Fleetwood Mac

Garbage - Terminal 5 - 3/22/13

Better Than: Practicing your '90's nostalgia with Mark McGrath's cruise-replacing tour. Garbage had never played Terminal 5 before. "This feels like how a venue is supposed to feel," proclaimed lead singer Shirley Manson before a sold-out show at the Hell's Kitchen venue Friday night. With the way ... More >>

The Ten Best Country Albums of 2012

This list of the year's best country albums is assembled with two important premises in mind: First: If the people who record and listen to these records consider them country, than they're damn well country. Purists who argue that country should still sound like '68, '76, '84 or whenever are in the ... More >>

Graham Parker Is Still Pissed

After a 31-year absence, his band the Rumour are back

Sun Airway Try (And Fail) To Keep It Simple On New Album Soft Fall

Jon Barthmus of Philadelphia pop group Sun Airway (who open for M83 tomorrow and Wednesday night at Hammerstein Ballroom) has a hard time keeping things simple. When he started conceptualizing the new Sun Airway album Soft Fall, out this week on Dead Oceans, he imagined something much more minimal t ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Kelly Clarkson, Lionel Richie And Countrified Pop Tunes

After Kelly Clarkson went to No. 1 on Billboard's Country Songs chart last year with the Jason Aldean duet "Don't You Wanna Stay," I wondered hopefully if the Texas-born pop star would finally go country with her next album. So I was a little disappointed a few months later, when she debuted the bla ... More >>

Q&A: Sontag Shogun On Playing Visual Art Installations, Lionel Richie, And Susan Sontag

There's a tangible loneliness to Sontag Shogun's music, but there's a wistful loveliness present, too. The Brooklyn trio assumes a sort of songwriting assembly line, with Ian Temple's emotive, tremulous piano figures falling prey to Jesse Perlstein's legion of atmospheric, laptop-catalogue samples a ... More >>

With the Help of Mark Ronson, Rufus Wainwright Learns to Dance

Cash In Now, Honey: The 11 Best Uses Of Music In Commercials This Year

We are adidas' friends. You'll never be shoeless again. ​Right now in a record store (probably in Seattle or maybe in Austin), two people are flipping through used vinyl and talking about music. Inevitably, one of them will turn to the other, pick up a record and accuse that musician or band o ... More >>

Six Songs With "Night" In The Title That Might Have Inspired Lady Gaga's "Marry The Night"

​The fifth single from Lady Gaga's Born This Way is "Marry The Night," an ode to the time of day that's seized the imaginations of countless pop stars—it's got darkness, mystery, cooler temperatures, more opportunties for steam-borne drama, and so forth. Gaga has proven herself to be a m ... More >>

100 & Single: You Can Keep Your EGOT; Adele's Going For A 2011 PB&G

​The lady sitting atop both of Billboard's major lists this week has made enough news in 2011 that I'm tempted to rename this column "This Week in Adele." The British thrush is certainly making enough sad news these days, canceling her tour and preparing to undergo much-needed throat surgery. ... More >>

Free Fallin' With John Mayer: Spotify's Most Popular Songs Of The Past Five Decades

Long were the days when my nights when my days once revolved around you.​ Cool Spotify timewaster of the day: If you search for "year:xxxx-xxxx" the browser will display the most popular songs released in that range in descending order. So what does this tell us about, say, this morning's heal ... More >>

Live: Stevie Nicks Closes Out The Season At Jones Beach

Stevie Nicks w/Michael Grimm Nikon Theater At Jones Beach Sunday, September 4 Better than: A radio stuck on the classic rock station. "Welcome, Jones Beach," Stevie Nicks said before her second song on Sunday night, the last night for both her current mini-tour and the Long Island oceanfront amp ... More >>

Rock-Critic Pop Quiz: How Many Ramones Can You Name?

​The Voice has spent the week celebrating the 60th birthday of one of New York's greatest treasures, Joey Ramone. We've made our To Do Lists of things we "wanna do" and things we "don't wanna do," and we've stolen the "Joey Ramone Place" sign on E 2nd St. about a dozen times in the last 24 hou ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Shinedown's Marathon Of Rock-Radio Domination

​ One of Billboard's biggest recent chart records was set last week, when Katy Perry marked 52 consecutive weeks in the top 10 of the Hot 100. She became the first artist to stay there for the entire year thanks to four singles from her sophomore album Teenage Dream, all of which peaked at No. ... More >>

The Great Radiohead Postmortem: Is The Entire World Live-Tweeting About The King of Limbs At The Same Time Such A Terrible Thing?

