For over a decade, music has been a central part of my personal and professional life. I’ve interviewed and written about hundreds of artists, from Lady Gaga to the next up-and-coming guitar player. What’s more, my wife is a radio DJ who receives song submissions for the airwaves on an almost hourly basis. So when it comes to the scope and landscape of the music industry, I’ve seen how much of the sausage is made.
Read MoreAfter we talk, famed feminist and political artist, Kathleen Hanna, is off to drop off some T-shirts to The Linda Lindas, the internet’s newest and favorite punk-rock quartet.
Hanna has worked with the band for years, mentoring their burgeoning, significant, youthful project. In a recent viral video, The Linda Lindas were seen wearing t-shirts from Hanna’s Tees4Togo business, which helps to raise awareness and funds for young women in Togo to get their education.
But this work should come as no surprise to fans and followers of Hanna. She’s long dedicated her life to empowering young voices, especially those belonging to young women.
As a result, she’s become known the world over for her music and her politics. Hanna, who is also married to a Beastie Boy, is 20th century rock royalty. Legend has it she came up with the name “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.
Read MoreChicago-born rapper and actor Common (born Lonnie Lynn) remembers first hearing music at the feet of his babysitters. He was three years old when he started to absorb the songs that would change his life. His babysitters, two sisters from a music-loving family, would play vinyl records from acts like Chaka Khan, The Commodores and Earth, Wind & Fire. To this day, Common says, parts of Chicago still feel like they’re living in the 1970s with the familiar fashion and melodies swirling in the air.
A few years later, Common acted in his first school play. He already loved movies and he quickly fell for the stage. But after performing in a modest production, Common says, he didn’t quite get the proper adoration he’d hoped he’d get from the audience. Thus, his momentum for acting slowed. Nevertheless, for Common, whose father was a professional ABA basketball player and whose mother was an influential educator, success in the spotlight was in his DNA. Armed with his passion for music, he began to write lyrics. This, of course, would soon lead him to win three Grammys and an Oscar in 2014.
Read MoreThe famed, prolific composer, and multi-instrumentalist, Danny Elfman, is a walking, talking opus. While some artists make a career of performance art, Elfman’s career is often seemingly performance art, embodied or personified. The artist, who just about everyone knows from is work as the composer for Batman, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Men in Black, Spider-Man, and many more globally-famous movies, got his start in the theater, performing avant-garde works. He’d later achieve some fame with his band, Oingo Boingo.
Elfman, who found himself involved in music later in his life than most professionals, has an affinity for pushing boundaries and buttons. Creatively, he’s always wanted to enter spaces where he wasn’t initially allowed. As such, he’s lived many careers, from composer to performer to rock musician. In that vein, Elfman is set to release his latest solo album (and his first in 37 years), The Big Mess, today via ANTI- and Epitaph. We caught up with the artist to ask him about his life, career, and what went into this new provocative work.
Read MoreOften, when listening to the dense, lush, lively music of Australian band, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, the idea of people dancing mesmerized around a fire comes to mind. The group has a vast, at times cultish following that is borne from the band’s at times labyrinth-like songs. If a record was a menu, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s music would offer a cornucopia feast.
The group’s latest album, Butterfly 3000, which is out today, exhibits this signature baroque quality. But, unlike past records, the LP smiles more, instead of sneering or smirking. It’s more hopeful, made in a time when despair wasn’t hard to come by. We caught up with King Gizzard’s frontman and principle songwriter, Stu Mackenzie, to ask him about this tonal shift, how he first found music, and much more.
Read MorePayge Turner, the trench-deep, powerful-voiced singer-songwriter who wowed audiences and judges on NBC’s “The Voice” last year and recently helped to open up Western Washington live music again last month at the WA Museum of Flight with rockers, The Black Tones, begins to break up and cry when she thinks about what the idea of home means to her. When asked, it hits her — she’s home. Meaning she is her own home. Wherever she goes, her home – herself – follows, is there. It’s an important realization for Turner, and it’s taken her some 28 years to come to it. But she has now.
Read MoreThe WNBA’s Seattle Storm continues to make history on and off the court. The basketball squad won its fourth league title last year in the “bubble” (or “wubble” as the WNBA community called it), tying it for the most trophies in the WNBA’s 25-year history. The team is also blazing new trails as a championship sports franchise by supporting Planned Parenthood and fighting for social justice. From the ownership group to the last player on the bench, the Storm, now led by a new head coach, Noelle Quinn, is poised to continue to redefine what it means to be a winner.
Read MoreShirley Manson, who is the frontperson for the platinum-selling rock band, Garbage, has both learned and done quite a bit in the 25 years she’s been in the public eye. Garbage, which rocketed to fame with its self-titled album in 1995, was all over the radio and MTV airwaves with hit songs like “Only Happy When It Rains” and “Stupid Girl” in the mid-’90s. In the years between, the band have released a number of successful records and now the band is poised to release its latest, No God No Masters, this Friday.
No Gods No Masters was produced by Garbage alongside long-time collaborator Billy Bush. The album will also be available in a deluxe CD/digital version, which will feature covers of songs by David Bowie, Patti Smith, and Bruce Springsteen, as well as guest appearances by Screaming Females and Brody Dalle, among others.
