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It doesn't really matter if Michael Jackson bullied the world's media into calling him the King of Pop in the early 1990s or if they just started using that sobriquet on their own. Either way, he earned it. Whether singing "I Want You Back" as the 11-year-old frontman of the Jackson 5, breaking the MTV color line with the explosive "Billie Jean" or defending the world's downtrodden and misunderstood (himself, that is), Jackson set the standard for pop singing, songwriting, dancing and, let's fac...
The Jackson 5's bubblegum-flavored soul helped Motown usher in the 1970s with a string of chart toppers that included hits such as "ABC," "I Want You Back" and "The Love You Save." Raised in Gary, Indiana by devout Jehovah's Witnesses, the brothers endured the kind of strict upbringing that groomed them perfectly for the "Motown machine." And what a well-oiled machine it was! The Jackson 5's likenesses could be found on everything from lunchboxes to dolls to Saturday Morning cartoons. But by 197...
By the time Regina Spektor's major label debut, Begin to Hope, arrived in 2006, the Russian-born singer already had a lengthy pedigree as a musician. She took up piano under the direction of her musically inclined parents while a child in Moscow. Her family eventually moved to the Bronx, where she continued classical studies at the Manhattan School of Music and started writing her own music. Her musical pursuits carried through college, and she graduated from a music composition program a...
Hailing from Los Angeles, the Black Eyed Peas date back to the early 1990s,
when group founders Will.I.Am and Apl de Ap parlayed their breakdancing
skills into a band called Atban Klann. Eazy-E eventually signed them to
Ruthless Records, although the label didn't really know how to market their
non-violent sound, and their album was shelved. After Eazy passed away,
they picked up a third member, Taboo, and began performing around L.A. as
Black Eyed Peas. Known for their positive lyrics and livel...
What do you do after you've sold a bazillion records with your band? Two words: solo career. Rob Thomas began his career fronting rock stalwarts, Matchbox Twenty. Thomas' soulful vocals and expert songwriting, along with a straightforward rock production put a punctuation mark at the end of the grunge era as they reached multiplatinum success with their debut record. But with his collaboration with Carlos Santana, Thomas showed he was more than just a faceless lead singer of a rock band of the m...
With her homespun charm, curly golden locks, and prodigious gift for songwriting, Taylor Swift is one of the youngest Nashville newcomers to capture a national audience in years. When she was just 16, Swift's first big single, "Tim McGraw," peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard country chart and held a spot in the top 10 for months. On the single's success, Swift joined the ranks of teenage country queens like Tanya Tucker, Marie Osmond and LeAnn Rimes, who all charted as teenagers. Unlike those youn...
The Dave Matthews Band (DMB) emblazoned the 1990s with its hybrid of jazz, folk, and world music with a distinct pop sensibility. By the end of the decade, Matthews' introspective lyrics and distinctive vocal timbre resonated through capacity stadiums across the U.S., as DMB achieved arena-rock stardom.
The son of a physicist father and an architect mother, Matthews spent his formative years in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Westchester County, New York. After being drafted by the Sout...
Indeed Coldplay's sound — dulcet, largely mid-tempo, melodic, and very dramatic — bore plenty of similarity to mid-1990s Radiohead. Indeed, when Coldplay issued its debut, Parachutes (Number 51, 2000), the success of the album's easeful sound was widely chalked up to the group's having stepped into the breach Radiohead had left with the release of the experimental Kid A. But Coldplay's penchant for melodic hooks and ability to pull heartstrings proved them no flash in t...
Raised on a musical diet of Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, Lady GaGa brings a sense of theatrical fashion and attitude to her dance-inspired, electro-rock performances. Named after Queen's "Radio Gaga," the pop fashionista took the fast lane to success, starting at age four when she learned to play piano by ear. At 14, she began performing at open-mic nights in and around New York City's Lower East Side. After graduating from Convent of the Sacred Heart School...
Although the media pretty much ensured that their music would have the shelf life of a banana by pegging them as the "Southern Strokes," the Kings of Leon's music really owes much more to the latter-day songs of Eddie Vedder than they do to any boogie-rhythmic Southern Rock. Sure, they sport John Fogerty-style bowl-haircuts, boot-cuts and beards, but the actual sound of their recorded music is truly more rooted in tasteful post-grunge pop (more Pearl Jam than Creed). Brothers Caleb, Nathan and J...
