Credit: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket, Geneviève Elverum
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. *** Grand Funk - "We're An American Band" HIT #1: September 29, 1973 STAYED AT #1: 1 week They really were an American band. They may have been the most American band. Grand Funk Railroad came bursting out of Flint, Michigan...
There's a point in many young rappers' lives when they become infatuated with MF DOOM. Joey Badass mined volumes of Special Herbs compilations for beats on his debut album. Milo scoured filesharing service Kazaa to find DOOM loosies in his pre-highschool years. Odd Future compatriots Tyler, The Creator and Earl Sweatshirt looked like toddlers meeting a mall Santa when they came face-to-mask with the...
The world is ready for a new Carly Rae Jepsen album. It's been four long years since her instant-classic E•MO•TION, although we've gotten B-sides and "Cut To The Feeling" and plenty of collabs in the meantime. But still, the world is ready for a new Carly Rae Jepsen album, and thankfully, that's exactly what the world is about to get. Earlier this month, Jepsen announced a new album called Dedicated,...
"HAVE U EVER SEEN A BITCH PLAY FLUTE THEN HIT THE SHOOT?" It was a reasonable question. It was also a relevant question because it accompanied footage of the woman who posed it doing just that: first busting out an accomplished flute solo and then breaking into 2018's biggest viral dance craze with her backup dancers. What a glorious sight it was to behold. Here, behold it: HAVE U EVER SEEN A BITCH...
Rosalía is still playing clubs, but the one-of-a-kind future-flamenco art-pop heroine almost feels ready for arenas. For the first American club show of her worldwide El Mal Querer Tour -- her first ever North American headlining gig -- she hit the stage at the Mayan in Los Angeles, a sold-out show held on the Wednesday between her two appearances at Coachella. Places the size of the Mayan may not...
Towards the end of Beyoncé's new Homecoming film for Netflix, which documents her performance at last year's Coachella, some warbled synths appear which might sound familiar to anyone who religiously keeps up with all of our Bands To Watch. Yes, that's right, the instrumental to Florist's "Thank You," from the group's 2016 debut album The Birds Outside Sang, plays over a quote from Maya Angelou. It's...
Bob Dylan hasn't been one to incorporate stage banter in recent years. He rarely even speaks to introduce the band. But that changed last night when someone broke his “no photos” policy at his show in Vienna, Austria. After singing one verse of “Blowin’ in the Wind," Dylan stopped and said to the audience: “Take pictures or don’t take pictures. We can either play or we can pose. Okay?” Before...
Toward the end of his life, Pimp C, quite possibly the greatest shit-talker in rap history, started referring to himself as Tony Snow. There was context for this. Tony Snow was a right-wing talk-radio host and a regular substitute for Rush Limbaugh. In 2006, George W. Bush hired Snow as the White House Press Secretary, and he served for about a year. I like to imagine that Pimp heard the name on the...
La Dispute were in a rut. After playing together (give or take a few members) for close to 15 years, the post-hardcore experimentalists were too stuck in routine and familiarity with each other to come up with ideas for their upcoming album. In search of something — anything — to jump-start their songwriting process, bass…
Admittedly, the name Intellexual is a bit of a forehead-slapper, but hear me out here: The record is good. Like, really good. You’d expect as much from Nico Segal and Nate Fox, guys who played a key role in crafting Chance The Rapper’s euphoric sound and who count Frank Ocean (“U-N-I-T-Y”), Kanye West (“Ultralight Beam”),…
As Weyes Blood, Natalie Mering has spent her career making more than just records: She’s created fully immersive experiences. The singer-songwriter has been self-releasing albums since she was 15, initially using the moniker “Wise Blood” from the Flannery O’Connor novel for her songs. For her self-released debut album The Outside Room, released in 2011, Mering…
In the beginning of 2017, Priests released their debut album Nothing Feels Natural. It was a long-awaited confirmation that this was one of the most exciting young rock bands of our time, and it wound up ranking towards the top of our list of the best albums of that year. Just under two years later,…
Coffee with Charlotte Gainsbourg seems like it should take place in black and white. There’s something distinctly classical about the 47-year-old, almost as if she walked out of the frame of an old film and into the streets of contemporary New York. But when we meet a few blocks from her apartment in the West…
Patrick Stickles does everything with intention. Having now released music via his Titus Andronicus project for over a decade, Stickles long ago proved that even in his work’s most aesthetically raw moments, there are layers of thought at play. So, while it may come as some surprise that he’s announcing a new album called An…
Is there a 2010s indie band more misunderstood than the Drums? When Jonny Pierce’s once-Brooklyn-based indie-pop project first emerged at the top of the decade with their indelible self-titled debut, it was with a wave of hype brought on by the typically mouth-foaming British music press and the local ubiquity afforded by notching multiple CMJ…
When William Lindsay arrived at Drexel University in 2010, Philadelphia still lagged behind his hometown of Columbus as far as music scene credibility went. The Caracara frontman recalls a vibrant “pay-to-play” scene dominated by an early incarnation of Twenty One Pilots, “The coolest band that was crushing those 200-cap shows.” Metalcore and its mutant toxic…
For someone who’s perpetually ahead of the curve, Laura Stevenson rarely seems to get the praise she deserves. The New York-based singer-songwriter has spent the past decade penning the type of songs that you can’t help but hold close to your heart, occasionally wiggling them loose to share them with people close to you. There’s…
Today, Tim Showalter returns with Eraserland, his sixth album as Strand Of Oaks. It almost didn’t happen. As the touring behind 2017’s Hard Love was coming to a close, Showalter found himself defeated. After the wild journey from his 2014 breakthrough HEAL to its follow-up, something didn’t click. Unsatisfied with his band, with the project…
“Jailbreak The Tesla” is an evocative title, one that can work as a mantra for the Phoenix hip-hop trio that created it. “That was kind of the idea of Injury Reserve,” says Nathaniel Ritchie, the rapper also known as Ritchie With A T — “taking this thing that’s supposed to be this futuristic modern car,…
Throughout SXSW last week, there was one question everyone invested in this year’s crop of emerging indie names seemed to be asking: “Have you seen Black Midi yet?”
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.
The last time Dido booked a tour, it was 2003 and the soft-pop singer was riding high on the success of mid-’00s radio megahits “Thank You,” “Here With Me,” “White Flag,”
Plenty of bands have long histories, forged from bonds of friendship formed in a distant childhood past. Shared upbringings, shared surroundings — these can provide good raw material for a couple artists to come together and define their identity within and against the rest of the world. In the case of Isaac deBroux-Slone and Raina…
Ever since the Malian “desert blues” band Tinariwen began to build an international audience at the dawn of the millennium, a steady stream of Saharan guitar music has been making its way around the world. The list of renowned Tuareg rock acts has grown to include the likes of Algeria’s Imarhan, Niger’s Kel Assouf, and…