So maybe you heard that Radiohead put out a new album, The King of Limbs, on Friday, one day earlier than planned, a gift that triggered a "live-Tweeting my first listen" torrent of unprecedented volume and ferocity, a glut of Internet-borne insta-opinions that seemed at odds with the band's reput ... More >>

Live: A Revitalized Ozzy Osbourne And Rob Halford Stay Young At Madison Square Garden

Good advice. Pics by Phil Freeman, more below.​Ozzy Osbourne/Rob Halford Madison Square Garden Wednesday, December 1 Better than: Any other Ozzy performance of the 2000s. Ozzy Osbourne is turning 62 on Friday. That makes him older than his new guitarist (the shredtastic Gus G. of Greek power ... More >>

Winter Guide: Iron & Wine Hop on Pop

Your fake name is good enough for him--Sam Beam chats about his new album

Reba McEntire Sings Beyoncé and 5 Other Cross-Genre Covers Done in Earnest

Reba McEntire's new album, All the Women I Am, features a spirited rendition of Beyoncé's "If I Were a Boy," which you can hear above, and which got us thinking again about the tricky nature of cross-genre cover songs. McEntire remains true to the song's melody, save the addition of her country tw ... More >>

The Brotherly Love of Sisters

More sloppy-savory shards of noise pop from deceptively friendly Brooklynites

Live: Tom Petty Looks Like an Anorexic Monkey, Sounds Like a Champ at Madison Square Garden

Another time at MSG Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers Buddy Guy Madison Square Garden July 28, 2010 Tom Petty looks like an anorexic monkey, and his voice is so nasal it makes Bob Dylan sound like a death-metal grunter. But he's a hell of a songwriter, and the Heartbreakers are one of the two or thre ... More >>

Brooklyn's Noise Scene Catches Up to Oneohtrix Point Never

American Idol Season 9, Idol Gives Back: Shut The Fuck Up, Alicia Keys

I don't want to be too cynical about "Idol Gives Back", the big annual charity-drive American Idol episode, because God knows the thing does more good with ten minutes of on-air banalities than I will ever do with anything in my life. But every year now, the thing is just sitting in the middle of ... More >>

American Idol Season 9, Top 8 Ladies: Siobhan Magnus Murders "House of the Rising Sun"; Paige Miles Goes Meta with "Smile," and Pays the Price

Please welcome the next Ernie and/or Swizz Beatz. Photo by Frank Micelotta/ FOX​Holy shit, only one hour this week! Do you guys know what this means? It means we don't have to sit through endless inane video packages about every contestant's favorite fruit or whatever the fuck! It means the ne ... More >>

The Top 10 Records Sold Last Week at Good Records in the East Village

In 2009, the traditional practice of exchanging physical copies of records for money is a trade that might best be called quixotic. But New Yorkers are stubborn people, and the record store is not dead. Below, the top ten records that actually sold in the last week at a store near you. ​Since ... More >>

Road Trip to Austin With Todd P

Scenes from the new doc starring NYC's premier DIY promoters

On the Cheerfully Combative Midwestern Noise-Pop of Wussy

The odd couple soldiers on

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti

Space Craft: Ivy Baldwin, Julian Barnett, Jeremy Nelson & Luis Lara Malvacías

American Idol First Results: Danny Gokey Advances! But Nooo. . . Tatiana's Sent Home?

Sharyn Jackson is your American Idol host for Season Eight. Today: results from the first round of semi-finals! Poor widower Danny Gokey advances! I'd been waiting all day for the first results show of the season, because an entire hour of fluff, recaps, dramatic musings by Ryan, and group singing ... More >>

TK Webb Stumbles Out of the Woods

Ancestor kicks the crap out of all this freak-folk and hippie retro-rock

Sublime Frequencies

The Field turns Lionel Richie and the Mac into thundering, florid ambient triumph

Awash in Complexity

Stop! There’s toilet paper stuck to your foot

Pop Den Mother Needs a Taste of Her Own Medicine

Mourning After

A sad survivor tries to figure out her ache

Accept Substitutes

The Loser's Lounge ventures into the present and other dangerous conceptual realms

Band in My Head

How Mojo, Bitches Brew, and Butch Morris inspired a funktional African American family unit

No Fruit 'Til Late

Garage Daze

Girls Take Center Stage in Their Own 'Warped Tour' Spin-0ff and Other Shows Around the City

NY Mirror

Jump on the Grenade

Boy, Those Hard Rock Kiddies Can't Play Guitar

Mr. and Mrs. Used to Be

Jack and Meg Find a Little Place to Fight 'Em Off

Mastery on Music Row

Music

Proxy Music

Electing the Pop Star in Chief

Velvet Gloves and Spit

Bummertime Blues

Getting Jiggy With It

MEA CULPA!

Records We Overlooked That Made a Splash in 1998

Dancing Up the Charts

A Terrible Beauty