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Lionel Richie — that guy has it all figured out. He gives a tour of his long life in the music biz in his gigantic memoir Truly — nearly 500 pages — but he’s a great raconteur because he’s totally devoid of bitterness. He’s got no scores to settle, no axes to grind; he’s just […]

David Byrne told Rolling Stone in no uncertain terms this summer that Talking Heads would not be reuniting. But disappointed fans of the groundbreaking New York art-rock band can still revisit the glory years in Jonathan Gould’s extraordinary Burning Down the House. The book chronicles Talking Heads’ origins in the East Village in the Seventies […]

While a seasoned sports journalist might seem like an odd authority for a 400+ page biography on the life and musical history of hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur, sportswriter Jeff Pearlman brings receipts, interviews, and dozens of never-before-seen artifacts to his all-encompassing biography Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur. Pearlman approaches the historic […]

It might hurt for millennials to admit it, but the indie boom that defined our youth in the 2000s is now far enough in the rearview for a well-written, entertaining history book like this to feel right on time. DeVille, a longtime Stereogum contributor who knows this subject as well as anyone on earth, explores what it […]

So many books have written on the broad history of rock & roll that it’s some marvel that John Lingan, who’s previously tackled the stories of Creedence Clearwater Revival and Patsy Cline, has found an entirely fresh way to tell its story. This selection of mini profiles on drummers ranging from Charlie Watts to Questlove […]

The story of Bloodshot Records, one of the country’s most well-regarded roots-leaning labels, is a thrilling, sensory-filled journey through the life of its co-founder, Rob Miller, who had a front-row seat to independent music in Chicago during the last three decades. Miller’s writing is at once funny, moving, insightful, and full of pathos, as are […]

American music legend Alice Gerrard has lived an extraordinary life in the arts and politics: She formed the foundational duo Alice & Hazel, participated in the pioneering Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project, and helped create the blueprint for studying traditional American music via her founding of the publication The Old-Time Herald. This book from the old-time/bluegrass […]

Throughout his memoir Fahrenheit-182, Mark Hoppus is obsessed with the odds. He mentions, on no less than a dozen occasions, these very specific “one-in-a-million” chances — the odds of making something out of his life in the California desert, the odds of turning Blink-182 into one of the biggest bands in the world, the odds of beating […]

Mark Ronson’s debut doesn’t linger on the moments that align the most with his caliber of celebrity. Set in the Nineties, the memoir only mentions his hits with Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars to clarify that he won’t be writing about them at all. But even the superstar names that do jump off its pages, […]

Long before Cameron Crowe became synonymous with films like Say Anything, Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous, he was a fresh-faced, teenaged writer for this magazine. He zeroes in on those formative years in The Uncool, a charming, vulnerable memoir that celebrates both rock & roll and journalism during a time when both, but especially the […]

In 2024, Cross Canadian Ragweed singer Cody Canada swore to Rolling Stone contributor Josh Crutchmer that under no circumstances would the influential Red Dirt band ever reunite. Canada swallowed those words this year when the group played a series of highly successful comeback concerts that, to this day, still seem highly unlikely, given Ragweed’s bitter […]

With No Doubt about to headline Sphere in Las Vegas next year and bring radio staples like “Don’t Speak” and “Just a Girl” to well-heeled ticket-buyers, it’s important to remember where the band came from: the DIY punk and ska incubator of Orange County, California. In their exhaustive history of the scene, authors Nate Jackson […]

The streaming economy is so ubiquitous in the 2020s that it’s easy to forget there’s a Faustian bargain behind it: Dip into a vast ocean of recorded music whenever you please, just don’t ask too many questions about whether the artists who make it are able to earn a living. This essential read aims to […]

In nearly every telling of the Elvis Presley story, Colonel Tom Parker is the villain who controlled his life and career, denied him crucial opportunities, forced him into bad movies, and ultimately robbed him blind. This was even true to some degree in Peter Guralnick’s twin Elvis biographies, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love. […]

Thirteen years after the publication of the truly definitive Bruce Springsteen biography Bruce, Peter Ames Carlin returned with an in-depth examination of Born to Run just in time for the album’s 50th birthday. Thanks to unprecedented access to the raw session tapes, official video vault, and new interviews with Springsteen, Jon Landau, and the E […]

How do you form another band after the Beatles? Only Paul McCartney had the guts to start from scratch. Wings, an oral history of McCartney’s other band, draws from hours of interviews with him and his bandmates and chronicles the group’s ascent. It’s easy to think that Beatle status would have made things easy for […]

The Prince of Darkness completed his final memoirs, Last Rites, in July between his monumental farewell blowout bash, Back to the Beginning, and his shocking death less than three weeks later. Throughout the book, Osbourne recounts the various health setbacks that forced him off the road in 2018, as well as reflections on his time […]

You can’t talk about the history of investigative reporting in America without talking about Seymour Hersh, the muckraker extraordinaire who helped bring stories ranging from the details behind the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam to the abuses happening at Abu Gharib prison into the broader public conversation. Filmmaker Laura Poitras (Citizenfour, All the Beauty and […]

Ken Burns’ deep dive through America’s war for independence has everything you’d expect from a Ken Burns doc: narration by Peter Coyote, slow zooms into images (in this case, paintings instead of sepia-colored pictures), a thoroughness that borders on fanatical, a running time only slightly shorter than a college semester. Burns gonna Burns! Yet this […]

