Pop singer Chappell Roan told a crowd of 150,000 on Sunday that she turned down an invitation to perform at the White House’s Pride festivities, during a set where she spoke about trans rights, women’s rights and freedom for “oppressed people in occupied territories.” Near the end of her set at New York City’s Governors … Read more
Halfway through Charli XCX’s new album, “BRAT,” the British pop star delivers a lyric that is “pop” in neither form nor content. She is rapping, more or less, her voice slightly warped by Auto-Tune. Flouting conventions of rhyme and meter, she acknowledges the sorts of concerns that stars like her are typically expected to ignore, … Read more
Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Wherever You Listen Sign up to receive our weekly cultural-recommendations newsletter. The rap superstars Drake and Kendrick Lamar have been on a collision course for a decade, trading periodic diss tracks to assert their superiority—but earlier this month the long-simmering beef erupted into a showdown that said as … Read more
Ask music critics what they think of Taylor Swift’s eleventh studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” and those who aren’t afraid of getting doxed might say something about the interminable length, the repetitive synth overlays, or the uninspired lyrics. Take “imgonnagetyouback,” a track that’s notably similar to Olivia Rodrigo’s “Get Him Back!” In the chorus, … Read more
It was eleven o’clock, and Meadow Street, in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was just starting to wake up for the night when a Welsh woman named Emma Kirby approached some bouncers who were guarding the entrance to a converted warehouse. They asked if she was on the list, and in a sense she was. “I’m one … Read more
Tennessee became the first U.S. state to protect musicians from AI that could clone and manipulate their voices, creating deepfakes, without permission. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security (ELVIS) Act into law on Thursday, adding the unauthorized use of a person’s voice to Tennessee’s list of protected rights. The … Read more
Wayne Gretzky will be among the high-profile figures to eulogize former prime minister Brian Mulroney at his state funeral on March 23, government officials announced Friday. Mulroney’s daughter Caroline will also speak, along with Canadian media baron Pierre Karl Péladeau, former Quebec premier Jean Charest and former U.S. secretary of state James Baker, who will address the … Read more
Day 613:59Canadian music legend Ron Sexsmith looks back on a remarkable career with a 60th birthday concert at Massey Hall Canadian songwriting legend Ron Sexsmith has turned 60, and will be celebrating the milestone with a concert at Massey Hall Thursday. A favourite of legends like Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello, Sexsmith has headlined the iconic … Read more
Little Richard sang songs like Good Golly, Miss Molly and Lucille – but very few people know that the same rhythm & blues pioneer claimed an experience with the divine back in 1957. The singer made rock music famous. He also had an epiphany during one of his concerts that almost made him give up … Read more
The forty-year-old musician Chelsea Wolfe has roots in folk and country, but her music is imbued with the sonic weight of doom metal, with sludgy guitars and droning bass notes that sound as though they are crawling out from underground. Through seven studio albums, she has made a career operating outside the bounds of genre … Read more
