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Coldplay create sparse, emotional soundscapes, dripping with melancholy. The London-based quartet is singer Chris Martin, guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman and drummer Will Champion. Their debut album, Parachutes, was released in late 2000 in the U.S., and they quickly became a sensation. The record went No. 1 in the U.K. charts and won Best Alternative Music Album at the 2002 Grammys. Marked by Martin's falsetto-happy vocals, songs like "Yellow" and "Shiver" employ stop/star...
One of Southern rap's most enduring and talented emcees, New Orleans' Lil' Wayne began rapping at the tender age of 11. By the time he was 15, he'd linked up with Juvenile, Turk and B.G. and formed the immensely popular Hot Boys group on Cash Money Records. Though the emcees showed promise, many listeners focused on the post-Bounce production of Mannie Fresh, and regarded Wayne as a fresh-faced vehicle for the producer. But Wayne went solo in 1999 with Tha Block is Hot. His raps focus on ...
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...
Katy Perry may or may not actually be gay, but she's certainly made her young career with coy, playful references to sexuality -- her own and her paramours'. The young Californian singer-songwriter first generated a heaping helping of online buzz in 2007 with "Ur So Gay," in which she accuses a disappointing boyfriend who "doesn't even like boys" of being, well, take a guess. Then, in 2008, she shot up the charts with the Sapphic sweet-talker "I Kissed a Girl." Kind of a surprising turn o...
Initially viewed as a younger take on the music of Dave Matthews, John Mayer's earnest and earthy pop has grown in popularity and reputation since his 1999 debut. Mayer sings mellow pop songs in an expressive tenor voice, and is an assured, harmonically astute acoustic guitarist whose jazzy phrasing fills out his songs nicely. His 2001 sophomore album Room For Squares was a pleasant, non-abrasive pop album that launched him to major label success. While maintaining his commercial appeal, ...
Talent and a dose of good luck got Barbados-born Rihanna signed to Def Jam when she was 16 years old. She was discovered by producer Evan Rogers, who was visiting Barbados in 2003, and went on to so impress Def Jam CEO Jay-Z that he grabbed her for a multi-album contract. The singer's first single, "Pon De Replay," was released in June 2005, with the full album Music of the Sun dropping in August 2005. But her big break came in 2006 with the release of the single "S.O.S." and the subseque...
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...
One of the 1990s' greatest success stories, Radiohead came to prominence largely on the success of their distorted, ingratiating single "Creep." Drolly repeating "I'm a creep / I'm a loser" in the pounding wake of arena rock guitars wasn't going to win them any artistic grants, but those lyrics and bouts with piercing feedback would not be soon forgotten. It wasn't until The Bends (1995) that Radiohead transcended the formula, crafting the patient, heart-wrenching "Fake Plastic Trees" and...
By the time he entered puberty, Usher had a record deal and a gold album. By the time he graduated high school, he was one of the most visible artists in R&B. Armed with a smooth voice, Usher specializes in saccharine-sweet profusions of love and desire; pop melodramatic ballads; and floor-rattling club jams. Between 1994 and 2004, he released six albums, appeared in several films, earned multiple platinum records and collaborated with a wide variety of top-shelf artists. However, 2004 was the y...
For anyone coming of age in the 1980s, the rise of glam metal served as a rite of passage which most of us would rather forget. Winger, Ratt, Warrant...we have consigned these bands to mothballed oblivion for trafficking in lyrical cliches and fancified guitar fluff. Perhaps the only such band that deserves to escape the fate of a rogue Cheerio under a sofa cushion is Motley Crue. A&R opportunists and image consultants be damned, these Metal diehards have managed to keep their priorities straigh...
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...
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 ...
Heavy metal will mutate in a thousand directions, taking on pop, hip-hop, ritual killing and even short hair in their turns. But the truism that the music will never disappear, always finding a new generation of misfit kids to entertain and comfort in its strange way, remains no less obvious in the 21st century. Disturbed are testament. Led by one of those former "maladjusted" teens, singer David Draiman (the veteran of five separate school expulsions), this Chicago-based band's short career has...
This Hotlanta trio garners a lot of comparisons to the Dixie Chicks even though one of them is a man and they don't play any bluegrass. Sugarland are definitely their own thing, and this is obvious when you listen to their music. Yeah, you may hear traces of Terri Clark's gruffness in Jennifer Nettles' sultry voice, but she also exudes some heavy soul leftover from her days as the front woman for the gospel band Soul Miner's Daughter. She met up with Kristian Bush and Andrew Hyra (of Billy Pilgr...
Few partnerships in rock 'n' roll have been as productive as the collaboration between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and of course having wunderkind Brian Jones along did nothing to hinder the Rolling Stones' popularity. From the get-go, the band played the raunchy, gritty doppelganger to the Beatles' dandified Merseybeat pop. They ventured a heavier, bluesier sound than their British Invasion counterparts, taking their cues from Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. The band's greatest strength, bes...
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...
