twenty-five years later, the earth is still reeling from the spectacle of Smashing Pumpkins’ early Nineties triumph, a keening feedback-drenched rainbow that melded dream-pop gauze and arena rock bluster, Joy Division emotions and Cheap Trick aspirations. Generations of zeros-turned-heroes followed after 1993’s Technicolor guitar-army bubblegumSiamese Dream, 1995’s bloated but pointed …
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Released on January 20th, 1975, Blood on the Tracks was many records – in conception, execution and rapid change of mind – on its way to canonization: Bob Dylan’s greatest album of the Seventies and, as much as the singer has denied it since, the most emotionally direct body of …
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Lil Wayne‘s Tha Carter V has been a white whale for hip-hop enthusiasts since 2014, so it was surprising last month when the rapper Young Thug predicted that the long-awaited album was sure to fall short. “I’m Wayne’s biggest fan,” Young Thug wrote, “but [Tha Carter V] not goin’ to …
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Milo and Elucid, the two rappers behind this project, excel at the Bandcamp-financed model of crusty, elliptical beat loops and abstract, literate lyrics. Elucid’s style recalls New York’s super-scientific early-aughts glory days, while Milo is a reincarnation of the Los Angeles underground’s noodling, jazzy jabberwockies (although he now lives in …
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Hip-hop’s Internet-mediated underground currently teems with talented women like Maryland MC Rico Nasty. While her debut mixtape for Atlantic Records doesn’t feel like a major creative breakthrough, it’s a solid introduction to a dynamic, hard-charging voice in what Rico herself dubs “sugar trap.” She raps with adrenalized passion on the …
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