Born April 23rd, 1936, in Vernon, Texas, rock & roll icon Roy Orbison would have celebrated his 84th birthday today. A pioneering artist in the Fifties whose distinctive look and operatic voice gave rock and pop songs a stark, dramatic edge, Orbison was a superstar throughout the world, breaking through …
Read More »See Kesha's Intimate 'Resentment' Performance on 'Fallon'
Kesha phoned into the latest socially distanced episode of The Tonight Show Friday to deliver an intimate home recording of “Resentment,” a song from her 2020 LP High Road. The studio version of the single features Brian Wilson and Sturgill Simpson, but Kesha stripped the acoustic ballad to its core …
Read More »See Toni Braxton's Homemade Video for 'Do It'
A month and change into quarantine, the number of music videos shot at home is starting to swell. Here’s Drake parading around his palatial mansion; there’s the rising band Younger Hunger making mayhem in their modest backyard. Toni Braxton offered up a homemade clip of her own on Friday: a …
Read More »'RS Interview: Special Edition' With Roger Waters
Who better to speak to at the moment than Roger Waters, who wrote about living in “perfect isolation/here behind my wall” back in 1979? The Pink Floyd co-founder and stadium-filling solo artist, who had to postpone his This Is Not a Drill Tour — which was supposed to kick off …
Read More »Madison Beer: A Rising Pop Star Looks Past Her Bubblegum Roots
Madison Beer has been hunkered down on Long Island since the coronavirus pandemic led to lockdowns across the country. The 21-year-old rising pop star has spent her time picking up hobbies: learning French, chipping away at a long list of movies she’s been wanting to watch. Between activities, she’s been …
Read More »Brandy Clark, Caitlyn Smith Set for 'Songwriter Sessions' Livestream
Although the doors of Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum remain closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, two of their most popular programs will open to the public via Instagram Live beginning this week. On Tuesday evenings, the museum will stream the interactive Songwriter Sessions; on Thursday afternoons, …
Read More »Social Distancing With Warren Haynes: Canceled Shows, New Songs, and Bill Withers
As the world fights a pandemic, we reached out to some of our favorite artists with a few quarantine questions about these unprecedented times. Warren Haynes played at one of the last major arena shows before the lockdown – the “Brothers” tribute to the Allman Brothers Band on March 10 …
Read More »Halsey Donates 100,000 Masks to L.A. Hospitals Fighting COVID-19
Halsey has donated 100,000 masks to various hospitals in Los Angeles that are treating patients with COVID-19. The singer wrote in Instagram: “Every single day I am in awe of the medical workers on the frontlines. Their determination, selflessness and empathy is the single greatest example of our capacity to …
Read More »Flashback: Hal Willner Recruits Leonard Cohen, Sonny Rollins for Transfixing 'Who by Fire'
Hal Willner wasn’t known for playing music himself. But the producer, who died Monday at 64, had a unique gift for making music happen. Through his marvelously eclectic tribute albums — which featured everything from Tom Waits yowling out Snow White’s “Heigh Ho (The Dwarf’s Marching Song)” to Debbie Harry …
Read More »The Unmistakable Genius of Adam Schlesinger
Since Fountains of Wayne co-founder Adam Schlesinger died of complications from COVID-19 on April 1st, tributes from his many friends and collaborators have poured in from all corners. Here, author and playwright David Bar Katz remembers their 35-year friendship. There are songs we would all have known by heart that …
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