In 1970, Neil Young released Southern Man, a song that condemned the racism and violent history of the American South with an unflinching directness — slavery, lynching, the specific moral rot Young identified in Southern culture, delivered over one of his most aggressive and extended guitar workouts. Two years later he released Alabama, which extended … Read more
When Ozzy Osbourne was fired from Black Sabbath in 1979 — a dismissal driven primarily by his escalating substance abuse and the band’s exhaustion with managing it — he was, by his own account, finished. Not metaphorically. He has described the months following his firing as among the darkest of his life, a period of … Read more
Queen’s reputation as a band of total creative democracy — four songwriters, four distinct voices, songs credited individually rather than as a collective — is largely accurate and is also a slight smoothing-over of a creative process that involved real friction, particularly between Mercury’s increasingly theatrical and genre-defying instincts and Brian May’s more rock-oriented sensibilities. … Read more
Creedence Clearwater Revival released seven studio albums in four years between 1968 and 1972, a pace of productivity that produced some of the most enduring American rock music of the era and that simultaneously destroyed the band from the inside. The mythology of CCR’s collapse is usually told as a story of John Fogerty’s controlling … Read more
Lady Gaga emerged as one of the most striking and unconventional forces in modern pop music, quickly rising from New York’s underground performance scene to global superstardom in record time. Her debut album The Fame became a commercial breakthrough, driven by massive hit singles like “Just Dance” and “Poker Face,” both of which reached No. … Read more
Lady Gaga has spoken candidly about a difficult period in her life following the filming of A Star Is Born, revealing that she experienced a serious mental health crisis she describes as a “psychotic break.” In a recent interview, Gaga shared that she was taking lithium while working on the 2018 film, a medication often … Read more
Lady Gaga took a moment during a recent stop on The Mayhem Ball tour in Tokyo to address an issue she says is weighing heavily on her heart. Speaking to the crowd, Gaga paused the show to talk about immigration enforcement and the impact she believes it is having on families and communities across America. … Read more
In 1969, a group of working-class musicians from Birmingham, England walked into a recording studio with a sound that record executives, radio programmers, and most of the established music press considered unmarketable, unmusical, and frankly upsetting. They were told, repeatedly and by people whose job it was to know better, that what they were making … Read more
The breakup of Pink Floyd’s central creative partnership is the longest-running unresolved conflict in British rock history, and Roger Waters has spent the years since explaining it in pieces — in interviews scattered across decades, in documentaries, in the occasional unguarded moment when a journalist asked the right question at the right time. What emerges … Read more
For decades, one thing always seemed certain: whenever a new Rolling Stones tour was on the horizon, Keith Richards would be among its biggest champions. The legendary guitarist has long embodied the band’s restless spirit, helping fuel one of the most remarkable live careers in music history. That’s why his latest comments have caught so … Read more