Into The Music
Nick Cave Re-Recorded His Most Famous Song and Made It Mean Something Different
There is a shot in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, the film that arrived on Netflix on March 20th, where Tommy Shelby rides on horseback through the mud,...
Deep Dives
Long-form essays on the albums, artists, and moments that shaped music history.
Featured Deep Dive
Still Here: What It Means When a Dead Artist Shows Up on a New Album
Mac Miller has been dead since September 2018. He was 26. This week, he appeared on a new Thundercat album, performing on a funk groove called “She Knows...
Read the Dive
When Security Becomes the Problem: Artists, Fans, and the Impossible Boundaries of Fame
An 11-year-old smiled at a pop star from across a hotel breakfast room. A security guard approached her table, told her mother she was being disrespectful, said she...
Who Owns Tina Turner Now, and What Are They Going to Do With Her
The announcement that Pophouse Entertainment has acquired Tina Turner’s name, image, likeness, and a majority stake in her music catalog from BMG is the latest entry in what...
A Dead Man’s Voice, Reconstructed: The RHCP Documentary and the Problem With AI in Music Storytelling
Netflix’s new documentary The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel premiered last Friday. It is, by most accounts, a genuinely affecting portrait of the...
Tom Waits Is 15 Years Deep Into His Cinema Phase. Here Is Why That Makes Perfect Sense.
Tom Waits has not made a studio album since 2011. He has been in movies instead. A lot of them. He showed up in the Coen brothers’ The...
What the Marianne Faithfull Tribute Concert Got Right
Last week, the Barbican Centre in London hosted a tribute concert for Marianne Faithfull, who died in January 2025 at the age of 78. The event was tied...
Rock
Show Your Bones at 20: The Yeah Yeah Yeahs Album Everyone Underestimated
Twenty years ago this month, Yeah Yeah Yeahs released Show Your Bones and divided their audience with such precision that it almost felt intentional. The band that had...
Lorde, Taylor Swift, and the Long War Between Artists and the Machinery That Made Them
Lorde signed with Universal Music Group when she was 12 years old. Taylor Swift signed with Big Machine Records when she was 15. These facts sit at the...
Folk & Americana
The Indie Folk Moment That Changed Everything (and What We’re Still Processing)
Somewhere between 2007 and 2012, indie folk became the soundtrack to a generation’s late-20s existential negotiation. Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, The National, Sufjan Stevens, Iron & Wine, Joanna...
Electronic
BTS, Military Service, and the Price of Being South Korea’s Greatest Export
In late 2022, BTS announced they were going on hiatus. The reason was unavoidable: South Korean law requires all able-bodied men to serve in the military, typically for...