Music Features

When Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst conceived their debut album as Better Oblivion Community Center, they tried to avoid, as Oberst put it, anything “too tender and folky.” One good way to do that: Sing about living in a private hell and showering at the Bates Motel over rollicking, gold-dusted …

When Green River hit their groove, they played a vicious mix of snarling punk and gigantic hard-rock riffs. It was a heavy, menacing sound, and in the mid-Eighties, nobody really knew what to call it. “I think we just considered ourselves rock & roll guys who grew up on punk …

Last summer, Nathan Graham, program director for the Detroit pop station WDZH, made a prediction. “The next big song that’s going to be on Top 40 that everyone is completely whiffing on right now is Tyga’s ‘Taste,’” Graham said. “If pop radio would actually give it a look, I think …

The plan was to sell flowers. Following a successful music-industry career throughout the Eighties and Nineties, working with the likes of Kenny Loggins and Paul Simon, Denzyl Feigelson moved to Hawaii. There, semiretired, the South African exec launched an online floral company (based on the the bones of a sluggish, …

Fortnite may be the world’s most popular video game, with 200 million players and $1 billion in revenue, but for 2 Milly, it’s just the game that stole his signature dance move. The latest version of Fortnite adapts the Brooklyn rapper’s viral 2015 dance, the Milly Rock, as an “emote” …

This year’s best music books offers a mix of fascinating memoir, adventurous criticism and rich historical investigation. Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968,Ryan H. Walsh Van Morrison‘s1968 LP Astral Weeks was a landmark fusion of jazz, folk, rock and meditative soul. But its creation is as mysterious as the …

What doAriana Grande, Travis Scott and J Balvin have in common? All were spurned to some degree by Grammy voters. The nominations for the 2019 awards ceremonywere announced on Friday morning, with Kendrick Lamar, Cardi B and Lady Gaga each picking up multiple nods in major categories. But each year, …

Soulja Boy‘s voice is breaking up. He apologizes, the culprit is his house — it’s in the hills and possesses less than optimal reception — rapper problems. He’s already let his 5 million-plus followers on Twitter know that we’re going to talk: “Whoa I got rolling stone and Forbes requesting …

The new episode of our podcast, Rolling Stone Music Now, features an extended interview with Elvis Costello, who just released Look Now, his first album in five years. Costello talks about mortality, working with Paul McCartney and learning from Bruce Springsteen, as well as the evolution of his band and …

On a warm, hazy Monday in August, tucked away in a nondescript office park in Milford, Connecticut, Keith Dakin, Kevin Begley and Allan Lamberti were deciding the sound of Star 99.9, a radio station that plays what’s known as “Hot Adult Contemporary.” Each week, Dakin and his teamexamine what’s being …