Stop me if you've heard this one before: A good-looking teenager from the northern reaches of Manhattan becomes a high school basketball star. But instead of seeing how far he can go with that gift, he finds himself drawn into the cultural vortex of his city. He spends time around globally famous musicians and larger-than-life figures. He also becomes acquainted with darkness and drugs. And eventually,...
I was born in San Francisco, CA to two Chicano musicians who connected over their complete obsession with playing and studying music. Once we were old enough to hold instruments, my sister and I expressed some reticence about performing with our parents, but due in part to the closeness of the Mexican family unit and the allure of high-paying, fun gigs, we caved and formed our family band, La Familia...
A bunch of older Jeopardy! episodes recently went up on Netflix, including a 2013 Tournament Of Champions entry in which 9-time winner Jason Keller talks about meeting up with the Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt after his initial appearances on the show in 2011. "The Magnetic Fields, an indie group... Their lead singer Stephin Merritt actually watched all of my shows in a bar, and through some mutual...
Are y'all familiar with the saga surrounding "The Watcher," the mysterious stalker who terrorized a family with eerily specific letters after they purchased a million-dollar home in a fancy New Jersey suburb? If you haven't read The Cut's new feature about the yearslong ordeal, I cannot recommend it enough. Come for the creepy thrills, stay for the petty suburban politics. Someone absolutely must option...
The most influential emo bands are almost invariably mourned using the lexicon of incompletion and imperfection - they break up on the precipice of something bigger, are misunderstood or scorned by contemporary critics, leave a cruelly small recording legacy cited by more commercially successful peers as a primary influence. And since Algernon Cadwallader is a cultishly beloved and defunct emo band,...
Do you remember your first time hearing Converge? I remember mine: September 2001, a listening station at a Syracuse record store, maybe a week after Jane Doe came out. And I remember what I thought: something along the lines of what the fuck? This was clearly heavy, intense music, and I knew that I'd be in for that before I pressed play. But what I didn't understand was how jagged and off-kilter it...
In The Number Ones, I'm reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart's beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. *** The Beatles - "Hey Jude" HIT #1: September 28, 1968 STAYED AT #1: 9 weeks "Hey Jude" remains the Beatles' biggest-ever hit, the one that stayed at #1 for the longest. It's also a document of the moment that the band...
It's never entirely clear what real-life rock star Jackson Maine is analogous to in A Star Is Born. But it turns out Bradley Cooper did have someone else in mind besides himself to play the role, though it didn't work out. In a new Variety cover story on Lady Gaga, Cooper says that at one point in 2014, after Beyoncé had dropped off the film but before Gaga came on, he approached an "actual musician"...
The most influential emo bands are almost invariably mourned using the lexicon of incompletion and imperfection – they break up on the precipice of something bigger, are misunderstood or scorned by contemporary critics, leave a cruelly small recording legacy cited by more commercially successful peers as a primary influence. And since Algernon Cadwallader is a…
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.…
“The Best Years Of My Life,” a standout from the Pistol Annies’ third album, Interstate Gospel, may have the best opening line of any song this year. After a short guitar intro that sounds like someone is X’ing out another day on the calendar, Ashley Monroe sings, “I picked a good day for a recreational…
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.…
Linnea Siggelkow. L.S. Ellis. It’s as simple as that. And the Hamilton, Ontario musician’s songwriting is just as intuitive, a raw yet graceful breed of indie rock with a dream-pop splendor and a brooding slowcore soul.
For people of a certain age, Gary Busey is best known as a rapscallion of disputable ’00s television, popping up in programs such as Entourage, I’m With Busey, Dancing With The Stars, Celebrity Apprentice, and Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew to offer up loopy yet undeniably heartfelt exhortations to follow your dreams to anyone who…
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.…
It’s late Wednesday evening in London and Danny Elfman is admittedly jet-lagged. “We’re right in the middle of scoring Dumbo,” says the iconic composer of the upcoming live-action adaptation of the classic story starring Danny DeVito and directed by his frequent collaborator Tim Burton. “All I can say right now about it is that the…
The first thing you’ll notice about Miya Folick is that voice. She’s just one of these people: There’s a natural gift there, and she has cultivated it, and she knows how to deploy it. Her vocals have an overwhelming power when she truly lets loose, the sound of a storm brewing within then erupting from…
Let’s just make something clear: While motorized scooters have infiltrated just about every major city in America to entertain drunks, endanger pedestrians, and undermine mass public transportation, watching kids throw Birds and Limes off a building or lighting them on fire is not funny. Nor is seeing a dog take a shit on these Uber-funded…
When Trent Reznor says he is excited about something he doesn’t actually sound excited at all. He speaks in a measured mutter, choosing his words carefully whenever he’s asked a question that could potentially lead to a headline-grabbing response. The press cycle for his most recent Nine Inch Nails release, Bad Witch, generated some notable…
Lorely Rodriguez writes about love in massive and minuscule ways. She measures it in the stars, she memorializes moments shared on a city stoop. Whether you’re speaking to her in person or listening to her lyrics, Rodriguez is considerate and direct. Both are attributes that she uses to write songs that feel universal and familiar…
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.…
Sir Babygirl lives up to the excess of her name. Kelsie Hogue, the mastermind behind the fledgling project, admits that her music can be a lot. “I want to do pop escapism,” she tells me at a café in Brooklyn, where she’s recently moved from New Hampshire. She hasn’t really had time to settle into…
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.…
