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When P!nk released Dear Mr. President in 2006, she did something many pop stars avoided at the time: she directly challenged political leaders through her music. The song, which featured the duo Indigo Girls, was written as an open letter to then-U.S. President George W. Bush. Instead of focusing on romance or personal struggles, P!nk … Read more
P!nk is known for doing things her own way, and one of her most unforgettable Grammy Awards performances proved exactly why fans admire her so much. During a breathtaking performance, P!nk sang while suspended nearly 40 feet in the air, spinning, flipping, and performing difficult aerial stunts. Many people assumed she would use a pre-recorded … Read more
Taylor Swift had an emotional moment when she accepted an award at the Songwriters Hall of Fame, taking time to thank the people who helped her reach one of the biggest milestones of her career. During her acceptance speech, Taylor became teary-eyed as she spoke about her family and the important role they played in … Read more
The image of the sweet, harmless grandmother has been completely upended by a group of fearless activists known as the Santa Fe Raging Grannies. Armed not with signs or slogans but with music, these outspoken women have captured widespread attention through a haunting protest performance that has resonated with hundreds of thousands of viewers online. … Read more
Smokey Robinson has been writing songs since he was a teenager in Detroit. He is now in his eighties. The catalog that spans those decades is one of the most extraordinary in American music — not simply in its commercial achievement but in its emotional range, its lyrical sophistication, its consistent ability to find the … Read more
The Rolling Stones have always had a relationship with the darker and stranger dimensions of their mythology that they have managed with deliberate ambiguity. They have not discouraged the associations — the satanic imagery, the occult references in song titles and album artwork, the specific atmosphere of menace that certain of their recordings carry. They … Read more
Joni Mitchell’s withdrawal from performing across the late 1990s and the two decades that followed was understood publicly as primarily a health matter. The Morgellons disease — a condition whose existence and nature was contested in the medical community, adding a layer of public skepticism to her private suffering — was the reported explanation. It … Read more
Tom Petty was, by the consistent testimony of everyone who worked with him and knew him across his forty-year career, the least pretentious major rock star who ever lived. This is not a small distinction. The music industry is structured around pretension — around the performance of importance, the maintenance of status, the specific social … Read more
Keith Richards and Chuck Berry had one of the most complicated relationships in rock history. Complicated because the love was total and the professional reality was often difficult. Berry was famously demanding in performance situations — insisted on being paid in cash before he played, refused to rehearse with backing bands, arrived at venues with … Read more
The pressure of being Michael Jackson in a recording studio during the peak of his commercial career was a pressure that very few people in the history of popular music have been required to carry. After Thriller — after the most commercially successful album ever released transformed every expectation that surrounded him — every subsequent … Read more