rock and roll hall of fame
Nov. 6, 2023
vulture lists
Nov. 2, 2023
vulture lists
Mar. 31, 2023
vulture lists
Mar. 1, 2023
All 165 Pink Floyd Songs Ranked, From Worst to Best So, you think you can tell Meddle from The Division Bell ?
remembrance
Jan. 20, 2023
The Complications of David Crosby He found disharmony in every aspect of his life except one.
remembrance
Jan. 13, 2023
The Masterful, Mercurial World of Jeff Beck In an industry of showoffs and sociopaths, he was a showboat only onstage.
remembrance
Oct. 28, 2022
Jerry Lee Lewis Was an SOB Right to the End The talented hell-raiser of early rock and roll died at 87.
Charlie Watts Held the Rolling Stones Together for Half a Century Remembering the legendary drummer, without whom the greatest rock and roll band in history might’ve crumbled.
Jim Steinman, Master of Excess At his best, humor and his natural talents came together — most often in the work of Meat Loaf — to create ineffable moments of pop and rock grandeur.
respect the classics
Feb. 10, 2021
All of the 2021 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominees, Ranked Who’s most deserving of induction this year? And who should maybe just wait?
No One Was Safe from Phil Spector The producer made countless contributions to music, but his ego overshadowed them all.
a-wop-bop-a-loo-bop
May 9, 2020
Little Richard Put Wild Sex Into the Top 40 for Good The self-described king and queen of rock and roll died today at 87.
Bill Withers Was the Definition of Timeless Withers, who died earlier this week at 81, had talent and an air of imperturbable gravity.
rock hall 2019
Mar. 27, 2019
The Essential Guide to Roxy Music, From the Songs to the Eno-Ferry Feud Everything you need to know about arguably the most influential of the 2019 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction class.
appreciations
Oct. 18, 2018
Elton John Is Not the Man They Think He Is at Home He’s sold 150 million albums and been famous for five decades. But do we really know him?
66 Oscar Monologues and Opening Numbers Ranked, From Worst to Best From Seth MacFarlane and Snow White to Chris Rock and NPH, with lots of Bob Hope in the middle.
vulture lists
Dec. 18, 2017
All 147 Michael Jackson Songs, Ranked From Worst to Best From his voice to his image to his dancing, it was so easy to get swept up in his High Pop Art. Then things got weird.
vulture lists
Oct. 11, 2017
Remembering Tom Petty While his image was laid-back, almost hippielike, you don’t get to be a star and stay one without some grit.
How the Creators of Something True Make the Best Podcast You Aren’t Listening To Each episode is a single, true story, generally from an obscure corner of history.
Beatles Engineer Geoff Emerick on Recording Sgt. Pepper It was 50 years ago today, when Sgt. Pepper was released in the USA.
chuck berry
Mar. 22, 2017
Taylor Hackford Remembers Making a Movie With Chuck Berry “It was like riding a Brahma bull. He was going to buck you off sooner or later, but you had to try.”
Chuck Berry Invented the Idea of Rock and Roll With grace and wit, his lyrics reflect back on themselves a world flawed but full of potential.
nobel prize
Oct. 13, 2016
vulture cover story
Sept. 14, 2016
For Better or Worse, Lou Reed Was Always Lou Reed Three years after his death, and in advance of a career-spanning box set, a reassessment of the Velvet Underground leader.
vulture cover story
July 6, 2016
The New Punctual Guns N’ Roses Axl, Slash, & Co. are back together, on tour, and finally doing what they should have been doing for the last two decades.
The New Punctual Guns N’ Roses Axl, Slash, & Co. are back together, on tour, and finally doing what they should have been doing for the last two decades.
Album Review: Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool A Moon Shaped Pool doesn’t rock all the way through, but each track is an actual good song.
Remembering Prince, Arguably the Most Crazily Multitalented Pop Star Ever With the death of Prince, let’s celebrate “this thing called life,” as His Purpleness himself put it.
Remembering Merle Haggard Merle Haggard was so talented he could float through a half-dozen genres (and generations) of country music and somehow always retain the respect of virtually all of his fellows.
Remembering George Martin, Architect of the Beatles If the pop world was considered an Inferno, then Martin was a Virgilian figure to the four young men — in various senses their leader, their teacher, their master.
remembering bowie
Jan. 11, 2016
10 Thoughts on David Bowie I think in the end, Bowie’s greatest legacy will have been an extension of this: expanding the rock world — its music, its vocabulary, its worldview.
David Bowie’s Golden Years: Assessing a Radical Career A new album after a decade in reclusion prompts the question: When Bowie was great, who was he exactly?
40th birthdays
Oct. 16, 2015
Surprise: The Foo Fighters’ HBO Show Is Actually Pretty Great Sonic Highways is an unapologetically deep, engrossing, revelatory look at the quirky corners of musical history.
not so swift
Nov. 7, 2014
Why Taylor Swift Is Nuts for Leaving Spotify As we’ve seen over the past 15 years, the decisions record labels make are quite often not in the best interests of their customers, their artists, or, in the end, themselves.
How Did Bob Dylan Get So Weird? Call his work art, call it crap, but in the end it’s the creation of an artist who defies us to ask for something more.
retrospective
Mar. 7, 2013