Articles
The Art of Restraint: Why Billy Gibbons and Joe Walsh Hit Harder Than Players Who Play EverythingSome guitarists say more with five notes than others say with five hundred.The Most Controversial Guitar Take: Why Prince Belongs on the Short ListHe could outplay almost anyone alive. So why does putting him at the top still start arguments?Is David Bowie Overrated? We Looked Hard. The Answer Is No.Every generation produces artists who seem too praised to be real. Bowie survives the scrutiny.Beyond the Fame Monster: Why Some Musicians Come Out the Other SideAt a certain point, the ones who survive long enough stop performing celebrity and just become themselves.Why Kurt Cobain, Bob Dylan, and Lou Reed Were Such Difficult PeopleThe psychology behind the chip on the shoulder, the contempt for interviewers, and the deliberate alienation.The Five Best 1000-Person Venues in AmericaBig enough to feel like an event. Small enough to see the sweat. These are the rooms that matter.To Smash or Not to Smash: The Strange History of Destroying Your InstrumentIt started as genuine artistic statement. Then it became a cliche. The line between the two is more interesting than you think.The Loudest Clean Sound Ever MadeIn 1974, the Grateful Dead built the largest concert PA in history using 48 McIntosh MC2300 hi-fi amplifiers. Jerry Garcia played through one of them personally for twenty years. It just sold at auction for $381,000.OZZYBorn in a Birmingham slum, fired from his own band, written off a dozen times. Ozzy Osbourne outlasted, out-survived, and out-rocked everyone. Then he sat down on a throne and did it one last time anyway.Paul Was RightFor a decade, Paul McCartney was the villain of the Beatles breakup. The real story is that he was the only one who saw clearly — and history proved every word of it.Under The TentThe Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus was the greatest rock event of 1968. It stayed locked in a vault for 28 years. The story of why is more interesting than the film itself.The Summer Nobody FilmedIn the summer of 1969, 300,000 people gathered in Harlem for the greatest music festival of the year. One man filmed all of it. Nobody wanted to watch.The Punk Credit ProblemThe Ramones and The Clash get called punk pioneers. They were not the origin point. They were the beneficiaries of one. And the difference matters.Bigger Than the WarOasis probably beat Blur in the Britpop wars. But Damon Albarn beat both of them by refusing to fight. While the Gallaghers were still arguing about who wrote which riff, Albarn was in Mali recording with Toumani Diabaté and inventing Gorillaz.The Long Way HomeBrandi Carlile spent twenty years playing Irish pubs, getting spotted by Dave Matthews, landing on Grey's Anatomy, and waiting. Then she stood up at the Grammys and reminded everyone what a voice is for.Blood and NoiseTwo of the best rock bands of the 21st century were built by families. The Shultz brothers wrote their first songs in a trailer park. The Followills drove across the South in a purple Oldsmobile. Both ended up on the same stage.Steely Dan Is Yacht Rock. Deal With It.Donald Fagen told the yacht rock documentary director to go fuck himself. Then he licensed the songs anyway. That contradiction is the whole argument.The Guy Who Wouldn't Let It DieRick Beato has 5 million subscribers and nearly 2 billion views. He got there by doing one thing nobody else was doing: treating rock music like it deserved to be taken seriously.The Signal in the StaticJoy Division made two albums and ceased to exist. In the 45 years since, virtually every serious rock band has had to reckon with what they left behind.The Last WaveThe Strokes, The Killers, Arcade Fire, Kings of Leon, Modest Mouse, The Shins, Cage the Elephant. The 2000s produced one of the greatest concentrations of rock bands in history. The argument that it was the last one is getting harder to dispute.The Kids Who Kept the Lights OnWhile MTV sold hair metal to the suburbs, a generation of teenagers was renting VFW halls, photocopying flyers, and building a network that would eventually produce Nirvana, Green Day, and the entire alternative rock explosion. Nobody asked them to. Nobody noticed until it was already done.The WhispererAndrew Watt was born in 1990, the same week Pearl Jam played their first show. By 34 he had produced the Rolling Stones twice, Paul McCartney, Ozzy Osbourne, Iggy Pop, and Pearl Jam. Nobody has a career like this.The Space Between the NotesBob Weir died January 10, 2026. He was 78. He spent sixty years playing rhythm guitar in a way nobody else has ever played rhythm guitar, and most people still don't fully understand what he was doing.Fifty Years of FearIron Maiden are celebrating their 50th anniversary by playing only songs from their first nine albums. With a new drummer. On stadium stages. With Megadeth opening. This is not a nostalgia tour. It is a statement.The Impossible ReturnFor five years after Neil Peart died, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson said Rush was finished. Then they found a drummer who changed their minds. The Fifty Something Tour started June 7 in Los Angeles. It sold out in hours.Everything and NothingToday any artist can publish music to 600 million listeners overnight. 99,000 of them did it yesterday. The question nobody wants to answer is whether all that access has made music better, or just louder.London Calling (Them Back Home)How three kids from Long Island sold America its own music by leaving the country firstThe Man From Nowhere in ParticularGeorge Thorogood didn't come from the Delta or Chicago. He came from Delaware. That turned out to be the whole point.The Costume and the PeopleDavid Bowie spent a decade as a liberating force for queer identity. Then in 1983, as AIDS ravaged the community he had borrowed from, he called it all a mistake. The story is more complicated than either his fans or his critics want it to be.Not Just Dancing QueenABBA were one of the greatest songwriting and production teams of the twentieth century. The disco costumes made it easy to miss that.The Most Difficult Genius in RockRoger Waters built Pink Floyd's greatest albums, alienated everyone around him, and was right about most of it.Electric WarriorMarc Bolan invented glam rock, befriended Bowie, influenced punk, and was just getting started again when he died at twenty-nine.Is "My Sharona" the Perfect Pop Rock Song?The Knack made one perfect thing. That should be enough.Ric Ocasek and the Cars: Architecture Disguised as PopThe Cars made precision sound like instinct. That is the hardest thing to do in pop music.Dave vs. Sammy: Van Halen and the Singer Nobody Could WinThe debate has been running forty years. Here is the honest version.Bon Scott and the Years AC/DC Was the Best Band in the WorldHe was ranked the greatest rock frontman of all time. The ranking was correct.The Shape-ShiftersIan Astbury and Billy Duffy have spent forty years refusing to be what anyone expected — goth band, hard rock band, or anything else with a clean label attached.