Pop Spotlight

Burt Bacharach’s songs are deft studies in light and dark, order and chaos, major-key optimism and minor-key doubt. The lyrics to songs like “Walk on By,” “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself,” […]

In Daisy Jones & the Six, the bestselling novel inspired by Fleetwood Mac’s tumultuous history, Taylor Jenkins Reid writes an album’s worth of song lyrics to hint at her fictional band’s pathos. In the climactic “Regret Me,” […]

Weeks before quarantine, babybaby_explores were already going feral in the kitchen. In a split-screen YouTube session from February 2020, the avant-pop trio performs “Duck Song” in a house in Rhode Island. As their bandmates scratch out a […]

Ugliness is underrated these days. Somewhere down the line, as the underground gave in to poptimism, the freaks made peace with the cheerleaders. But not Morgan Garrett. Reared in the small town of Portsmouth, Ohio, and […]

Franz Kafka wrote about animals a lot: a monstrous bug, a young panther in a menagerie, a mouse named Josephine who wants to wow you with her song, a dog who sees a powerful triumvirate of […]

This past Valentine’s Day, Tink hosted what was essentially a master class on overcoming heartache. At a Morehouse College event in Atlanta, fans lined up with blue baseball bats branded with the Chicago artist’s name […]

Beneath John Talabot’s catalog runs a pipeline tunneling from euphoria to dread—from sunset reveries to midnight rituals. In just over a decade, the Catalan electronic musician (aka Oriol Riverola) has gone from being a serenader of […]

In “feeling body,” the twelve-minute title track of Nyokabi Kariũki’s debut album, the composer’s voice wavers as she asks a vulnerable question: “If you’re not hopeful for your body, then who is?” Amid a wash of […]

After reconfiguring the rock-based Revolution on Sign o’ the Times in 1987, Prince expanded his touring band to bring in horns and additional musicians on the magnificent Lovesexy shows. Since introducing the New Power Generation (NPG) on Diamonds […]

From their plane back to Memphis, the Astors could see the fires. Four days earlier, you could’ve caught the group performing their hit record “Candy” on the syndicated Los Angeles television show Shivaree. The appearance was […]

According to astrologers and ancient mythology, a blood moon, or red moon, is a bad omen, a portent of natural disasters, economic catastrophes, or the death of a great patron. Luckily, a red moon is […]

Morgan Wallen has met the girl of his dreams; he has fucked up considerably and lost her forever; he is drowning his sorrow in whiskey; he feels the spark of new love; he pledges to […]