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What Willie Nelson Understands About Country: Deep Down, It's Like Jazz
The 80-year-old's latest album, Let's Just Face the Music and Dance, showcases Nelson's prodigious familiarity with the inter-mingled ancestries of country, jazz, swing, and pop.
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Why Violent Femmes' Classic Debut Still Seems So Young, 30 Years Later
Songs like "Blister in the Sun" and "Add It Up" don't sound like April, 1983—they sound like eternally sweaty, frustrated, neurotic teenagedom.
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'Open Letter': Jay-Z's Mad at Republicans, and It Sounds Great
Track of the Day: Hova answers his political critics as only he can.
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America's No. 1 Country Album Is an Experiment in How Bad Country Can Be
The Band Perry's 'Pioneer' fuses the worst of country and rock for a new kind of bland.
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Reminder: Songs About Racism Can Actually Be Quite Good
Listen to these 10 tracks instead of Brad Paisley and LL Cool J's "Accidental Racist."
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Against the 'Conversation on Race'
More on Brad Paisley and LL Cool J's "Accidental Racist"
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Why 'Accidental Racist' Is Actually Just Racist
The assumption that there is no real difference among black people is exactly what racism is.
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'Accidental Racist' Is Not a Joke
Day 2 of our Brad Paisley/LL Cool-induced national argument
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Brad Paisley and LL Cool J Show How Not to Sing About the Confederate Flag
Musical treatments of the South's legacy aren't all as horrible as "Accidental Racist."
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Bettmann / Getty How Nina Simone and James Brown Mourned MLK, Jr. Onstage
After Martin Luther King, Jr.'s murder, two of the era's most prominent black musicians gave career-defining performances as they helped audiences grieve.
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Track of the Day: 'When Winter's Over'
Listen up ...
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The Man Who Writes WWE Wrestlers' Theme Music Is a James Taylor Fan
Jim Johnston talks about overseeing World Wrestling Entertainment's music for 27 years, from the nu-metal phase of yesteryear to today's inclusive soundscape of pop and R&B.
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Nigel Treblin / AP My Chemical Romance Wore Themselves Out, and It Was Glorious
Restless, angsty, pop-punk energy made them great—and is probably what ended them.
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What Rush Limbaugh Got Right About Beyonce
Her new song "Bow Down" does, in fact, diss women. But so do lots of her songs.
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Justin Timberlake, Our Sammy Davis Jr.
He's the return of a long-lost showbiz archetype: the song-and-dance (and jokes!) man.
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It's Beach O'Clock Somewhere: Songs of the Southern-Hemisphere Summer
A Rio-flavored club-thumper, an Argentine cumbia revival, a throwback by New Zealand's version of Adele, and more
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Album Preview: Gordon/Lang/Wolfe's 'Shelter'
Hear the forthcoming record from the contemporary-classical innovators of Bang on a Can.
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16 Bands to Check Out From South by Southwest 2013
From snotty skate punk to genderbending rap, these acts justified their buzz—or sparked some.
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Icona Pop, K-Pop, and the Winter of American Group Pop
At South by Southwest, a Swedish duo and Korea's f(x) resurrect the awesome pleasure of pop in-sync.
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God's Love Supreme: The Arrival of Jazz as Christian Worship Music
Some churches have brought jazz into the sanctuary—both for its sound, and to attract congregants.
