Popular Music
“Art can be heartbreaking, but you don’t have to let it break your heart for it to be good. You just have to have the correct relationship with it, understanding that it is a continual exercise.”
Our popular music critics pick some of the standout albums and live performances of 2025.
Lettuce is pushing funk forward, drawing on what has come before (Tower Of Power) and making some distinctive changes.
It turns out that singer Jessica Vosk’s personality is just as big and colorful as her voice. Add to that her zigzagging brand of comic spontaneity, and you had an evening filled with joyous holiday spirit.
Add these four remastered Ray Charles albums to your collection and remind yourself what the real thing sounds like when it finally comes along.
There was little doubt that the singer owned every note with a pure sense of conviction — and community — that blew past rock-star trappings.
The musicians assembled here for the updated recordings of tunes from fifty years ago are first-rate, and Peggy Lee still convincingly inhabits a wide range of material.
By Matt Hanson There’s an enticingly primeval quality to the way bluesmen Ryan Lee Crosby and Jimmy “Duck” Holmes play off of one another. Willie Dixon once said that “the blues are the roots, the other musics are the fruits.” We all know by now how plenty of world-famous bands have harvested those influences. So…
The cross generational Do the Reggae Tour suggested that reggae’s creative trek was far from over.
MonoNeon is the most important musician to emerge from Memphis in recent memory.
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