Music Features

Goodbye to Andy Fletcher, a beloved New Wave uncle to countless Depeche Mode fans over the years. Fletch, who died at age 60 of natural causes, was a founding member of the pioneering synth-pop sages, and a crucial element in their chemistry. Every sullen goth teen who ever wore black …

This spring, six months after a crowd rush at Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival killed 10 people in Houston and injured hundreds of others, the live-music business is getting ready for another festival season — its first full-scale comeback since the pandemic sidelined concerts in 2020. While the specific legal ramifications …

Rolling Stone interview series Unknown Legends features long-form conversations between senior writer Andy Greene and veteran musicians who have toured and recorded alongside icons for years, if not decades. All are renowned in the business, but some are less well known to the general public. Here, these artists tell their …

The last time we heard from Flasher, they were the tightly coiled chameleons putting the “post” in punk on their June 2018 full-length debut, Constant Image. Singer/guitarist Taylor Mulitz had emerged from the smoldering ashes of a mid-2010s Washington, D.C., scene to front a new group that retained much of …

For this year’s Icons & Influences issue, we asked 10 artists to pay tribute to the women who have shaped their sound, provided an example, and inspired them to break down barriers. In 2000, at age 13, BoA became the first solo artist to debut with SM Entertainment. Years later, …

In 2018, Lee Bains was at a Swedish university, where he’d been invited to speak about music and movement-building, when a student asked him a question he still thinks about to this day: Given Bains’ interest in social justice organizing, the student wanted to know if Bains ever wrote songs …

Carl “Buffalo” Nichols knows the question is coming, and he can’t help but smile. “Should I be careful or should I be honest?” he says, Zooming in from a hotel room before a show in Englewood, Colorado. “You know, this is a very loaded question.” The question: “Where does the …

In 2021, CD sales increased for the first time in 17 years. That’s mostly because of Adele, whose new album sold 898,000 of those shiny little discs. The last time CDs were this hot, Usher, Ashlee Simpson, and Hoobastank were the ones selling them. Now it’s Adele, BTS, and Taylor …

In 2006, a crew of young musicians from Nigeria set up the Hottest Coalition of Nigerian DJs. The group comprised artists living in the country as well as in the growing diaspora around the world. Their mission was to promote the kind of music that was popular in West Africa …

When Rihanna met Tems, you would have thought that Tems was the newly minted billionaire. The Bajan mogul brought the 26-year-old Nigerian singer-songwriter into a firm embrace at the New York premiere of her latest Savage X Fenty fashion show in September: “Enough of that humble shit,” Rihanna was heard …