Kanye West's new album is raw, unapologetic—and boring
The music of George Jones is an argument against the intellect, a case for art made without the mediating influence of the mind. For decades before his death in April at the age of eighty-one, Jones had been widely regarded as one of the greatest singers in country music, if not the greatest ever in his field; but even that exalted status may have undersold him. He was, I think, one of the most distinctive and effective vocalists in the whole history of American music, category notwithstanding.
Meow Meow and the rise of alt-cabaret.
The HBO biopic Phil Spector isn't a truthful work—but it gets some things very right.
Comebacks are sometimes acts of recovery, sometimes rediscovery. The Next Day is both.
Donald Byrd's jazz-pop-funk mix foreshadowed the hybridization of music in the digital era.
Sing Along with Beck
This old-timey "album" of sheet music isn't worth the gimmick
With his new "album" of sheet music, Beck tries to go back to the days before iTunes, CDs, and records. It doesn't really work.
In His New Music, David Bowie Can't Stop Looking Back
“Where are we now?” croons David Bowie in the single he released to the music world’s surprise this Tuesday, on the occasion of his sixty-sixth birthday, and the unspoken answer is “Back together.” The theme of the song is reunification, in all its meanings. The first new music from Bowie in ten years, “Where Are We Now” reunites one of the most revered elders of art pop with fans who had been filling the long silence with whispers about his health.