Like G. Love, Jack Johnson plays groovy acoustic funk. The difference is that where G. Love relies on hip-hop, Johnson's points of reference are a bit more eclectic, incorporating lite jazz and classic singer-songwriter motifs (including interesting vocal experiments a la Joni Mitchell and Tim Buckley). It's all held together by earthy rock backing, and topped off with a voice that at times sounds enough like Mose Alison to convince listeners that maybe Johnson really has the goods. Before embar...
Brad Paisley has a bit more going for him than your average Nashville molded hunk-in-a-hat. Before moving to Music City, he was a teenage phenomenon in his native West Virginia. Leading a country band, Paisley sang in a mature voice and played a wicked Bakersfield honky-tonk-influenced lead guitar. When he got to Nashville, he quickly nailed a publishing deal, which in turn led to a recording contract. Paisley wrote or co-wrote every song and played lead guitar on his 1999 debut Who Needs Pic...
The breakup of the influential Belleville, Illinois, roots-punk band Uncle Tupelo found Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy, the band's principal singer-songwriters, fronting new groups of their own. People expected less from Tweedy than they did from Farrar, who had always been regarded as the more serious artist of the two. It wasn't long, however, before Tweedy's new band Wilco outstripped Farrar's Son Volt, emerging as one of the most acclaimed and innovative bands of the new millennium.
Aft...
Eminem crashed the mainstream in the late '90s. With super-producer Dr. Dre behind the boards, the Detroit emcee quickly became a cultural touchstone. Combining cartoonish rage, ear-tickling beats, a distinct flow and gushing rhyme skills, he drew the praise of critics and the scorn of rap-hating political interests. His second album was darker, loaded with moody singles "Stan" and "The Way I Am." Eminem's private life soon mirrored his bad-boy image, and he found himself getting divorced, sued ...
Nickelback, a post-grunge band from Alberta, are the first Canadian band since the Guess Who (in the '70s) to have a No. 1 hit single in both Canada and the U.S. Since the mid-'90s, the group -- singer/guitarist Chad Kroeger, bassist Mike Kroeger, guitarist Ryan Peake and drummer Brandon Kroeger (eventually replaced by Daniel Adair) -- has evolved from near-Pearl Jam tribute band to its signature polished, hard-rock sound. Nickelback's popularity first gathered steam with the single "Leader of M...
Naysayers predicted that this whole rap-rock thing would be dying a slow, silent death right about now, but it seems to be breathing just fine without needing to come up for air. Linkin Park are one of the most successful guitar-swinging, lyric-dropping scratch wizards to simultaneously glorify the big riff while bowing down at the altar of hip-hop. In the course of a single song they let their guitars run amok, push plodding rhythms and growl like angry dogs roused from sleep -- all while dexte...
Punk revivalists in style, this raucous trio achieved triple-platinum status with their major-label debut, Dookie. Although Green Day's taut, three-minute, guitar-driven songs ably revive the fierceness of the group's stylistic progenitors (the Who, the Clash and the Sex Pistols), punk's original aim — to annoy, outrage, shock — is not Green Day's thing.
Friends since age 10, Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt grew up in Rodeo, California. They formed their first rea...
Beyonce Knowles, the leader of Destiny's Child, always knew she wanted to be a star. She formed the first incarnation of Destiny's Child in 1990 -- when she was 9 years old. By 2001, the group began to dissolve. Knowles nabbed a lead role in Mike Myers' Austin Powers: Goldmember; an appearance in MTV's Carmen: A Hip Hopera cemented her reputation as a formidable entertainer. Her solo debut, Dangerously in Love, came out in 2003. The first single, "Crazy in Love," was a duet ...
A revered, recognizable figure on the dance music scene since the early '90s, the enigmatic producer/DJ Moby was catapulted into mainstream stardom with the 1999 release of Play. A surprise hit, Play delved into highly personal areas in a downtempo vein never before explored in any of his previous releases. A master of such styles as techno, house, trance, ambient and breakbeat to name just a few, Moby is blessed with the ability to strike a sincere, emotive chord with a wide range...
It took him nearly a decade to get there, but in 2002 Kenny Chesney began his ascent to a Garth Brooks-like status in country music when his blockbuster album No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems rocketed to Number on the country and pop charts and eventually sold more than 4 million copies. In 2008 Chesney won the Academy of Country Music's Entertainer of the Year award for the fourth consecutive year. Chesney's mix of heartland rock, pop and country has earned him more than thirty Top Ten co...