Manson, who is Scottish, joined the band’s other three members—Duke Erikson, Steve Marker, and famed musician and engineer, Butch Vig—after an audition in Wisconsin in 1993. At first, the audition went disastrously. But nevertheless, fate intervened and Manson joined the band and the rest is history. We caught up with Manson to ask her when she first fell in love with music, how Garbage’s new record came to be and what she loves so much about Patti Smith.
Read MoreThere are moments in the new film, The United States vs. Billie Holiday, that are very hard to watch. They’re socially gruesome. But at the center of each is the acclaimed musician (and now actor!), Andra Day, who portrays Holiday in the way any naturally great actor might. She—Day—is lost completely in the roll. Holiday then emerges, bright, brittle voice and all. Cigarette smoke swirl and scary-beautiful eyes. Then, on stage, Day as Holiday becomes the thick, buoyant beam of light that can form only when two other beams merge. That’s when Day’s singing prowess meets her newfound acting talent. Those eyes look up into the camera. Are they Day’s eyes? Holiday’s? And her voice finds you, pulls at your earlobes. You succumb note by note. It’s magic. But it’s also tragic. Holiday’s story is the stuff of tears and tissues. But it’s also much more than that. It’s the stuff of inspiration. Just ask Day.
Read MoreI never, ever thought I’d play in a band. Or perform on stage for anyone. I never thought my time spent musing alone would extend past the four walls of my bedroom.
In the long run, maybe that’s what helped make it all happen.
I got my first guitar, a six-string acoustic, when I was a freshman in college. A few months beforehand, I’d seen a songwriter on TV, accompanying himself on guitar as he performed a Beatles song on the anniversary of John Lennon’s death. I watched as thousands in the audience were enraptured. “I need to learn how to do that,” I thought.
Read MoreIn the span of about six decades, the famed Brazilian composer and performer, Sérgio Mendes, has worked with Cannonball Adderly, Herb Alpert, Lani Hall, Quincy Jones, John Legend, Will.i.am, and many others. In each collaboration, Mendes brings his lighthearted, though thoughtful spirit to the music he produces. Indeed, this is the theme of the new documentary on the musician, Sérgio Mendes & Friends: A Celebration, which will air this month on PBS.
We caught up with the Brazilian-born Mendes to ask him about how he first found music, what it was like to grow up in Brazil, what it’s like for the 80-year-old to look back on his life in the new movie, and how he deals with doubt.
Read MoreFamed horror movie director and score composer John Carpenter says he might be addicted to playing video games. But, for the artist, that’s not necessarily an awful thing. In fact, Carpenter says a great deal of music and inspiration have come from the time he’s spent taking a break from his favorite gaming console. And these video game sessions have of late helped usher in a new phase of Carpenter’s creative career, one for which he is especially grateful.
Read MoreWhen HBO first partnered with now-world-famous show-runner, Issa Rae, for her television show, Insecure, the sky was the limit. Today, with Insecure headed into its fifth and final season, having made its way into the hearts of many adoring fans, Rae’s footprint on HBO remains large. Thankfully. In her own way, she has helped to usher in more diversity to the channel and a keener eye for more so in the future.
One of the shows Rae has helped bring to HBO is A Black Lady Sketch Show, which stars the quartet of Robin These, Ashley Nicole Black, Gabrielle Dennis, and Quina Brunson. This season, the show added Laci Mosley and Skye Townsend. The show features sketches, recurring characters, and a flare for the surreal that equates to an important new series.
We caught up with Black and Dennis to talk about how they got into entertainment, what it was like to build the show from scratch, what it was like heading into the show’s second season and much more. The season finale of A Black Lady Sketch Show appears tonight, May 28, on HBO.
Read MoreMichelle Zauner, known by her stage name, Japanese Breakfast, is clear-headed and sharp even when discussing her most vulnerable experiences. This, of course, is no easy task.
Zauner, who is preparing to release her third and forthcoming LP, Jubilee, on June 4, also recently released her popular memoir, Crying in H-Mart, which discusses her Korean mother’s passing and the devastating ripple effects of that time in Zauner’s life.
Yet, perhaps surprisingly, Zauner’s new record is not sad or morose. Rather, the musician says, it was an attempt to turn the tables on that story and dive deeper into concepts of joy and jubilation.
We caught up with Zauner to ask her about how she first found music and how she later came to play guitar. We also talked about grief, death and egg-and-cheese sandwiches.
Read MoreIf you ask Yolanda Quartey—better known as the voluminous singer Yola, who today released her second single, “Stand for Myself,” from her forthcoming new record of the same name—when she first began to listen and pay attention to music, she’ll tell you it started especially early. “The birth canal,” she says, with a chuckle. “I kid you not!”
Here’s how it happened: While pregnant with the future groovy Grammy nominee, Yola’s mother was working as a registered nurse in a mental institution in the U.K. When she would work the overnight shift in the hospital, her supervisors would understaff “because of racism,” Yola explains. So the singer’s mother had to find ways to keep things in order. “She would find it hard,” she says, “with two nurses to a ward of 60 patients. She used to play disco to chill them out. So, even through gestation, I was grooving to disco—and apparently I quite enjoyed it!” As a child, Yola continued to love the art form. At four years old, she told her mother she wanted to be a singer and she’s never wavered since. Of course, that didn’t mean her path was easy. For Yola, that’s never been the case, despite boasting a singing voice that could fill a room in a millisecond.
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