When they first appeared on the commercial pop landscape back in 1994, it wasn't without a fair amount of derision from the indie rock cognoscenti. After all, these guys were copping the indie rock style, using the same pop culture references and the same hooks, but putting it out on a major label with no grassroots support behind them. They had no "cred," as it were. Where did Weezer come from anyway? The answer is: nowhere. Rivers Cuomo founded the band as an outlet for his love of Van Halen, ...
The first crew to put Memphis on the rap map, Three 6 Mafia busted onto the national scene with their rowdy crossover hit "Tear Da Club Up" in 1996. Originally known as the Triple 6 Mafia, their blend of hypnotic yet hype production and over-the-top lyrical attacks soon endeared them to the nation at large. They continued to drop independent albums throughout the late '90s, and in 2000 scored another huge hit with their classic codeine-endorsing single "Sippin' on Some Syrup." In 2001 they ventu...
If Kenny Chesney's new traditional tinged country style leans toward hard rocking pop, blame it on the '70s FM radio and the country rock music coming out of the radio stations in his hometown of Luttrell, TN, a small place just outside Knoxville (also Chet Atkins' hometown). Chesney wasn't one of those kids who grew up with stage parents in Stetsons. He actually stumbled into the realm of country music by accident while studying marketing at East Tennessee State University. He found a guitar un...
Coming from a small town in Virginia, underage R&B crooner Chris Brown hit the scene in the summer of 2005, teaming up with Scott Storch and Juelz Santana for the club-friendly single "Run It!" Flexing a vocal style akin to Usher (or a young Michael Jackson), he released his debut self-titled LP later that year.
- Brolin Winning...
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...
One of the few megastars only needing a single name, Madonna's brand of dance pop began as the purest of bubblegum but has become increasingly sophisticated during the course of a career now in its third decade. Her influence has lessened a bit since the multimedia dynasty she lorded over in the 1980s and early '90s, partly because she's been busy raising children and partly because the focus of dance-oriented music has radically shifted in the years between Bedtime Stories (1994) and ...
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...
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...
Say what you may about her fashion sense or "diva-tude," but there is no doubt that Mariah Carey defined 1990s urban pop music. Carey ruled the charts during the Clinton decade -- her 1990 self-titled debut album alone spawned four No. 1 hit singles, and she would have 11 more before the new millennium. Over the years, artists from Christina Aguilera to Ciara would name her as an influence. Her albums are always expertly crafted and performed, making her MTV Unplugged EP a surprisingly wa...
With the release of their 2003 debut Leave A Whisper, Shinedown joined the ranks of modern metal bands taking their cues from the major league success of Creed. Namely, they played crunchy guitar nu-metal with unprecedented amounts of melody. The band's 2004 single, a cover of Skynyrd's great "Simple Man," was surprisingly true to the original, and also successfully fused real Southern rock elements to the trappings of radio metal. Shinedown has proven itself a band that was able to chang...
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...
Nashville superstar Chely Wright's backing band members were so talented that they went out and started their own musical project, the fruit of which is Rascal Flatts. Where Wright tends toward the more twangy roots of country music, Rascal Flatts take the foundation of country songs and layer on R&B-inspired rhythms overflowing with pop-rooted vocal harmonies. With their boyish good looks, uplifting optimism and friendly smiles, they have garnered many more comparisons to boy bands than country...
The key to Maroon 5's chart domination is an unvarying torrent of broadly palatable blue-eyed soul, but the band's story is ultimately one of chameleonic transformations. Members of the group first met at a private junior high in the L.A. 'burbs in the early '90s, where they formed a group called Kara's Flowers to emulate the grungy pop that then ruled the airwaves. Although they landed a major deal while most of the group was still in high school, by the late '90s the band was dropped. Two year...
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 ...
Due to their uncanny ability to change with the times, U2 have managed to stay alive as the majority of their '80s counterparts have disappeared. The evolution of their music is ongoing, and each new record seems to bring a never-before encountered style to the band's oeuvre. From the jangly Post-Punk of their earliest records to the genre-exploding extravaganza that marked their hyper-rhythmic re-entry into the post-Nirvana world, the quartet has provided an utterly original sound and a rarely ...
Sigur Ros may not realize they're the kings of post-Shoegazer (sorry, Mogwai), but perhaps that's a good thing. This Icelandic outfit creates interplanetary soundscapes that make Slowdive sound like Motorhead. Moaning guitars weep and howl over textured, ether-soaked guitar effects as an androgynous singer coos and croons wistful melodies of pure soul. Sigur Ros create the kind of transcendental music for those who appreciate aural escapism and white noise. Their songs somehow sound and feel lik...
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...
This young singer and pianist has so much talent that she can't be
contained by one genre of music. The American-born, Texas-bred daughter of
Indian music legend Ravi Shankar has after-hours jazz, soul, country,
blues and folk music at her command, and combines each with natural,
dreamy ease. It's almost as if Rickie Lee Jones or Diana Krall were
recording for an absinthe-soaked 4AD label that specialized in Americana. Some of our greatest artists
-- from Frank Sinatra to Ray Charles, from Elvis...
