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James Minchin III Enough of Silly Love Songs
New albums from Mumford & Sons, Best Coast, and My Morning Jacket try to separate emotion and sentimentality.
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Steve Marcus / Reuters To Sing a Song That Changes the World
Ben E. King, dead at 76, contributed to so many classic hits, but "Stand by Me" alone would have ensured his immortality.
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Linda Brownlee Blur Takes on the World
The Magic Whip, the band's first album in 12 years, uses a familiar sound to document unfamiliar places.
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Wendy O'Connor/courtesy of HBO Embracing the Myth of Kurt Cobain
Montage of Heck offers the most intimate portrait possible of the Nirvana singer. That still doesn't mean you can understand him.
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Charles Sykes / AP The Mystery of Kesha's Comeback
After a period away from the public eye amid a confrontation with her longtime collaborator, the pop star played a tiny rock venue in Washington.
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YouTube How ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ Endured
Twenty-five years ago, Sinéad O’Connor’s cover of an obscure track written by Prince hit No. 1, becoming one of the best-known pop songs of the decade.
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Lucy Nicholson/Reuters Alabama Shakes Frees Itself
The band's sophomore album, Sound & Color, offers up sound experiments that are as wild as the voice over them.
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Lucy Nicholson/Reuters How Fashion Co-Opted Coachella
The 16-year-old music festival in the California desert is being overshadowed by the parties, lounges, and extracurricular events organized by brands like H&M and Lacoste.
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Lucy Nicholson/Reuters The Album Is Immortal
If anyone should be ditching the format, it's young, Internet-native musicians like Tyler, the Creator and Kendrick Lamar. Why do so many artists stick by it in the streaming age?
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Mike Segar MS/Reuters How 'When a Man Loves a Woman' Captured the Terror of Love
The late Percy Sledge's best-known hit portrays one-sided, obsessive infatuation, which is part of what makes it such a classic.
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Danny Moloshok/Reuters Madonna's Kamikaze Kiss
Maybe she's fighting ageism. But maybe she's making it worse.
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Paul Iverson/AP The Miracle of CGI Selena
Fear not dead pop stars' holograms—they're more natural than they seem.
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Brendan McDermid/Reuters 'American Pie': The Paradox of Boomer Nostalgia, in One Song
Some people obsess over the lyrics of Don McLean's 1971 hit. Others just appreciate it as enduring pop.
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iHeartRadio, John Shearer/AP The Golden Age of Online Music Is Over (and Another Is Beginning)
Beyonce and Rihanna's exclusive Tidal releases show that what was once a listener's paradise is now being carved into fiefdoms as competition between streaming platforms intensifies.
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Tidal Tidal: Long Live Millionaire Musicians
Jay Z and other ultra-famous stars declare a revolution in the form of $20-a-month subscriptions.
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Joe Lencioni/ Wikimedia Commons How Sufjan Stevens Subverts the Stigma of Christian Music
The genre has had a bad reputation since the 1960s, but the singer-songwriter succeeds by focusing on aesthetics over evangelism.
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Asthmatic Kitty Sufjan Stevens Comes to Grief
Carrie & Lowell, his most challenging album yet, captures the subtle reality of loss.
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Andrew Burton/Reuters Zayn Malik, One Direction, and the Post-Modern Boy-Band Blues
Is this the end of the group's big, meta experiment?
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Kevin Lamarque/Reuters What Ted Cruz Gets Right About Listening to Music
He says 9/11 made him a country fan. Why doubt it?
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Spencer Kornhaber The Gloriously Tacky Future of Music
PC Music is the Jeff Koons of the pop world, and might just transform it.
