Some artists make their name on being multi-instrumentalists, and it’s easy to get caught up in that, envisioning them as a sort of jack of all trades. Sure, they deserve credit for the…

Let’s be honest. “Gender” is really an ambiguous term. When you’re small, and told things like “Blue is for boys,” and “Pink is for girls,” it makes people latch on to ideas that…

The main thing that truly stands out about Carrie Underwood,” putting her in a category of her own, is how over-the-top her singing is. Country music, or anything…

Chicago rapper and poet Noname came to prominence in the slam poetry scene, and makes incisive and articulate music in the longstanding tradition of artists dating back to…

6lack, whose name is pronounced “Black,” grew up in Atlanta, battle rapping since an early age with the likes of Young Thug. Having honed his skills on the mic for years, he ventured…

Willie Nelson is a country icon, embodying everything rustic and down-home, in terms of not only country, but also rock ‘n’ roll, as he famously united the hippies and the isolated,…

Popular music derives much of its power from its predictability — the epic bass drop that you can sense coming for three minutes, the seeping, anthemic chorus whose inevitabile imminence packs stadiums of…

The most iconic artists inevitably find themselves playing a dangerous game. When you’ve soundtracked millions of lives, and literally changed the course of history, any later artistic forays are typically met with a…

Lenny Kravitz is like a rockstar written for fiction, a caricature of sorts. His music seems assembled from all the common denominators of “rock.” His guitar playing is almost exclusively…

Paul Simon announced his retirement from performing earlier this year, after a musical career spanning five decades. The time is ripe for a retrospective, of sorts, and Simon’s latest release,…