In 2016, Zoe Saldana portrayed Nina Simone in a biopic titled Nina. The casting of the lighter-skinned Saldana was widely criticized at the time. "My mother was raised at a time when she was told her nose was too wide, her skin was too dark," Simone's daughter Lisa told The New York Times way back in 2012, when the casting choice was first announced. "Appearance-wise this is not the best choice." For...
In an Instagram post on July 23, veteran rapper Talib Kweli announced he was leaving Twitter and focusing on Patreon, where had he recently announced plans to fund a new solo album. The move made some kind of sense because Kweli's existence on Twitter was defined by hostile debate -- to follow him was to witness him in seemingly constant conflict. "Now most of my exchanges will always be with real...
"I will never stop singing this song," Phil Elverum intones in his signature trembling singsong narration. "It goes on forever." Less charitable listeners might spotlight that line as a self-own, coming in the context of a 44-minute track that functions as an album unto itself. Elverum is self-aware enough to recognize that possibility, but his intentions with the new Microphones In 2020 are grander...
Save Stereogum, the crowdfunding campaign to help our newly independent business stay afloat In These Uncertain Times, ends later this month. It’s going really well! But we did promise additional contributions to our massive ‘00s covers compilation and today we’re ready to reveal them. If you’ve been on the fence about buying an album to save this blog, maybe the participation of these fine...
Donald Trump has been using Neil Young songs at his campaign rallies for years now -- he literally first announced his candidacy to "Rockin' In The Free World" -- and Neil Young has been annoyed at Donald Trump for using Neil Young songs at his campaign rallies for about as long. Just last week, following Neil Young-soundtracked rallies in Tulsa and Mount Rushmore, Young announced that he was considering...
As the pandemic wears on and mass gatherings fade further and further into the distance, a whole lot of people are missing the experience enough to throw big parties anyway. Right now, the organizers of FuckJerry's JAJA tequila are under investigation for putting on a Chainsmokers concert in the Hamptons, and things like that are happening on smaller levels too. Late on Saturday night, as Gothamist...
It is, of course, not uncommon for musicians to cover each other. It's perhaps a bit more unexpected when established indie musicians go and form a full-blown cover band. That is, however, what has happened with Black Sabbath Cover Band Rehearsal. As you might be able to tell from the name, it's not exactly your typical cover band -- the stuff we're maybe used to seeing booked for state fairs or casinos...
Imagine what you think of blackness. Then reimagine it, again and again, until it is true, until it is righteous, until it is real. That is Beyoncé’s new goal. Black Is King, her new visual album, is a testament to the continual strength and power of Black culture. In the project, which debuted last Friday on Disney+, Beyoncé makes a definitive statement for the underlying power of Black creativity...
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…
If you know anything about Creed Bratton, you know he’s lived many lives. Most of us, of course, got to know him as the oddball scene-stealer on The Office. Bratton began as a background supporting character, playing a bizarro fictionalized version of himself. His character came close to being written off in the second season,…
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.…
At any point during 2018 or 2019, do you remember thinking, man, it doesn’t get any better than this? “It feels weird to be nostalgic for anything that happened post-2016,” Sarah Tudzin jokes, but even if every year is indeed “the worst one ever, until the next one,” at least the slow-burn success of Illuminati…
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.…
Anyone who has ever seen the Eurovision Song Contest knows that it’s a spectacle like no other. Between the elaborate special effects, outlandish costumes, and dramatic ballads and upbeat pop songs peppered with awkwardly translated English lyrics, the long-running European institution is ripe for parody. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga — starring…
The last time the Seattle doom metal duo Bell Witch released an album was in 2017, and chances are you could still be making sense of that music nearly three years later. The colossal, mind-expanding Mirror Reaper was one 83-minute song that completely warped your sense of time as it stretched everything out into a…
In 2017, Phoebe Bridgers released her debut Stranger In The Alps. With that album alone, she was already greeted as one of the most exciting, assured young songwriters newly on the scene. But in the ensuing years, Bridgers’ stature as a respected musician and generational voice has risen significantly, and quickly. The following year, she…
You could never question Jay Watson’s psych-rock bona fides. The man’s resume, of course, includes Tame Impala, the band that implausibly made the leap from being weirdo hallucinogenic rockers from western Australia to arena-conquerors worldwide. But all along the way, Watson also played in Pond, Tame’s sister band. And alongside that, he’s been putting out…
Aaron Dessner is always working on a ton of music. Quarantine has been no different. Recently, he’s had a couple projects germinating — one of which was a new song with none other than R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe. It all sounds pretty idyllic in a way: If you’re going to have to be isolated from friends…
