Music Features

To Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga‘s credit, the most controversial, critiqued element ofA Star Is Born is a simple plot point. After Gaga’s Ally spends the first half of the film falling in love with Cooper’s turbulent, alcoholic rock star Jackson Maine and playing her songs around the country with …

The soundtrack to 1993 chase flick Judgment Night — on which 10 rap artists collaborated with 11 rock groups — was a gold-certified triumph of the post-Nirvana major label wild west. Dropped shortly after Lollapalooza wound down its third summer, here was a similarly divide-breaking gathering of genre-crossing cool: Cypress …

By the time Hole‘s third album Celebrity Skin had been released in the fall of 1998, the world had already met two different Courtney Loves. The first was a vitriolic weapon of self-destruction: a brash bottle blonde with smeared red lipstick, ripped tights and coquettish babydoll dresses, who growled and …

No one makes noise quite like Empath. On Liberating Guilt and Fear, the excellent four-song EP they released this spring, the Philadelphia quartet whirl psychedelic guitar, found sounds, New Age drones and more into an exhilarating 16-minute blur. In concert, they sound as much like a cosmic jazz combo as …

When John McCauley first sat down to watch his life depicted on screen, he didn’t particularly enjoy it. “Deeply uncomfortable” is how the singer-songwriter describes the experience of watching Straight Into a Storm, a new documentary about Deer Tick, the band he has fronted since 2004. “I don’t go online …

There’s a 1978 interview with Eddie Money, the radio-staple rocker whose biggest hits still adorn every classic-rock station and outdoor bar serving Mai Tais and Bahama Mamas, on YouTube that perfectlysums up the “Two Tickets to Paradise” and “Take Me Home Tonight” singer. The Long Island–via–Brooklyn musician was 29 at …

The last notes of “Please Please Me” still hung in the stale air of EMI’s Studio Two on November 26th, 1962, when George Martin’s disembodied voice crackled over the talkback from the control room above. “Gentlemen,” he addressed his young moptopped charges, “I think you’ve made your first Number One.” …

When Deep Purple didn’t show up for a gig once in Ohio in the early Seventies, opening act Fanny went on in their place. “And slammed,” recalls guitarist June Millington. “No one left, which impressed everyone. It was a big deal ’cause, well, you know: girls!” Four girls, in fact. …

While no shortage of American liberal-arts undergrads have wondered whether the degree they’re working toward will be any use in the real world, for 20-year-old singer-songwriter Sophie Allison, those doubts got too loud to ignore. “It got to the point where I would be in class emailing my agent,” says …

Before Jack White walked into a New York recording studio, he issued himself a challenge: Spend only three days recording a new batch of songs with a group of musicians he had never played with. Many of them were from the hip-hop world – he had reached out to players …