Ariana Grande’s masterful 2018 album Sweetener includes a single called “R.E.M.” Mike Mills, bassist for the legendary alt-rock band R.E.M., found this amusing. His laughter became slightly more anxious and perturbed when Grande made R.E.M. the name of her cosmetics and fragrance line. And when that company released a product line in a box designed to look like a cassette …

Metal had to set its “Days Without a Nazi Festival” counter back to zero after the ignominious Metal Threat Fest brought sketchball acts like Graveland, Inquisition, Grand Belial’s Key, and Arghoslent to the Chicago suburbs earlier this month. It was an amusing circus to behold from afar, at least.

Orville Peck might be preparing for his EGOT. Earlier this year he played the Emcee in Cabaret on Broadway, and he’s starring in the Kitao Sakurai-directed Street Fighter with 50 Cent, Jason Momoa, and Noah Centineo. Today, he’s pivoted back to music with the announcement of a new EP Appaloosa, out in two weeks via Warner. The mysterious country crooner …

The ads have already started airing. Every year, the Christmas industrial complex encroaches earlier into autumn, and thanks to climate change, we’re now subjected to holiday fare before some of us have even pulled our coats out of the closet. The promo blitz extends to the music industry, where new yuletide tracks and albums start materializing basically as soon as …

On this date in 2020, MF Doom’s family released a statement announcing that the influential rapper passed away at 49. “The greatest husband, father, teacher, student, business partner, lover and…

On this date at the turn of the millennium, Jay-Z and his Rocafella cohorts released the only crew album of his career, The Dynasty: Roc La Familia. Along with Memphis…

It’s incredibly fitting that Florence + The Machine would release an album on one of the most powerful, spooky days of the year. For one, Welch has done it before with 2011’s Ceremonials, but her new album Everybody Screams feels more charged in transformation and transition.

Happy Halloween, boys and ghouls! In the nasty ’90s, the vampire-themed hardcore band Ink & Dagger emerged from the scary streets of Kill-adelphia and brought their brand of beastly terror all across the land until frontman Sean McCabe sudden and untimely death in 1999. (That’s not me being spooky. He really died.) Ink & Dagger reunited in 2010, slaying some …

On this date, at the turn of the century, Big Boi and Andre 3000 released their fourth album, Stankonia, on the Laface/Arista imprint. Following up on their successful Aquemini LP, Outkast…

Just in time for Halloween, multihyphenate artist Westside Gunn has released his latest project, HEELS HAVE EYES 3. The 11-track album builds on the acclaim of HEELS HAVE EYES 2,…