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Fadi Kheir How Art Can Double as Historical Corrective
Two recent projects, a jazz concert about the Great Migration and a book about “wayward” young women, ambitiously recontextualize black life and art in early-20th-century America.
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Diana Stoyanova I Ran a Backstreet Boys Website for Superfans
Twenty years ago, as the group’s Millennium album topped music charts, one writer found belonging in an online community she unwittingly helped create.
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Brian Stukes / Getty The Houston Rapper Taking the Industry by Storm
Megan Thee Stallion’s much-anticipated debut album, Fever, is a remarkable mix of braggadocio, lyrical acuity, and self-awareness.
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Markus&Koala Carly Rae Jepsen Is Getting Weirder—And It’s Brilliant
The singer gets campier and more creative on her fourth album.
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Graham MacIndoe The National Further Complicates Its Sadness
I Am Easy to Find sees the rock band involving new voices and a softer approach to evoke indescribable feelings.
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AP / KGC-182 / STAR MAX / IPx The Anti-party Anthem Contending for Song of the Summer
Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran’s “I Don’t Care” joins a growing body of sing-alongs about social anxiety.
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Michael Schmelling Vampire Weekend’s Father of the Bride Is an Ambivalent Epic About World Peace
On the art rockers’ most sprawling album, global serenity is a personal worry.
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Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy / Shutterstock / … Finding Comfort in the Gloomy Beauty of The Cure’s Disintegration
How one writer came to love the band’s dark, shimmering masterpiece as a teenager 30 years ago
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Taylor Swift Productions Taylor Swift’s ‘ME!’ Is Everything Wrong With Pop
The star’s first single since Reputation has almost none of the elements that once made her interesting, but it does have a dolphin screech for a chorus.
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Amy Harris / AP The Genre-Defying Rage of Rico Nasty
The Maryland rapper’s new project, Anger Management, is a collaboration with the producer Kenny Beats that continues an electrifying repertoire.
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Emma McIntyre / Getty The Chart-Topping Artist With a Complicated Empowerment Message
The singer and flutist Lizzo’s new album is as impressive as it is ad-friendly. But navigating both repressive industry standards and commercial co-option is tricky territory.
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Gunpowder and Sky A Movie That Radically Rewrites the Myths of A Star Is Born
The wild and challenging Her Smell stars Elisabeth Moss as a self-destructive rocker in a familiar mold—and features an ending in a less familiar one.
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Eric Lagg / Columbia Records How ‘Old Town Road’ Transforms the Listener
Whether or not Lil Nas X’s No. 1 hit is country music, it definitely shows the anarchic power of pop.
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Jon Savage Deciphering the Mystery of Joy Division
A new book explores how the group turned itself into a portal for some of the most alien and beautiful information ever to be broadcast through the medium of a rock-and-roll band.
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The CW How Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Revived the TV Musical—And Liberated Its Heroine
The CW show, which is ending after four seasons, gave new life to a genre that was losing ground on the small screen.
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Richard Shotwell / Invision / AP Billie Eilish’s Spooky Teen Pop Shouldn’t Scare Adults
The suddenly ubiquitous singer’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? connects goth ideas across generations.
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Courtesy of 4th Floor Creative / Sony Music The Teenage Girl Leading Jamaica’s New Reggae Scene
Since her tribute to the track star Usain Bolt went viral, Koffee has shown she has staying power.
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Jamie Hawkesworth / 4AD Scott Walker’s Legacy as a Vocal Auteur
The singer, dead at 76, morphed from a ’60s pop idol into an avant-garde legend. But his voice and his fatalism were consistent.
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Hannah Giorgis / The Atlantic The Queens Rapper Connecting American Hip-Hop to African Audiences
Bas, raised in New York, wants to bring his music to his Sudanese parents’ homeland and to the broader continent. And so do his fans.
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Autumn de Wilde The Complex Carpe Diem of Jenny Lewis’s On the Line
The rocker’s fourth solo album has a big, bold sound and a mature, unapologetic take on desire.
