When Miles Davis released his seminal 1969 album In a Silent Way, its newfangled, neoteric sound — which Lester Bangs described as “space music” — polarized…
Dwight Yoakam is, in many respects, a victim of his own early success. His 1986 album Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. remains as accomplished a debut as…
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s The Message, released in 1982, is one of the most important albums in all of hip-hop. While coming in at…
One of the horniest albums ever recorded, Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson is a 28-minute exhalation of libidinous longing. The album tells a Lolita-like tale, partially autobiographical, of…
Waylon Jennings may not have invented outlaw country, but with Honky Tonk Heroes he gave the movement its clearest distillation of purpose; its manifesto, its aesthetic framework, even its…
The West Coast has always been a boon for launching rap oddities; today, it’s brought us Lil B and Blueface, and in the ’90s, Cypress…
It was the time of the outlaw. Waylon Jennings’s 1973 Honky Tonk Heroes had already set the mould for a type of country music that…
In her biography on her late husband — renowned Chilean singer/guitarist Victor Jara— Joan Jara recalls the days leading up to the impending sea-change in…
Had he not been murdered more than two decades ago, Tupac Shakur would have turned 48 this month; he would be in the third decade…
The adage coined by Charlotte Whitton — that women must work twice as hard to be considered half as good as men — was repeatedly…
The year 2000 was a watershed year for Chinese-language cinema. Milestones like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and In the Mood for Love and Yi Yi…
There are a couple of ways to apprehend Mule Variations, the twelfth studio album from Tom Waits and the second to be co-written almost entirely by…
In 1982, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released what’s largely considered the first ‘conscious’ mainstream rap single, “The Message,” a harrowing seven-minute journey into…
Was it when Elvis first suggestively gyrated his hips on national television? The first time a fan let out a piercing, adulatory scream as the…
Emmylou Harris’ first four studio albums all stuck to an eclectic formula that allowed her to establish her bona fides as the premier interpretive vocalist…
Richard D. James’s debut altered the electronic music landscape, and remains a singular experience within the enigmatic musician’s oeuvre. Whereas the album’s follow-up, Selected Ambient Works…
From their first release (1982’s Garlands), Cocteau Twins enjoyed critical acclaim. But it was only after the departure of founding member and bassist Will Heggie — and the induction of…
“College rock” has lost just about any use it once had as a genre signifier, now mostly just a descriptor for broad, alternative rock of…
To distinguish between “old-school” hip-hop of the late 1970s and the “new school,” founded primarily by Run-DMC and LL Cool J, listen to Kurtis Blow’s…
The music of Ray Charles always sounded like freedom. On his early sides for Atlantic, he was a man unencumbered by the conventions of genre, gleefully innovating…