Bellingham, Washington's Ben Gibbard has always been the restless type. Not content to only front the one-man lo-fi outfit All-Time Quarterback, he recorded a collection of tunes that he called You Can Play These Songs With Chords, distributing them only on cassette. They were so well received, he decided to expand his vision and assemble some like-minded and literate types to form a band around his quirky, rather reflective compositions. Drafting guitarist/organist/producer/engineer Chri...
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...
Frank Sinatra transformed popular music. Often cited as the single finest interpreter of American standards, he influenced generations of vocalists such as Nat King Cole and Carmen McRae by focusing on phrasing and matching narrative nuance and emotional naturalism with amazing breathing control. In the 1930s, Sinatra starting bringing back "old" songs by such masters as Cole Porter while he was still a Big Band singer. He became a national institution in the '40s, and even though Ray Charles ha...
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...
Bob Dylan is on the short list of the most influential artists of the 20th century. He coupled a love for all forms of American popular and folk music with a personal and poetic songwriting style instead of relying on professional craftsmen or standard tunes. Influenced by Woody Guthrie, Dylan proved that you didn't have to be a technically perfect singer or musician to make brilliant pop music. The songs on 1963's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan catapulted the artist to stardom but he was alr...
Alicia Keys seemingly came out of nowhere in the summer of 2001, storming up the charts with her braids and heaping servings of soul. But Keys is no pre-fab diva; she's been studying music since age five and began writing songs at age 14. She wrote (or co-wrote) and produced most of the songs on her debut, Songs in a Minor, and subsequent singles have proven she's no one-hit wonder. She took home five Grammy Awards in 2002 (including Best New Artist and Song of the Year), and returned tri...
The age when televised talent contests were popular kingmakers has no better poster child than Leona Lewis, an English neo-soul singer and songwriter who won the third series of a British TV talent show called The X Factor and became a huge international pop star nearly overnight. Lewis began writing songs at 12 and winning local talent contests around London a few years later. Her big pipes earned her an instant following in the UK (here toothsome good looks probably didn't hurt either) ...
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...
Many accused Pearl Jam of being a mainstream hard rock band that happened to hop on the alt rock gravy train at its busiest stop (Grungeville circa late 1991/early 1992), thereby reaping the benefits of constant exposure on suddenly flannel-friendly MTV with hit videos for "Alive," "Even Flow" and, most notably, "Jeremy." In the wake of the unpredictable success of their multi-platinum anthem-fest/debut Ten, Eddie Vedder eventually got used to being a celebrity. Not coincidentally, the ba...
No rock performer has spoken with more authority on the human fallout of the American Dream than Bruce Springsteen. Darkness on the Edge of Town and Nebraska are American Gothics haunted by star-crossed lovers and noble souls hag-ridden by fate into crime, depression, and worst of all, ordinariness. But lest we forget, the original denim rocker has also written some of the most uplifting songs in AOR: every line of "Born to Run" and "Glory Days" offers an ideal place to hang your t...
In May of 2005, Carrie Underwood became the fourth winning contestant on the hugely popular TV show American Idol. Seemingly within seconds her first single was released, "Inside Your Heaven." Underwood has all the makings of a classic ballad belter, with an extremely powerful voice and a gift for emotiveness but her music seems geared towards the country crowd more than the teen crowd of fellow winner Kelly Clarkson or the contemporary R&B of Reuben Studdard, the show's second winner. Bu...
Michael Buble, the Canadian retro crooner, grew up listening to such influences as Stevie Wonder, Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin and Ella Fitzgerald. Egged on by his grandfather, Buble became a showbiz kid who loved performing and at age 17 he won the top prize in the Canadian Youth Talent Search. After releasing a number of independent albums, Buble went stateside and joined the touring company of the much-praised Broadway show Swing. After being featured as a nightclub singer in the movie <...
If you like your chanteuses liberally doused in Chartreuse, Amy Winehouse is someone to raise a salutatory snifter to. As renowned for her boozing exploits and plunging dress sizes as for her marked musical abilities, the Londoner has risen to prominence on the back of gritty, often bleak autobiographical work. Winehouse readily admits that she writes from direct experience, and with songs that revolve around doomed relationships ("Stronger than Me"), drink ("Rehab") and recreational drugs ("Add...
With her homespun charm, curly golden locks, and prodigious gift for songwriting, Taylor Swift is one of 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 young ch...
Van Morrison stands out in the youth-obsessed, disposable world of modern pop music. A grouchy fireplug of a man, he has earned a loyal following that's always kept guessing as to what direction he'll take next. Since the beginning, Morrison has ignored all fly-by-night fads and in doing so has amassed a timeless body of work. Coming out of Them's primal R&B-fueled Garage Rock, Morrison's 1968 Astral Weeks was a daring, exploratory work that painted a bleak picture of the acid generation,...
Colbie Caillat owes her early success to MySpace, which brought the soulful folk singer and songwriter from Malibu, California to the attention of millions of fans before she'd released a proper debut. When that debut, Coco, came in July 2007, the online buzz helped her become an instant success, and she quickly earned top spots on digital music services and the Billboard charts.
- Nate Cavalieri...
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