Caryn Rose

In 1963, The Beatles made a short holiday recording for their fans: the first Beatles Christmas single.

Box sets. Super deluxe editions. Reissues. Whatever you want to call them, it is the season for record companies to give consumers the opportunity to spend their hard-earned cash on previously issued material in new formats, usually buttressed by music you haven’t heard or at least haven’t heard in this particular form.

The first large image you see when entering the first gallery of “Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,” the massive retrospective of Yoko Ono’s work currently on exhibit at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, is the large reproduction poster for her debut performance at Carnegie Hall...

With “Bread of Angels,” Patti Smith has finally given readers the long-awaited follow-up to 2010’s “Just Kids.” Unlike “M Train” (2015) and “Year of the Monkey” (2019), both of which mixed memoir with surrealism, “Bread of Angels” is presented as the next chapter of her life following the death of her husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith, in 1994, and Smith (Patti)’s return to performance, recording and public life.

When most people think “Bruce Springsteen,” the image that likely springs to mind for the average person is the Springsteen from 1984/5, at the height of “Born in the USA”’s stratospheric success, a guy in blue jeans and a white T-shirt with a bandanna around his head performing non-stop hits in front of a massive stadium crowd.

Sponsored by the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music (which is housed at Monmouth), the event was part of a multi-day series honoring the record’s role in Springsteen’s career and its place in American music history.

For the last 40-plus years, the holy grail for diehard Bruce Springsteen fans was something referred to as Electric Nebraska. The rumour circulated that there were full E Street Band versions of the songs from Springsteen’s 1982 solo acoustic release that were recorded, but remained unreleased and never leaked.

In a world that revolves around the confounding belief that modern humans can only process information being presented in 30-second clips, deciding to create a rock opera — on any topic — in 2025, let alone a concept record about ’60s counter-culture figure Dennis Hopper, is both cantankerous and bold. But it’s also completely unsurprising coming from Mike Scott, the leader of the musical ensemble known as The Waterboys.

Within the first 15 minutes of “Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery – the Untold Story,” a new documentary about the groundbreaking late ’90s touring music festival, viewers will learn that a tour that featured two female artists, headliner and opener, was referred to as a “pussy package.”

The first line of “Hard Headed Woman,” the new record from Margo Price, begins with a battle cry. There’s a high and lonesome fiddle sounding the alarm, before a gloriously defiant harmony vocal: “I’m a hard headed woman . . . and I don’t owe ya sh*t.”

Neil Young is on tour this summer with the chrome hearts (Micah Nelson — guitar, Corey McCormick — bass, Anthony LoGerfo — drums and Spooner Oldham — keyboards) on the continuation of what Young has dubbed the “Love Earth” tour. After a trip around the European festival circuit earlier this summer (including an appearance at Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage), the band arrived back home at the beginning of August.

When Sinéad O’Connor left the planet in July of 2023 at the age of 56, the internet coalesced into a digital wake, with feeds full of tributes, song quotes and memories. For every person posting about “Nothing Compares 2 U,” there were those who could immediately reference the songs she made that were not chart-topping, million-selling, MTV-at-the-top-of-every-hour hits.

Ana da Silva and Gina Birch of The Raincoats (Martyn Goodacre/Getty Images)
“You can’t tell the story of UK punk without The Raincoats.”
This is the opening statement of “Shouting Out Loud,” a fantastic new book about this important, culture-shifting band. Author Audrey Golden continues, listing the myriad other movements that The Raincoats are fundamental to, including: New York City’s downtown scene, Riot Grrrl, grunge, American indie pop, alternative rock, noise rock, queercore and the mod...

If you’re a Bruce Springsteen fan, at this point, you’ve likely heard all about his latest release, “Tracks II: The Lost Albums,” a collection of seven unreleased albums recorded from 1983 to 2018, a total of 83 new songs. But if that seems like an overwhelming abundance of riches, the Boss has kept you in his thoughts with “Lost and Found: Selections From The Lost Albums,” a single CD/2 LP release which whittles the tracklist down to only 20 songs, dealer’s choice. That boils down to three s...

You’re never too many songs into a Low Cut Connie show when bandleader Adam Weiner runs his hands across the piano keys and declares, “I love everybody in this room right now.” He’s also fond of declaring, “I love you so much, boys and girls.” He says it because he genuinely means it, it’s not a line, it’s not even shtick. Weiner says it repeatedly because it’s the vibe he wants to create in the room he’s working in. It’s corny, sure, but it’s also sincere and true.