Music Features

“Hal Blaine was such a great musician and friend that I can’t put it into words,” Brian Wilson wrote on Twitter Monday after news of the legendary session drummer’s death began to circulate. “Hal taught me a lot, and he had so much to do with our success — he …

Fiona Apple has been pretty elusive in the music world for the past seven years, aside from a few live performances and Tumblr posts. Though her contribution is more source material and harmonies here, there’s something satisfying about hearing the venerable singer-songwriter team with young newcomer and fan King Princess …

Not long ago, the rapper Chester Watson played a show in Brooklyn to support the release of his short, assured new album, Project 0. After the performance, he and fellow Nü Age Syndicate member Kent Loon met a guy from Italy who knew all the words to Watson’s song “Phantom.” …

Nigerian singer-songwriter Kah-Lo has had success with conversational club music, but she understands why listeners tend to lump her songs in with afrobeats: That minimal, swaying, polyrhythmic strain of pop that’s become an “explosive industry” in her country and hit the charts in London, Paris and elsewhere. “It is great …

Ozzy Osbourne knew he had a problem when he saw that his right thumb had swollen to “the size of a fuckin’ lightbulb.” After a Salt Lake City gig earlier this month, he had trouble putting on a thumb ring he regularly wears. The digit got larger overnight until it …

The R&B singer H.E.R. has never cracked the Top 25 on Billboard‘s Hot Hip-Hop/R&B Songs chart. But when she releases her debut album this fall, she can rest assured that plenty of listeners will be interested: She has already amassed more than a billion streams across various digital platforms. H.E.R.’s …

He’s best known as the charming frontman of Fall Out Boy — but long before he embarked on the path to pop punk stardom, Patrick Stump spent days and nights poring over his mom’s old textbooks, memorizing the names of long-extinct mammals and aquatic life. “All my favorite superheroes were …

One of the summer’s biggest club singles has been DJ Koze’s “Pick Up,” an immensely likable house record that reached Number One on the Beatport chart (which tracks online dance music sales) in May and remained in the chart’s upper reaches for several months. “Pick Up” is built around a …

Aretha Franklin’s genius took so many forms — as a singer, a songwriter, an album-crafter, a live performer. But the Queen was also one of history’s most audacious Beatle fans. Nobody ever sang the Beatles like Aretha. Since she was one of the few Sixties musicians as famous and revered …

Charlie Puth had an odd feeling as he read negative reviews of his 2016 debut album, Nine Track Mind: He agreed with them. Despite scoring three radio hits, Puth – a classic-rock fanatic from New Jersey who graduated from the Berklee College of Music – was insecure it had taken …