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"This is the future of sound." This was Madonna, talking to Billboard in August of 2000. She was describing the French producer Mirwais Ahmadzaï, her main collaborator on her new album Music -- and, by extension, she was describing her new album itself. Madonna has a long history of making imperious and slightly ridiculous statements, and this one certainly seems like it belongs on the list. But she...
We’ve Got A File On You features interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc. Alicia Keys has come a long way from taking classical piano lessons as a kid. As her 2007 single suggests, she is a bonafide “Superwoman.” Nearly two decades after the release of 2001’s critically...
Van Morrison has announced plans to release a series of songs protesting the UK's coronavirus lockdown restrictions. As the BBC reports, the musician will put out three different songs in the coming weeks, starting with one called "Born To Be Free" next week. The lyrics to that one, per The Telegraph, go like this: "The new normal, is not normal/ It’s no kind of normal at all/ Everyone seems to have...
A few weeks ago, the Smashing Pumpkins put out two new tracks, "Cyr" and "The Colour Of Love." The release was tied to one of six countdown clocks on their official website and the next countdown has now hit zero. And with it, more Smashing Pumpkins news. The band has just announced that they will release a new double album called Cyr on 11/27 via Sumerian Records. The album was produced by Billy Corgan...
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition For A Limited Series, Movie Or Special (Original Dramatic Score) for their work on the HBO miniseries Watchmen. They won against the scores for Hollywood, Little Fires Everywhere, Mrs. America, and Unorthodox. It's their first Emmy win, which means that the composing team is only needs a Tony Award to complete the...
McDonald's Travis Scott Meal is too dang popular. It may just be a Quarter Pounder burger with medium fries and a Sprite, but the youths are eating it up. Some locations are running out of ingredients like beef and lettuce. People are stealing restaurants' Travis Scott posters and selling them on eBay for hundreds of dollars. And customers are annoying the fuck out of McDonald's employees by blasting...
Justin Townes Earle, a talented singer-songwriter and the son of Steve Earle, died last month at the age of 38. Today, Steve Earle has announced that he will record a covers album of songs that were written by Justin Townes Earle with his band the Dukes. Per a press release sent by his label New West Records, Earle expects to record the album next month and release it in January near what would have...
The videos never stop. They're a constant stream, a deluge. As I'm writing this, the last one was three days ago. Cinematically, that video is nothing much. The imagery is static, even boring. It's NBA YoungBoy, riding a shopping cart through a supermarket, throwing boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch at the camera. It's NBA YoungBoy, flexing in the parking lot of a Krispy Kreme. It's NBA YoungBoy, hunched...
We’ve Got A File On You features interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc.…
“You know, I’ve always been kind of busy,” Bartees Strange says over the phone. He pauses for a second, underscoring just how much of an understatement “busy” is — the Washington DC-based musician was, until late August, holding down a full-time day job directing communications and marketing at a climate change non-profit, all while releasing…
We’ve Got A File On You features interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc.…
We’ve Got A File On You features interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc.…
There is no version of 2020 where Barely Civil aren’t a nervous wreck. As drummer Isaac Marquardt helpfully reminds me: “We’re all early 20-year-old people in an emo band,” and a quintessential Midwestern one at that. Their 2018 debut We Can Live Here Forever reflected the concerns of four teenagers spread out at satellites across…
Mike Doughty may have left Soul Coughing two decades ago, but Soul Coughing never really left him. On his brand-new EP with bassist and longtime collaborator Andrew “Scrap” Livingston, Doughty has purposefully sought to revive his alt-jazz-rock project, which was famously born out of the ‘90s underground jazz scene in New York and resulted in…
If Krill was a project about how to be a better person in the world, then Knot is, for the most part, about how to make the world a better place for people. The shift from personal accountability to collective action occurred in the five years that Krill was away, from when the beloved Boston…
The dream of the ’90s is alive in Houston. Narrow Head’s second album 12th House Rock, out today, swirls together a broad spectrum of heavy alt-rock sounds from the late 20th century. Opening track “Yer’ Song” begins with gnarled Alice In Chains melodies, moves on to a dreamily whimpered Deftones chorus, then rips into a…
Jonathan Leahy was 11 when he saw a goofy movie about two bodacious teens who travel through time to complete a history project. “I was raised by old-fashioned parents in a conservative part of the Northeast,” Leahy says, recalling when Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure first came out. “I almost certainly saw it on VHS…
When Universal Pictures started the promotion cycle for Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, they clearly didn’t know which angle to push. To be fair, the movie has got a lot going on. Edgar Wright’s geeky action-comedy romance, an adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel series, follows 22-year-old slacker Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) as he…
When we first met Fontaines D.C., they were already exciting. Between early singles like “Hurricane Laughter” and “Boys In The Better Land” and raw and exhilarating gigs in Dublin, everything seemed to point towards them being one of the best in a sudden swell of young guitar bands coming from the UK and Ireland. Still,…
A year ago, Lauren Morgan, one half of the Orlando-based indie rock duo SALES, shrugged off her hometown. As Morgan explained to an interviewer, the Florida city, home to over a dozen theme parks, did not significantly shape her band’s identity. “More than anywhere we’re from the internet,” she said. For seven years, Morgan and…
Tonight, I’m going undercover as one of the 695 people in the Angel Olsen Cosmic Stream group chat. My code name? Virginia. My mission?
Jessy Lanza songs don’t stop moving. They’re rendered in twitchy shuffles, hypnotic little loops that operate like spinning tops. These kinds of songs were fully realized on her dementedly fun 2016 album Oh No, and four years later she’s refined them even more on her latest, All The Time. The album was predated by a…
My phone call with Patty Smyth is cut off just as the former Scandal singer starts talking about living on the same East Village street as her name-doppelgänger Patti Smith in the ’70s. “I was getting Patti Smith’s mail, and I didn’t know who that was at that time,” she says before the line abruptly…
