The Gallagher brothers have conducted their relationship in public for thirty years. This is not a choice exactly — it is the consequence of a specific temperament meeting a specific level of fame. Both Noel and Liam Gallagher are constitutionally incapable of the privacy that would be required to keep their relationship out of the … Read more
There is a relationship at the center of Elvis Presley’s life that the mythology of his career has never fully contained because it belongs to a register that mythology cannot reach. Not the manager relationship with Colonel Tom Parker, not the romantic relationships that the tabloids tracked across decades, not the friendship with the Memphis … Read more
The story of “Bohemian Rhapsody” as it is usually told begins with Freddie Mercury and ends with the song’s commercial triumph — a narrative arc that smooths over the period in between, the period of doubt and resistance and the specific institutional hostility of a music industry that did not understand what it was hearing … Read more
The small funeral home in Maple Grove smelled of wilting lilies, lemon polish, and quiet heartbreak. Sunlight slanted through half-closed blinds, striping the faded carpet in gold and shadow. In the far corner, as far from the two closed caskets as a child could get, sat five-year-old Tommy Walker. He wore a black suit two … Read more
My brother Marcus and I used to be the same person in two bodies. That’s not something I say lightly or romantically. I mean it in the literal, functional sense that people who grow up poor and close in age understand — we shared clothes, we shared a bedroom for seventeen years, we shared a … Read more
The Ozzy Osbourne that the world received is a specific and carefully constructed thing. The Prince of Darkness. The bat-biter. The man who bit the head off a dove in a record label meeting and off a bat onstage in Des Moines. The television persona of The Osbournes who shuffled through his own house in … Read more
There is a paradox at the center of Fleetwood Mac that their entire career has been built upon without ever fully resolving. The music they make is music about the specific damage that the people making it have done to each other. The songs on Rumours — which remains one of the best-selling albums in … Read more
Elton John and John Lennon had a friendship that the public record has only partially captured. The most visible evidence of it is musical — the 1974 Madison Square Garden concert where Lennon appeared onstage with Elton following through on a bet made in the recording studio, a bet that produced “Whatever Gets You Through … Read more
There is a version of Frank Sinatra that the world received — the tuxedo, the tumbler of Jack Daniel’s, the ring-a-ding-ding swagger of the Rat Pack years, the voice that could devastate a room of two thousand people with the precision of a surgeon and the warmth of someone who genuinely, specifically loved you. That … Read more
Lady Gaga has built a career on surprising audiences, and her stunning performance of Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) is one of the best examples of her incredible versatility as an artist. Originally made famous by singers such as Cher and Nancy Sinatra, Bang Bang is already a dramatic and emotional song. However, … Read more