Since just about every human on the planet seems to own Legend, it's hardly necessary to describe the King of Reggae's music. Marley's style developed early under the tutelage of Lee Perry, who influenced Marley's phrasing. His voice graced early Ska, Rock Steady and Reggae recordings, but many believe that the time he spent backed by fellow Wailers Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston was the most artistically satisfying of his career. The varied personal styles that the trio brought to recor...
The Rolling Stones began calling themselves the "World's Greatest Rock & Roll Band" in the late '60s, and few disputed the claim. The Rolling Stones' music, based on Chicago blues, has continued to sound vital through the decades, and the Stones' attitude of flippant defiance, now aged into wry bemusement, has come to seem as important as their music.
In the 1964 British Invasion they were promoted as bad boys, but what began as a gimmick has stuck as an indelible image, and not just bec...
Are you, do you have, or have you recently been around an eight-year-old girl? Then you know who Miley Cyrus is. In fact, we'd bet the young star of the Disney Channel's Hannah Montana has been an omnipresent part of your life since 2006, when her series about a regular girl who leads a secret double life as a pop star named Hannah Montana premiered, and Cyrus became tween America's biggest star. She has talent in spades: she sings, she dances, she wears couture. On top of all that, she's...
Early Pink Floyd recordings make space travel superfluous so long as we have keyboards here on Earth. Back when enigmatic lyricist and acid-eater extraordinaire Syd Barrett skippered the ship, the Floyd sounded something like Monty Python with instruments -- quirky, trippy and weird. Barrett made Bedlam seem a reasonable price to pay for such gems as "Bike," "Lucifer Sam," and the Space Rock tour-de-force "Astronomy Domine." Upon Barrett's departure, the only marginally less maniacal Roger Water...
Cousins Jay DeMarcus and Gary LeVox (born Gary Vernon) both nurtured their dreams of musical stardom while growing up in Ohio. When DeMarcus landed in Chely Wright's band, he convinced LeVox to quit his job and join him in Nashville. DeMarcus met Joe Don Rooney through Wright's band, and when their regular guitarist couldn't make a show, Rooney offered to step in and Rascal Flatts was born. The trio signed to Lyric Street, and in 2000 released its eponymous debut, which produced four hit singles...
U2 began the '80s as a virtually unknown "alternative" group and ended the century as one of the most widely followed rock bands in the world. The Irish rockers were influenced initially by punk's raw energy, but they immediately distinguished themselves from their post-punk peers with a huge, soaring sound — centered on Dave "the Edge" Evans' reverb-laden guitars and Paul "Bono" Hewson's sensuous vocals — and songs that tackled social and spiritual matters with an open, tender urgen...
Jason Mraz is a quintessential example of the modern singer-songwriter, meaning he incorporates all that's gone before him into his music, including reggae, hip-hop, Jewel and the Dave Matthews Band. This, combined with a particularly distinctive vocal waver, makes for a radio-bound body of work that has way too much going for it to remain in the obscurity of a San Diego coffee house, which is where Mraz got his start.
- Mike McGuirk...
If cultivating an iconoclast status is a career, then Pink is one serious go-getter. Since her 2000 debut, the husky-voiced singer has overhauled her sound several times, changed her hair color even more often, married motocross star Carey Hart and taken George Bush to task. Then there's "Stupid Girls," the 2006 single in which Pink skewered tabloid perennials like Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton.
She's abandoned the sugar-coated pop-soul of her first album, but Pink got her start in RnB...
When tour buses and Grammy nominations were just distant dreams, the Fray's Joe King had aspirations to start up a real estate company. Had it not been for his chance meeting with old schoolmate Isaac Slade in a Denver music store in 2002, he may well have been writing up contracts rather than lyrics. Instead, the two began composing songs together, soon adding drummer Ben Wysocki and guitarist Dave Welsh to the mix. In 2004, after turning down eight of their submitted songs, Denver radio statio...
Although he made an initial splash with his flamboyant stage getups, it's Elton John's effortless way with simple, yet memorable melodies that have won him his ongoing popularity. With lyricist Bernie Taupin, the British pianist crafted a string of hits in the 1970s:
zoologically-themed numbers such as "Crocodile Rock"
and "Honky Cat" showed off his rock 'n' roll side, while "Rocket Man" and "Bennie and the Jets" proved he could slow things down just as effectively. A range of personal and artis...
