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In her pink-tiled bathroom with a sky-blue tub, Kim Deal gripped a wad of cables in one hand and squatted to peer down a laundry chute. She bought this modest [...]

Neko Case has a striking singing voice and a unique writing voice that is both poetic and pointed. In https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/arts/music/neko-case-the-harder-i-fight-the-more-i-love-you-memoir.html, Lindsay Zoladz dug into how she developed both, and the [...]

The people who make live music run work tirelessly at physically demanding jobs: lugging instruments up and down stairs, dashing into the rafters, burrowing under stages. And as Tim Sommer [...]

Happy new year, Louder readers! The first week of 2025 we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about a movie that arrived in the final days of 2024: “A Complete [...]

It’s been a touring-point year for Kendrick Lamar, the Pulitzer-winning rapper who’s always managed to stay just above the fray: In 2024, he was the fray. His war of words [...]

“In the New York rock world,” John Leland writes, “Jesse Malin has been a fixture for so long that it is hard to imagine the scene without him.” Last May, [...]

Kim Deal has loomed so large in rock music for nearly four decades, when I approached interviewing her for a https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/15/arts/music/kim-deal-nobody-loves-you-more.html (out next week), I just wanted to figure out […]

There's a pause before Billy Joel steps onstage each night when he makes the subtle transition from low-key Everyman to world-renowned Piano Man. It's just a few minutes of ''not [...]

Listen to songs by Martina McBride, Destiny’s Child, Kelly Clarkson and more. Dear listeners, Hello again from your guest playlister — Lindsay’s editor, Caryn — in this lead-up to the [...]

Hear five standouts from the set, and six we wish she’d played. Dear listeners, Lindsay is desperately seeking some time off this week, so I am the first of your [...]

Our reporters spent the past week breaking down the issues at the heart of the Sean Combs case: Ben Sisario and Julia Jacobs explained https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/22/arts/music/sean-combs-diddy-freakoffs-sex-drugs.html — what prosecutors describe as [...]

Last November, Ben Sisario broke the news that https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/arts/music/sean-combs-diddy-cassie-rape-lawsuit.html, accusing the music mogul of physical abuse and rape. Combs denied the allegations, and the two settled in a day. Over [...]

Last week, we took you https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/08/07/arts/music/missy-elliott-out-of-this-world-tour-career.html as she prepared her first-ever headlining tour; this week, Jon Caramanica saw the show and https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/13/arts/music/missy-elliott-out-of-this-world-tour-review.html. “At times, it had the complexity and density [...]

More than a year ago, Wesley Morris and I started chatting about a Meshell Ndegeocello profile, and I’m so glad our moment finally arrived with “No More Water: The Gospel [...]

The superstar's 11th album is a 31-song excavation of her recent relationships that is not universally loved. Our pop team dissects its sound, themes and reception. BEN SISARIO Hey, have [...]

Byline: Caryn Ganz Billy Joel's first new pop song in nearly two decades was sparked by someone miles from the record business: a Long Island doctor. Joel, 74, has long [...]

We had a few examples of how performing live can reshape an artist’s career this week. Tricia Romano looked at a unique situation for the https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/arts/music/chappell-roan-festivals-live-shows.html, who set up her [...]

On Friday, Cigarettes After Sex put out its third album, and a tour will soon bring the group to arenas around the world, including Madison Square Garden and the Kia [...]

The 15 songs that hit No. 1 this year (so far) 15 songs, 43 min 51 sec Dear listeners, It’s Caryn the editor https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/arts/music/amplifier-newsletter-independence-songs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/21/arts/music/amplifier-newsletter-rem-deep-cuts.html, seizing control of the playlist [...]

This week, Amanda Hess confirmed what I suspected it is like walking down a New York street with running commentary from one of the city’s most iconic exports, Cyndi Lauper: [...]

In the https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/25/arts/music/pop-music-superfans-stans.html era, pop fans are obsessed with numbers: Who has more No. 1 hits? Who earned the most Grammys? The biggest fans do what they can to boost [...]

Madonna’s hits-filled Celebration Tour, dissected 11 songs, 53 min 16 sec Dear listeners, Lindsay is desperately seeking some time off this week, so I am the first of your guest [...]

It was half past 3 the day after the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting, and a pair of America's most famous drag queens strode up to the spruce's formidable footprint, [...]

Her Celebration Tour is the pop superstar's first retrospective, one which thematically explores her past and perhaps offers a glimpse of how she will chart her future. For 40 years, [...]

Her Celebration Tour is the pop superstar’s first retrospective, one which thematically explores her past and perhaps offers a glimpse of how she will chart her future. For 40 years, [...]

It was half past 3 the day after the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting, and a pair of America’s most famous drag queens strode up to the spruce’s formidable footprint, [...]

