Music Features

During the last few months of his life, Gregg Allman would often talk with his manager, Michael Lehman, about his legacy. “If you can imagine, Gregg thought, ‘Will people forget me?’” Lehman says. “He never saw himself as a ‘rock star.’ I said, ‘People will never forget you and your …

Smash Mouth’s “All Star” has followed you incessantly for the last two decades. If you’re under the age of 30, it’s a part of the fabric of your life as much as it’s a strand of the DNA that keeps the internet funny and weird. But before “All Star” was …

No one saw Lil Nas X coming.His race to ubiquity came impossibly quickly, and it’s a rare instance of an artist’s industry story — the making-of chronicle of an underdog star — becoming to wide audiences as compelling as his music. Ever since the 20-year-old rapper rose into the public …

In 2017, when one of Nathaniel Rateliff’s oldest friends — a carpenter who grew up alongside him and Night Sweats bassist Joseph Pope in Missouri — was injured in a construction accident, Rateliff and Pope knew they needed to support him. Their band had just celebrated two years of unprecedented …

There are 13 frontline major record label groups operating in the United States, including Nashville outposts. One of those labels, Sony’s Epic Records, is run by a woman – Sylvia Rhone. One of them, Warner’s Atlantic Records, is co-run by a woman – Julie Greenwald. All of the rest, literally …

My new book, Bruce Springsteen: The Stories Behind the Songs, tells the tales behind every officially released studio recording of Bruce Springsteen’s career so far. In addition to my years of Springsteen reporting, including five interviews with the man himself, the book draws on over 60 hours of brand-new interviews …

Ariana Grande is the face of Starbuck’s “Cloud Macchiato.” It’s synergy made in marketing heaven: Grande loves cloud emojis, is one of the biggest pop stars on the planet and has millions of young fans who presumably love sugar and caffeine in equal measure. Starbucks is a multi-billion dollar company …

At this point, Cher is more than just a pop star; she’s the one-woman embodiment of the whole gaudy story of pop music. She’s a myth so huge that the new Broadway musical The Cher Show takes three different Chers to encompass her — Babe Cher, Lady Cher and Star …

“RealLife Rock Top Ten” is a monthly column by cultural critic and RS contributing editorGreil Marcus. 1. Nobody’s Baby, “Life of a Thousand Girls” (Bandcamp). “All the ingredients to an American classic, the Teenage Death Song,” says this San Francisco foursome of itself. “Noboby’s Baby formed around the idea of …

When Durand Jones & the Indications released their self-titled debut album in 2016, it didn’t take long for them to notice that fans were gravitating to a particular track: “Is It Any Wonder,” a lolling, pretty soul ballad, with sharp rim-shots puncturing long lines of prepubescent falsetto from drummer Aaron …