In 1975, David Bowie moved to Los Angeles and reinvented himself. As rock’s greatest chameleon, he had already achieved success as Ziggy Stardust, Halloween Jack, and others, morphing into different personas whenever it suit him. But this new character would be his darkest yet: the gaunt, slick-haired, theatrical Thin White …
Read More »Adele Single-Handedly Made Spotify Change How Albums Are Played on the Streaming Service
Spotify users listening to Adele’s 30 will hear the album as the singer intended after the streaming service promised to remove the default shuffle feature from the LP, as per Adele’s request. “This was the only request I had in our ever changing industry! We don’t create albums with so …
Read More »'The Rage Would Come Out of Nowhere': Personality Change Has Emerged as a Symptom of Long Covid
One July day in 2020, Julie Fallon, a second-grade teacher from Massachusetts, found herself standing in a dumpster in her driveway, shaking and enraged. She doesn’t remember what had triggered her anger that summer afternoon, but recalls reaching for the nearest items and smashing them against the other contents. “I …
Read More »A Photographer's Year on the Front Lines of an American Uprising
Mel D. Cole always told himself that if he saw a chance to photograph history in action, he’d take it. So when he heard about a protest at New York’s Foley Square following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, he headed downtown. “It was so intense I couldn’t …
Read More »An Instagram Influencer Was Murdered. Now, Other Models Are Terrified
T hey were two different people, Jenae and Mercedes; on that everyone could agree. Mercedes was outgoing, bubbly, the life of the party. She’d jump on a table and karaoke to Ginuwine’s “Stingy” on Instagram Live, or don a sombrero and pretend to eat a giant papier-mache taco for a …
Read More »Flashback: U2 Cover 'Dancing Queen' With ABBA's Bjorn and Benny
ABBA confirmed years of rumors earlier this week when they announced that they’ve reunited to record their first new album since 1981’s The Visitors. “We took a break in the spring of 1982 and now we’ve decided it’s time to end it,” the group said in a statement. “They say …
Read More »'Snake Eyes': Ninjas, Yakuzas and 'G.I. Joe' Origin Stories, Oh My!
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. Over the next several days, He would create the evening and the day, the light and the dark, the waters and the firmament, the movies and the Military Industrial Complex and various corporate marketing divisions. On the fourth day, He …
Read More »Clairo's Wide-Open Spaces
I t’s noon in the Catskills, and Claire Cottrill is thinking about buying a barn. The 22-year-old singer-songwriter, who performs as Clairo, recently purchased more than five acres of property in nearby Massachusetts, and she has big plans to use its well, churn butter, and convert that prospective barn into …
Read More »Olivia Rodrigo Announces 'Sour Prom' Concert Film
Olivia Rodrigo will host her own alternative prom during a special concert film airing Tuesday, June 29th at 11:30 p.m. ET/8:30 p.m. PT on her YouTube channel. The Sour Prom Concert Film will find Rodrigo performing songs form her debut album Sour. Prior to the show, starting at 11 p.m. …
Read More »Japanese Breakfast's Michelle Zauner on Making Her Brightest Record Yet
When Michelle Zauner thinks about her latest album as Japanese Breakfast, she thinks of persimmons. “Persimmons are pretty present in a lot of Asian cultures, as gifts that you give to people,” she says over the phone from her home in Brooklyn. “I had seen an image of these hanging …
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