Music Features

Dee Snider (center) with the rest of Twisted Sister in 1984.

Music & Culture

Don't Get It Twisted: 'We're Not Gonna Take It' Can Be Anyone's Protest Song

12:31pm August 27, 2018

by Rachel Martin

Talk about ironic: Twisted Sister's 1984 anthem to bucking authority has since been adopted by religious entities, teachers and even politicians, each bending it to their own definition.

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KT Tunstall album WAX comes out Oct. 5 via Rostrum Records.

Music & Culture

Listen To KT Tunstall's Anthemic 'The River' From Her Forthcoming Album, 'WAX'

11:46am August 23, 2018

by Bruce Warren

Inspirational and emotionally charged, this song puts KT Tunstall's immediately recognizable voice at center stage.

Christian McBride performs with The Time Jumpers.

Music & Culture

Nashville: Not Just A Country Scene But A Place To Go For Jazz

10:20am August 23, 2018

Nashville has always nurtured a small but serious jazz culture. Meet up with some of its enterprising artists and get a crash course in Nashville's hidden jazz history.

Robyn performs at Radio City Music Hall in 2011.

Music & Culture

Robyn Is The 21st Century's Pop Oracle

9:31am August 23, 2018

by Jessica Hopper

An artist in control of her work, Robyn serves us a dreamy possibility beyond the rigid binaries and adapts pop's dance floor language into something that serves her own dreams.

Wayne Kramer, Rock Legend And Failed Outlaw, Assembles A Supergroup In The Rearview

9:38am August 22, 2018

by Alex Pappademas

Now 70 years old, Wayne Kramer — co-founder of the short-lived, influential Detroit rock band The MC5 — reflects on life as an artist, near-revolutionary, bumbling outlaw and prison reform advocate.

Madonna at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards, where her racy performance of "Like a Virgin" caused an uproar.

Music & Culture

'Like A Virgin' Lives On, A Winking Anthem For Women Getting Married

7:30pm August 20, 2018

by Neda Ulaby

The unofficial anthem of bachelorette parties, Madonna's 1984 hit can be seen as a wink at virginity's ongoing place in the theater of weddings — even today, when most brides are sexually experienced.

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The Carters, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, are among the top nominees at the 2018 MTV VMAs.

Music & Culture

An Afro-Surrealistic Worldview Looms Over This Year's Video Music Awards

4:52pm August 20, 2018

by Rodney Carmichael

From Childish Gambino's dystopian vision of America to The Carters' takeover of the Louvre, absurdity is the new black and it fuels the best music videos nominated this year.

St. Vincent performs in Park City, Utah in 2017.

Music & Culture

St. Vincent Is The 21st Century's Guitar Vanguard

12:00pm August 20, 2018

by Sasha Geffen

For Annie Clark, the guitar is not an appendage, not an extension of the body. It is its own body with its own voice. She doesn't use it to embellish her songs; she uses it to build worlds.

On gospel recordings such as 1987's One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, Aretha Franklin captured something sacred in the sound of black life.

Music & Culture

The Sound Made Flesh

8:02am August 19, 2018

by Ashon Crawley

Franklin's gospel recordings presented black life itself as a sacred practice. On albums like Amazing Grace, she is less individual genius than willing instrument of the world that created her.

Aretha Franklin performs at the Fillmore West in San Francisco on March 5, 1971.

Music & Culture

Aretha's Bridge

3:29pm August 18, 2018

by Daphne A. Brooks

Amidst an instantly historic performance in 1971 that led to one of her best-known albums, Aretha Franklin's rendition of a single song carries inside it the weight of pop, soul and gospel history.