One of the most successful hip-hop artists and personalities of the past decade, Chi-town producer/emcee Kanye West may be hip-hop's most unlikely superstar. After Jay-Z's The Blueprint dropped in 2001 with West productions "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)" and "Never Change," his patented chipmunk soul (sped-up soul loops for choruses; dramatic, sweeping strings) was ubiquitous and ushered in a new era of polished hip-hop formalism that was a nice rejoinder to the bombast of Timbaland and the Neptunes....
For over 40 years, Bob Dylan has remained, along with James Brown, the most influential American musician rock and roll has ever produced and the most important of the '60s. Inscrutable and unpredictable, Dylan has been both deified and denounced for every shift of interest, while whole schools of musicians took up his ideas. His lyrics — the first in rock to be seriously regarded as literature — became so well known that politicians from Jimmy Carter to Vaclav Havel have cited them ...
George Strait is less an elder statesman of country than a pure force of nature. The Texas-born traditionalist continues to enjoy an unbelievable run of success that spans two decades of country music. Strait grew up on a ranch, so his cowboy hat is no affectation. He gravitated to music early on, playing rock in high school and switching to country during a stint in the military. He and his band Ace in the Hole played honky tonks and dancehalls throughout Texas in the 1970s, releasing two indep...
Jimmy Buffett was a country rocker before 1977's aptly titled Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude cemented his image as a beachcombing sage. Although he hit his creative peak during this period, Key West, Fla.'s favorite son has continued to write amusing, often intelligent tunes. A wise businessman, he has become the hero of "parrot heads" -- blue and white-collar working stiffs who would love to lead the life about which he writes (music, novels, plays) and sings. Jimmy Buffett is ...
You might consider Johnny Cash the original gangster. He sang a song about killing a man "just to watch him die" long before young men began to wear big pants and cap their teeth in gold. His trademark baritone growl and disdainful sneer were the crown and scepter he bore as the king of outlaw country music. Cash's unique sound wasn't complex by any means. His Southern Gothic-tinged narratives and lighthearted country songs contained similar elements to Woody Guthrie's simple ditties. However, n...
In the 2000s no musician has been able to deftly navigate the terrain between R&B, pop, soul, and rock as successfully as John Mayer. Throughout his career his deference for music traditions, consummate musicianship, and keen sense of melody has kept him atop the charts and in constant radio rotation.
The middle son of two teachers who grew up in Fairfield, CT, John Mayer began playing guitar at age 13, and was soon playing local clubs in blues and cover bands. At 17, he was rushed to t...
Elvis Presley is rock 'n' roll. He sang like a dream, he was sexy enough to send girls swooning, and he exuded enough cool not to have the boys resent him. Adults worried about his rebellious nature, but they were eventually comforted by his polite, courteous manner. Yet as perfect as Presley's 1950s rock recordings are, he excelled at so much: down-home country crooning, raucous R&B belting, enraptured Gospel singing, and classic pop balladeering. Elvis wasn't a vocal chameleon: these styles se...
Call them precocious, call them adorable, just don't call them the second
coming of Hanson. Because this brother trio is here to rock. And they
don't do three-part harmony. New Jersey brothers Kevin, Joseph and Nicholas
Jonas were 17, 16 and 13, respectively, when they released their debut album
in 2006. They got their start when littlest bro Nicholas, in possession of a
soulful prepubescent voice, finagled a solo record deal with
Daylight/Columbia. When Columbia got wind that there were ...
Formed in Jacksonville, Fla., in 2001, Shinedown have separated themselves from the ranks of their peers since the very beginning, when an acoustic cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man" found its way into local and then nationwide rotation. The modern hard-rockers' debut album, Leave a Whisper, was re-released on the heels of the single's success and promptly went platinum, while carving out a Southern rock identity for the band. Second record, Us and Them, appeared in 2005 and fu...
Britney. Over the past decade the name has dominated pop charts and tabloids. Uttered with a mix of adoration and repulsion, the first name of Britney Spears exists as shorthand for the magnificent mess of contemporary pop culture. It's been quite a ride for the former Mouseketeer, who first appeared in pearly smile and short skirt on the cover of 1999's ...Baby One More Time, with a glut of sugary singles. By 2000's Oops! I Did It Again, she was a household name and a pop-music ic...
