The culture of electronic dance music has long been seen as a safe space for the marginalized, but over the past decade it took a sharp turn towards the mainstream.
After two abbreviated releases she likens to experimentalist haikus, the singular 25-year-old artist refined her voice and expanded her collaborations to create a stunning, singular debut.
George Michael is one of the latest musicians to have music released posthumously. A lot goes into how that music gets released, who profits and what players make it happen.
"You are something and you make a choice in your life, like, 'This is going to be great' — and then it happens, and you're kind of like, 'This is more stressful than I imagined.' "
With Gang Starr, DJ Premier and Guru established one of the most influential projects in hip-hop history. Now, nine years after the death of their lyricist, comes the return.
Carlile's tribute concert established a new approach to canonizing Mitchell's work. And in a video produced for the concert, musicians and friends share their favorite lyrics by Mitchell.
It's not easy to see that history is being made when it's happening right in front of you — just ask the critics tasked with assessing these classic, ahead-of-their-time recordings.
In 2019, Kanye West rose from the ashes of a career flameout by taking his faith on tour. But engaging with this self-styled salvation means forgetting what gospel music was created to do.
The band couldn't afford instruments. So they made their own out of scavenged items, like kitchen pots and air-conditioner parts. On their U.S. tour, they stopped by NPR's Tiny Desk.
As she's grown upwards and inwards, the singer-songwriter's work has dramatically increased in scope and scale — a mirror reflecting the internal world she's working to conquer.
As the voice of Chairlift, Caroline Polachek crisscrossed indie and mainstream tastes. Her solo LP adds digital flex to that voice, melding real and "enhanced" performance into one penetrating force.
Sulli wasn't afraid to defend herself against online bullies, or advocate for women's rights in South Korea — a relative rarity. Now, after her death, the country is looking inward.
Laetitia Tamko has found a way to cram all of the sounds that personally move her — pop, punk, trap, African music — into Vagabon. "I feel like I made an amazing record. Why can't I say that?"
The meaning of a place can change based on tiny shifts in perspective, by returning to a location after time away or by digging into the dirt underfoot. Can music bring these layers together?
This week, Big Thief will release its second album of 2019. But Two Hands is a deeper accomplishment than the statistic: It's a record that finally captures the band's audible unconditional closeness.
"I think everyone got on their horse too fast," says trauma therapist Dr. Lee Norton of the many performers affected by the 2017 tragedy — but there's often no other choice for stage-bound artists.
The new Ode to Joy couldn't sound less like the ambitious clatter of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot — but Jeff Tweedy and crew sound at home in its skeletal frame, driven by something cozier than ambition.
Joker is a psychological character study of a disturbed man who turns violent. To give the comic book villain human depth, composer Hildur Guðnadóttir had to dig deep and empathize with the character.
Rosetta Tharpe was a huge star in her era and set the template for rock and roll. So why was she absent from popular consciousness after her death — and why did it take decades to revive her legacy?
A contemporary of Rosetta Tharpe's, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson had one of the great big, gorgeous voices of the 20th century, the echoes of which can still be heard in popular music today.
For many, Rosetta Tharpe's music represented a kind of healing, and the way she played inspired listeners — including writer Alice Randall — to find sweetness in the bitter of life.
Robert Hunter was more than another gear spinning within the perpetual motion machine of the Grateful Dead — his songwriting helped define the group's narratives and bloom its philosophies.
In 1951, gospel star Rosetta Tharpe got married in front of thousands of fans at a baseball stadium. In some ways, says biographer Gayle Wald, it set the template for today's stadium rock concerts.
