Music Features

Joeboy has a knack for the sticky, sub-three-minute single — see his breakout hit “Baby” from 2019, and last year’s “Call.” His voice is not overpowering, but it quavers effectively to communicate longing. And the singer maximizes the impact of his harmonies by picking beats with just a few musical …

Caleb Hearn and Jason Messer used to be inseparable. “We did everything together,” says Hearn, a 20-year-old singer from King, North Carolina. But on February 18th, 2017, when Messer asked his friend to go hiking in nearby Hanging Rock State Park, Hearn had to bow out — he had a …

Gorillaz have always prided themselves on being the biggest virtual band in the world —so it makes sense that the cartoon pop act has adapted well to this dystopian year of life behind the screen. “We’ve just been waiting for this, really,” says Damon Albarn, 52, with a wry laugh. …

Billy Idol has always pushed the boundaries of chronological time, starting with the anachronistic 1970s punk look he modeled all over 1980s MTV. Idol turned 65 on November 30th, three days after the release of Miley Cyrus’ new album, Plastic Hearts, which features a brand-new duet with him on the …

The first 15 seconds of the Notwist’s “Where You Find Me,” the latest single from their upcoming LP Vertigo Days, sound like the equivalent of clouds breaking. It’s a skipping melody, voiced by warm, fuzzy synths that would sound like a voice if they weren’t rendered so perfect, and then …

Amy Lee misses Brooklyn. She lived there for 12 years with her husband (and later their son, born in 2015), before they left their apartment for Nashville a year ago. “The perfect year,” she says with an eye roll over Zoom. Lee had hoped to be closer to her family …

On July 3rd, 2019, Stonechild Chiefstick, a Chippewa Cree man who was part of the Suquamish tribal community in Poulsbo, Washington, was shot and killed by police during a confrontation at a park. Accounts surrounding the circumstances of the confrontation vary, but he wasn’t carrying a gun, and the officer …

The first time that producer Ted Templeman saw Van Halen playing at the Starwood in West Hollywood one night in 1977, he burst out of the club’s doors to find the nearest payphone. He called Donn Landee, a recording engineer he worked closely with, and left several messages. “You’ve got …

Helen Reddy, the Australian pop singer who died Tuesday at age 78, was an unlikely pop superhero. She sang in a smooth timbre that never lost its becalmed manner — call her the anti-Joplin — and most of the Seventies hits for which she’s known (“Delta Dawn,” “No Way to …

Abbey Road Studios was prepared when they closed their doors for nearly three months in March due to Covid-19 restrictions. Many of the artists and orchestras had already started moving their bookings, and the staff had begun working on an operational strategy. But still, the shuttering gave them pause. “Abbey …