Musicians Steven Tyler, Ben Harper, Joe Walsh, and others speak with candor about their journeys to sobriety and how they are in much better places, personally and creatively.
music
Posted inEditor's Pick
In My Own Voice, Redefining Success and Failure
In this personal essay, Lauren DePino looks back at her ambitions as a singer, and re-evaluates the rejections she once allowed to define her.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Quote Posts, Quotes
For the Love of Phish: ‘The Art of Letting Go’
“This is the other thing about Phish: you can be just as earnest and dorky as you want to be.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Quote Posts, Quotes
Bruce Springsteen: Sadness, Love, Madness, and Soul
“All you needed to do,” Springsteen says, “was to risk being your true self.” We ignore our demons at our peril.
Posted inArts & Culture, Quote Posts
What Has Everyone Got Against Dave Matthews?
What’s not to like about Dave Matthews, asks Allison Williams.
Posted inArts & Culture, Essays & Criticism, Highlight, Quotes, Uncategorized
The Meaning of “Aquemini”
OutKast’s masterful 1998 album “Aquemini” defined a bold and Black South and predicted today’s pop music landscape.
Posted inBooks, Profiles & Interviews, Story
Falling in Love with Chicago at Night: An Interview with Jessica Hopper
In “Night Moves,” Jessica Hopper is 80% on her bike and 20% at a show, memorializing a young adulthood spent in just one of “a million Chicagos” — but one that shaped a wide network of artists and writers.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Nonfiction, Story
The Dead End on My Record Shelf
I believed that there was no music existing in the world with an unbroken connection to its original context. I was wrong.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Story
J.R.’s Jook and the Authenticity Mirage
When a young white musician gets invited to a house-party, the musicians he plays with show him a slice of blues culture many people assumed had died.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story, Unapologetic Women, Writing
Lyrical Ladies, Writing Women, and the Legend of Lauryn Hill
Joan Morgan’s “She Begat This” looks back at how Lauryn Hill crashed through hip-hop’s glass ceiling, while our critic looks at how the author and a cadre of black women writers did the same for hip-hop music journalism.