A look at the Grammys' most unexpected and interesting story lines, including Olivia Rodrigo's intergenerational rock battle with the Rolling Stones. Young women from across genres -- along with the [...]

A look at the Grammys’ most unexpected and interesting story lines, including Olivia Rodrigo’s intergenerational rock battle with the Rolling Stones. Young women from across genres — along with the [...]

Byline: Caryn Ganz Olivia Rodrigo, the bearer of perhaps the most famous driver's license in Los Angeles, piloted her black Range Rover to Westwood on a scorching late July afternoon. [...]

Byline: Caryn Ganz Onstage at the cozy Chelsea club Racket in May, Howlin' Pelle Almqvist had an important announcement. 'Ladies and gentlemen!' the frontman shouted to the mess of bopping [...]

Kathleen Hanna has had an extremely rich artistic life as a dedicated creator of music and art out of pure drive, via independent channels, with friends and like-minded cohorts, driven [...]

Maximalism was the watchword of the week (thanks to Taylor Swift’s 31-song “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology”), and we certainly brought you all. Before we get to Swift, a [...]

The Beatles insider Peter Brown (name-checked in “The Ballad of John and Yoko”) is a polarizing figure in the band’s history, and a longtime keeper of its secrets. “The only [...]

Two major stories dueled for attention this week: the arrival of Beyoncé’s new album, “Cowboy Carter,” and raids on two of Sean Combs’s homes by federal officers. Ahead of the [...]

It was a bit of an interviewapalooza over here the past week, starting with two biggies from Jon Pareles, who spoke with https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/arts/music/shakira-las-mujeres-ya-no-lloran.html about the personal upheavals fueling her new [...]

In a week of big new releases, Jon Pareles reviewed one where an artist looked refreshingly inward (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/14/arts/music/kacey-musgraves-deeper-well-review.html a Critic’s Pick), and Lindsay Zoladz wrote about one where an artist [...]

Rock history is filled with bands of famously bickering brothers. One of them has reconciled and will release its first album in 15 years next week: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/arts/music/black-crowes-happiness-bastards.html. Craig Marks spent [...]

I have enjoyed Kim Gordon’s music and admired her as a person for so long, it was such a win to hit play on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ3i80B0qKg the first single from her [...]

Is the time of surprise album drops (mostly) over? Taylor Swift announced hers during the Grammys, and Beyoncé used another well-watched event, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/11/arts/music/beyonce-super-bowl-act-ii-country-album.html, to tease what seems to be her [...]

Sixty years ago, the Beatles took the world by storm, and Paul McCartney was snapping away. “I thought the photos were lost,” he said, but his archivist found 1,000 of [...]

The 66th annual Grammy Awards are in the books, and so is a new record for Taylor Swift, who now has the most album of the year wins in the [...]

The Grammys are Sunday! If you are realizing you don’t know who’s https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/arts/music/grammy-awards-nominees.html, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/arts/music/grammys-how-to-watch-live.html, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/31/arts/music/grammy-awards-taylor-swift-sza.html and https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/01/arts/music/grammy-awards-barbie-billie-eilish.html, we have you covered! Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli made some predictions on [...]

Brittany Howard returns with her second solo album, “What Now,” in early February, and https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/arts/music/brittany-howard-what-now.html is the cover of our Arts & Leisure section this weekend. “I was in the [...]

A pair of pieces Lindsay Zoladz wrote this week are especially poignant to me this morning. She reviewed the new album from Sleater-Kinney, a band we’ve both long loved, and [...]

I’m a huge fan of our Obituaries desk’s “Overlooked” series, which revisits subjects who didn’t receive Times reports at the time of their deaths. I saw the photo of Cordell [...]

In our critics’ last words on 2023, Jon Pareles looked at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/29/arts/music/taylor-swift-beatles-replacements-past-recordings.html, which both the Beatles and Taylor Swift did this year, noting, “an update isn’t necessarily an improvement. It [...]

Who is https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/arts/music/andrew-watt.html, and why did three knights — Mick Jagger, Elton John and Paul McCartney — jump on the phone with Alex Pappademas to talk about him? The 33-year-old [...]

Sorry for the slightly belated Louder, I spent this morning on multiple text chains unpacking last night’s Liz Phair show, which celebrated 30 years of her remarkable debut, “Exile in [...]

In a whirlwind 24 hours in music news this week, on Thursday Ben Sisario broke the news that the singer https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/arts/music/sean-combs-diddy-cassie-rape-lawsuit.html accusing Sean Combs, her former boyfriend and label boss [...]

Barbra Streisand’s memoir is 970 pages. “The bigness of it makes literal the career it contains,” writes Wesley Morris, who shared dessert (apparently a bigger deal than I realized!) with [...]