Avid skaters and surfers from Southern California, Incubus first came together as teenagers at Calabasas High School in the early '90s. They gigged early and often at rundown joints across L.A. County and self-released their first album of hip-hop-inflected hard rock and psychedelic urban punk, titled Fungus Amongus, in '95. Their second record was picked up by Sony and went gold, leading to double platinum status and Top 10 tracks from the two albums that followed. More radio-friendly th...
The first-ever American Idol, Kelly Clarkson won over America with her soulful voice, bubbly personality, and "small-town girl makes it big" story. After a dismal run at Hollywood after high school, the native Texan hightailed it back to Burleson, where she hawked Red Bull, movie tickets, and vacuum cleaners until friends convinced her to audition for Idol. The show catapulted Clarkson into the kind of career she'd spent years working (unsuccessfully) towards, but her debut album p...
Heavy metal gods to some, studio-oriented power pop innovators to others, and purveyors of overblown sports arena anthems to still many more, Queen left a deep and varied legacy at the end of their nearly 20-year career. Despite a 2005 Broadway stage show that was written by guitarist Brian May, which featured the remaining members, the band never really recovered from the tragic loss of singer Freddie Mercury to AIDS in 1991. Combining a fondness for hard rock riffs with a knack for catchy melo...
After establishing himself with the Hot Boys and a handful of solo albums in the late Nineties and early 2000s, rapper Lil Wayne became best known for his series of critically acclaimed mixtapes and guest appearances on hit songs by other artists. With his prolific output in the mid-2000s, which included mixes he made available free online and his Tha Carter series in the mid-2000s increasingly brought legitimacy to his boasts of being the "best rapper alive."
Born Dwayne Michael...
Punk-pop ladykillers All Time Low formed in Maryland in 2003, while the members were all still in high school. Tilling the fertile fields of exuberant guitar pop a la blink-182, the band released a pair of records, The Party Scene and So Wrong It's Right, on indie labels in 2005 and 2007, respectively. Extensive touring and coverage on MTV helped raise their profile, and in 2009 their first single off third album Nothing Personal, "Damned If I Do Ya (Damned If I Don't)," bec...
For nearly four decades Bruce Springsteen has been a rock & roll working-class hero: a plainspoken visionary. He is a fervent and sincere romantic whose insights into everyday lives — especially in America's small-town, working-class heartland — have earned comparisons to John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie. His belief in rock's mythic past and its potential revitalized pop music and made Springsteen a superstar in the '80s. Since then, he has remained true to his artistic calling and s...
What does it mean that one of the early 21st century's best British bands is actually from Las Vegas? They might not fit into a convenient theory, but the Killers haven't wasted much time since their formation in 2002: Even before their debut album, Hot Fuss, appeared on Island in mid-2004, they were already selling out headlining shows in England. Named for a fictional group in a New Order video, the Killers practice a tense, stylish brand of rock in the vein of U2 and Bruce Springsteen,...
Can you raise your lighter high in the stadium and still keep your indie cred? Probably not, but you can combine the catchy hard rock of the Scorpions with the grungy street metal of Nirvana and get 3 Doors Down. Their debut hit, "Kryptonite," was a surprise smash, selling quantities that would make Shania or Britney very happy. Not bad for a rocking band who had just broken out of a small town in Mississippi. 3 Doors Down don't smell like teen spirit, but this is still the sound of acceptable t...
Radiohead emerged from the fading '90s Brit-pop invasion with a sound that was moody, melodic and explosive, with roots planted firmly in both alternative culture and the art-rock legacy of such classic rockers as Pink Floyd. With the release of 1997's OK Computer, Radiohead were among the most closely watched bands of the decade, drawing on influences as varied as Queen, R.E.M. and Miles Davis. The Oxford musicians were embraced as saviors of modern guitar rock, only to resurface in 2000...
Flo Rida (born Tramar Dillard) is the quintessential singles artist. Tracks such as "Low," "Elevator" and "Right Round" have been ubiquitous in the clubs and on the radio and have topped digital sales. Still, his debut album, 2007's Mail on Sunday, was by most measures a commercial flop. Listeners see him as essentially utilitarian. They expect him to deliver the bigger-than-God club bangers, and they'll gladly fork over for a dollar for the single, but most don't want to make any long-te...
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Billie Jean - Michael Jackson Beat It - Michael Jackson Smooth Criminal - Michael Jackson Thriller - Michael Jackson Boom Boom Pow - Black Eyed Peas |