The summer she turned “Born Slippy.” Pink pops that vintage Underworld techno-perv loop into the CD changer — “Dark & Long (Dark Train),” from the druggiest scene in Trainspotting — and presses play, panting and puffing and twirling across the beats, capturing a late night in the club that turns into something more, as she […]

The best roller-skating utopia song… ever? JID makes this a heaven-is-a-rink love song to Atlanta’s skating culture, with hometown goddess Ciara listing the names of revered roller palaces like a Homeric catalog, from Skatetowne to the Golden Glide to Cascade to the Sparkles Family Fun Center. (Plus there’s Skate Zone, which she’s never been to, […]

“She was, in short, too bloody much.” That’s what Richard Burton said the night he met Elizabeth Taylor. No wonder Taylor Swift can relate — just her kind of girl. This is the kind of ingeniously crafted melodramatic bombshell that Swift specializes in, serenading the Hollywood legend she calls “the ultimate quintessential showgirl,” an orchestral […]

Rock-a-bye, Sweet Baby Jake. MJ Lenderman keeps singing “I’m my own worst enemy,” but nobody understands him except his guitar, and in this song, even his guitar has doubts. He takes a great This Is Lorelei song and transmutes it into a stoner-country ramble, with the honey-slides ache in his voice and the mellow-gold dirtbag […]

Ever have one of those “nobody in this world understands me except Addison Rae” moments? Yeah, me neither, except OK, maybe every single time she modulates to the chorus of “Headphones On” and deals with emotional turmoil the only way she knows how: She listens to her favorite song. (It’s always cool when the pop […]

A reading from the gospel according to Ryan Davis: “I left my wallet in El Segundo/I left my love in a West Lafayette escape room.” The mangy underdog Kentucky rogue travels the dirt roads of American country-rock, finding losers and drifters down every byway, in a nine-minute travelogue full of twisted poetry. He does right […]

The year’s most reliable “today sucked until I put this song on” song. Like everything Dijon did all year long, “Yamaha” can disorient you and caress you at the same time, especially when he croons, “Baby, I’m in love with this particular emotion.” He manages to pack the entire Side Two of Sign o’ the […]

Love, lies, and laundry. A misty-blue break-up slow jam where Kehlani can’t decide if the door is locked or open for another shot (“I’ll let your body decide if this is enough for you”) but always leaves you wondering what happens next.

The Crutchfield sisters — Katie from Waxahatchee and Allison from Swearin’ — reactivate their wonder-twin powers for Snocaps, the first project they’ve done together in years, in a delightful surprise album, with MJ Lenderman and Brad Cook as (mostly) silent team players. “Wasteland” is an adult break-up song with years of anguish behind it. They […]

“Scream and shout, slut me out” is the dance-floor chant of the year, over an eruption of Ghanian highlife and Southern African gqom and Nu Shooz synth-stabs and the Black Star’s sultry musings on the erotic taste of Lexapro. If a prospective romantic partner corners you in the club, stares you in the eye,  and […]

A modern standard — hearing a stranger croon this at the karaoke bar was when it really strolled away with my heart. Let’s pray for Willie Nelson to sing this one at least once.

Sometimes the test of a great singer is how they attack the world “stupid.” Sabrina sings it with a thrilled sense of discovery, like she’s unwrapping a surprise gift. (If you’re a connoisseur of 1980s synth-pop trash, it sounds like Julie Brown in her immortal hit “I Like ‘Em Big and Stupid,” which Sabrina must […]

I’ve been a fan of these Welsh indie kids since their great band Joanna Gruesome, who I saw a million times in the year or so when they were constantly playing New York. But “Strange” is something new, with Celtic dread in Owen Williams’ voice and the folk-punk guitars, like a mix of Richard Thompson […]

The comeback kid has so many left-field successes on Swag — “Yukon,” “Zuma House” — yet I love “Butterflies” for how it meanders through Nineties yacht-grunge guitar until those massive drums kick in. If I’m not mistaken — and when it comes to Bieber, I usually am — “Butterflies” is his brightest pure pop shot […]

I’m the kind of Jeff Tweedy fan who comes for the the endless guitar-solo reveries (“Impossible Germany” at Jones Beach this summer, with the seagulls screeching along — what a moment) and gets around to the verse/chorus/vocal tunes later. So when he dropped a triple solo album I took a look at the track list, […]

Two mismatched lovers in a burning house, but they don’t have the sense to be afraid of the flames — they’re dancing to the siren sounds. This underrated gem should have been a monster hit from Tate’s blockbuster So Close to What, but it didn’t even make the album. It’s a bonus track on the […]

A strangely beautiful collaboration from the dashing Roxy Music glam-rock legend and the writer/painter Amelia Barratt, inspiring the Divine Bryan to finish his first album in a decade. On Loose Talk, she recites spoken-word vignettes over his music — some of it new, some from demos going back to the Seventies. She visits a tailor […]

My Bloody Valentine in the streets, Gin Blossoms in the sheets — nice trick. The “na na na na” rocker of the summer. (It makes a neat pair with Horsegirl’s equally great “Julie.”)

So much of this year’s deepest music was about grief — the emotion AI can’t feel and the algorithms can’t simulate. After losing his mother, Dev Hynes sings about traveling through time with music, revisiting songs he forgot he loved, to commune with ghosts of his past. “In your ears there’s Paul Westerberg,” he sings, […]