Bob Dylan’s 31st studio album was released to lofty expectations on September 11, 2001. Listeners who managed to snag a copy on that fateful day were greeted, just two songs in, with an image of dreadful portent. “Sky full of fire / pain pouring…
Exemplified once more by the recent Donda rollout, Kanye’s productivity subsists off embattled energy, his “Soon as they like you make ’em unlike you” ethos perhaps the primary driving force of his continued success and betterment as an artist. Though many cherish the memory…
“Imagine there’s no heaven / It’s easy if you try / No hell below us / Above us, only sky.” On October 11, 1971, John Lennon released “Imagine,” the opening track and first US single from his sophomore solo album of the same name.…
“And during the few moments that we have left, we want to talk right down to earth, in a language that everybody here can easily understand.” These recorded words from Malcolm X — an excerpt from his 1963 speech “Message to the Grassroots” —…
“Rock and Roll Band,” the rousing, celebratory track that opens side two of the vinyl LP edition of Boston’s 1976 self-titled debut, spins the tale of the band’s supposed origin story, a rather mundane, cliché narrative of “just another band out of Boston” initially…
In the history of metal music, there are perhaps no other records met with as much variance of opinion as Metallica’s 1991 self-titled album, which is mostly known as The Black Album. It’s a record that marked a pivotal moment in the band’s career,…
“You know where you are? You’re in the jungle, baby! You’re gonna dieeeeahhhh!” Axl Rose’s banshee wail, keening forth from the bridge of “Welcome to the Jungle” — the opening track of Guns N’ Roses’ 1987 debut album Appetite for Destruction — is the…
Prince’s body of work is, of course, one of the broadest and slipperiest in the Western pop canon. Swaths of his career still remain without much substantial critical contextualization, the iconic Minneapolis rock star’s far-ranging experimentation extending to mode of distribution as much as…
When Eazy-E departed our earthly realm, he left behind not just his own substantial body of work, but an entire, still-thriving record label with a lively, promising roster. The rapper/mogul’s Ruthless Records had been a revolutionary force in the hip hop industry, establishing the…
The Bangles’ origin story is, at this point, the stuff of pop mythology, with Susanna Hoffs’ perfectly on-brand “must be nice” advertisement for bandmates and the shifting line-up’s emergence in the niche Paisley Underground scene. But that backstory actually goes a long way toward…
