Credit: Sofia Lee
When a truly iconic music figure dies, a eulogy can never tell the full story. Sometimes, you learn more about this person's impact on the world when you dig through the flotsam -- random TV performances, soundtrack appearances, half-forgotten duets. We've collected moments like these in the past for recently departed musical legends like David Bowie and Prince. And today, we're doing it for Aretha...
Aretha Franklin’s "Respect" is eternal. Anyone born after its release in 1967 might assume the song had existed since the Big Bang; it's the kind of music that you cannot pinpoint hearing for the first time because it sounds like it’s always been there. But if you were alive and listening to the radio the moment "Respect" first made it on-air, it must have sounded like a revelation. That sleazy...
The soul and gospel legend Aretha Franklin has died after a battle with pancreatic cancer cancer. Her publicist confirmed the news to the Associated Press, stating that Franklin passed away this morning at her home in Detroit. She was 76. Franklin was born in Memphis, the daughter of an itinerant-preacher father and a musician mother. When she was a child, her family moved to Detroit, where her father...
Kurt Vile’s last full-length b’lieve i’m goin down was wholly awesome. But that was in 2015, and we haven’t heard much from him since besides last year’s joint venture Lotta Sea Lice with Courtney Barnett. Back in April, when Vile’s longtime label Matador posted a photo of custom Vile ’18 campaign signs stuck in neighborhood median next to some daffodils, it seemed like an obvious teaser....
Back in 2007, around the time she joined Lil Wayne on Young Money Records, Nicki Minaj released the mixtape track "Dreams (2007)." The concept was pretty simple. She was freestyling over the beat from the Notorious BIG's "Dreams," the one where he graphically fantasized about having sex with different R&B singers. Over that same beat, Nicki disclosed her plans to fuck various mixtape rappers. It's...
Pearl Jam have a fervent fanbase, the kind that arrives early and lines up at the merch stands hours before the show is set to begin. Why? Well, in past years one constant has often been their posters, featuring art specific to that show and never to be used elsewhere, a memento for the people who were there. Sometimes you'll find these for sale on their site, or being traded between members of the...
Last week, the 1975 did that thing again where they sent out another real, tangible press kit to announce the next single off their forthcoming album A Brief Inquiry Onto Online Relationships, the first of two planned full-lengths. The track is called "TooTimeTooTimeTooTime," and they debuted it on Annie Mac’s BBC Radio 1 today. The note claims "TooTime" as the album’s second single following...
Chan Marshall aka Cat Power is back from her six-year hiatus with an upcoming record called Wanderer, due out this Fall via Domino. The singer, songwriter, and producer has been supplying us with idiosyncratic, heartwrenching records since the early ‘90s. Today we hear “Woman,” a collaborative track with her former tour-mate Lana Del Rey, and see its accompanying visuals directed by Greg Hunt. The...
John Rossiter came of age as an emo kid in the Midwest, so it goes without saying that he’s had some formative Saddle Creek experience. But with only the slightest prompt, the Young Jesus frontman is gonna say it anyway: “Album Of The Year is one of my all-time favorite records,” he gushes, describing the…
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.
1991 is the year alternative rock went mainstream. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden were about to take over the world; Out Of Time and “Losing My Religion” turned R.E.M. into megastars;…
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.
Jill Cunniff is a lifelong New Yorker, born and raised. But today the Luscious Jackson frontwoman and founding member is in Los Angeles visiting her brother, who, naturally, works in TV.
Rico Nasty is a nu metal-channeling rager, a Balenciaga-wearing pop trap diva, and a bullish shit-talker. All three personas, and the ones in between, thrive on an infectious catharsis. The rager — sporting black, spiked-out hair and the leather choker to complement it — is who shows up to perform at New York’s SOBs on…
Jeremy Enigk is backstage at San Francisco’s Rickshaw Stop, hours away from beginning the next chapter of his life. The singer-songwriter — and, as frontman of the now-defunct Sunny Day Real Estate, the critically dubbed “king of emo” — has spent the past year performing stripped-down acoustic shows in living rooms across the US. But with…
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.
Ed Kowalczyk has just flown from Denver to Austin. Immediately before that, it was back to the States after playing a festival in Europe. But the Live singer doesn’t sound tired…
Susanna Nicchiarelli was first drawn to that voice. A low alto, lightly accented, dipping in and out of key, it could have been a man’s voice; after all, the singer’s name was Nico. “I remember being somehow attracted to this voice. It has something,” Nicchiarelli told me. “It said something. It spoke to me, in…
Tierra Whack was never boring. Even within the abbreviated context of a festival set, most musicians cannot make that claim — many of her fellow performers last weekend at Pitchfork Music Festival certainly could not — but Whack is not most performers. The Philadelphian rapper and singer is a rainbow-colored whirlwind of ideas with the…
Jim O’Rourke is searching for a word he’s forgotten how to say in English. After more than a decade living in Japan, the experimental musician doesn’t speak his native language much anymore and warns me at the beginning of our interview that he may occasionally have trouble. He’s trying to describe his new album, Sleep…
Over the last five years, the British quartet Wolf Alice have built up the kind of career arc that feels like the beginnings of a storied career. After a couple initial iterations, the group cohered into a lineup consisting of frontwoman Ellie Rowsell, guitarist Joff Oddie, bassist Theo Ellis, and drummer Joel Amey before launching…
For bands of any stripe — let alone those working in the indie circuit — successfully maintaining a career over nearly two decades is an impressive feat. And that’s certainly true for Seattle mainstays Minus The Bear, who have built a steady and devoted following since the release of their 2001 debut EP This Is…
Last year, someone broke into Lillie West’s apartment while she was sleeping. She didn’t wake up. At the time, West was living in a one-bedroom on the ground floor in Chicago and, while everything that was taken ended up being replaceable, a creeping unease settled in. Paranoia took over West’s mind. It made her feel…
Anyone who spent time listening to indie rock in the ’00s has, on at least one occasion, asked themselves, “what exactly does ‘subway, she is a porno’ mean?”
Owen Ashworth has been making criminally under-appreciated music for over two decades now, first as Casiotone For The Painfully Alone and more recently as Advance Base. He’s a storyteller by nature, and the narratives within his songs typically catalog the eternal ticking of the clock in heartrending but plaintive fashion.
On his new…
Two decades ago, smooth jams ruled the pop charts. Usher, K-Ci & JoJo, Next, Brandy and Monica, Lauryn Hill, and Divine were just some of the R&B acts who topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1998. But amidst all the slick beats there emerged a goofy, lite rap-rock jam that was so undeniable, it managed…
