In 1997, the fourth issue of the Beastie Boys' Grand Royal magazine included a long profile on a Midwestern rapper named Kid Rock. Kid Rock, we learned, had started the '90s as a major-label hope and a protege of former Boogie Down Productions member D-Nice. He'd even released a full major-label album, one that attempted to position him as a much hornier version of Vanilla Ice, his white-kid Gumby...
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 Rolling Stones - "Get Off Of My Cloud" HIT #1: November 6, 1965 STAYED AT #1: 2 weeks When John Lennon was starting to freak out about the overwhelming enormity of his own fame, he wrote "Help!," a song about...
Be the cowboy. It's a hell of a phrase. The cowboy is the archetypal figure of the American mythos: the self-determining young traveler, wandering the expanse of the frontier, beholden to no one. Even if you've never watched a Western, the appeal of the cowboy is probably somewhere baked into your soul. If you're American -- if you've ever really thought about America -- it's in there. It's never leaving....
I imagine Ben Gibbard circa 1998 situated under a tree reading Kerouac. A sensitive 20-something in sandals and jeans, probably the brainiest of his friend group. Grounded, but reactive. That August, 20 years ago tomorrow, he would release Something About Airplanes with his newly-assembled band Death Cab For Cutie. When I spoke to Gibbard a few months ago on the 10-year anniversary of Death Cab’s...
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...
At first, Korn were a myth to me. When they released their self-titled debut album in 1994, I was 11. I may have glimpsed their spooky dreadlocked scowls in magazines or TV ads, or wherever I found out about new music in that nascent internet era. But for a suburban Christian kid who spent his late elementary years dabbling in pop and country radio, they remained elusive boogeymen lingering over the...
Billy Corgan answered some fan questions on his Instagram story today and, as Exclaim points out, when asked if he had ever seen Shrek, he responded with a fun fact, which is that the Smashing Pumpkins were apparently originally offered the end credit songs for the film, but that their offer was withdrawn and given to Smash Mouth instead. In a follow-up question, he said that, if they had appeared...
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...
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…
