While I’ve always found the news roundup trope of “here are some good stories to happen this year” to be grating, Megan Thee Stallion’s earned the right to give it a spin. Every week seems to bring some lingering reminder of the violent assault she…

There’s always an arbitrary switch that flips earlier and earlier every year to determine when the holidays can begin. Before November, artists were already releasing Christmas albums. Last night, unrelated to the month or seasonal shifts, my…

You’ll never imagine how loudly I gasped early Friday morning when, that’s right, System of a Down released its first new music in 15 years. If not the most substantial development in the past 24 hours, it certainly ranks among the most surprising.…

There’s something to be said for a guy who started the year in a Masked Singer costume and wound up at a President Trump event in Miami. While I won’t parse what led Lil Wayne into either scenario — I’d suspect there’s a similar impulse behind both,…

Not that I get remotely invested in Saturday Night Live hosting and musical guest duties, but this weekend’s pairing — Adele hosting, but forgoing the musical responsibilities, alongside H.E.R., who network executives love more than anyone I’ve ever…

Things are getting weirder. Besides the president and almost everyone in his orbit testing positive for coronavirus, and his delirious, cough-heavy phone interviews, we’re witnessing music careers derail in real time due to poor health precautions.…

One afternoon, in June 2013, Kanye West was wandering through a Rick Owens exhibit in Basel, Switzerland, when he decided to throw a listening party. He sent a few cryptic emails and booked a yawning gallery space in the Messeplatz, five minutes…

Lana Del Rey has spent a career and five studio albums musing over the promise of the American Dream; her focus is not money or success but romance—the expanse of Western highways, the nostalgia of rock and roll, Malibu’s star-studded beaches. And,…

Lana Del Rey unveiled her third album, Honeymoon, on Friday, and it's everything the 30-year-old singer's fans want from their cool, vintage queen — persistent melancholy and a mood that says she has zero fucks to give.  Honeymoon, cowritten with…

"If you're gonna be me you need a manifesto," M.I.A. sings on the title track to her finally-released new album, Matangi. You get the feeling that she means the line sincerely. While the album is great, it shows Maya herself floundering without…