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CMJ Owner Adam Klein’s Professional Past Raises Questions Over Music...
On the afternoon of July 6, 1993, Adam Klein was arrested as he stepped off a plane at the Johannesburg airport. He was charged with fraud, theft, and forgery. A former studentradical and labor leader,...
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Whatever Happened to Young Maylay, the Rapper at the Heart of Grand Theft...
You know Young Maylay from Grove Street. He’s the laidback South Angelino who gave hardened neighborhood hustler Carl “CJ” Johnson his voice and a huge chunk of his disposition in Rockstar Games’ Grand...
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Prince and Lil B Wrestlers Exist. They Are Miserable to Watch.
Wrestling is this magnificent soap opera that’s all catchphrases and stupid jokes and insults and backflips and literal fireworks. It forces you to pick favorites, where you just point at someone and...
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Inuk Throat Singer Tanya Tagaq Will Make You See Canada in a Chilling New Light
Tanya Tagaq admits that she’s feeling “soft” today. The light from the window illuminates her slightly bashful smile when she says that, lying on a couch in Montreal and holding a screen to her face as...
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The Stories Behind the Photos on 6 Iconic Album Covers
The portrait album cover is as common as it is routinely unremarkable. But sometimes, the right pairing of photographer and musician leads to career-defining imagery for both parties—sights that...
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Why Exactly Did the Police Nix Boiler Room’s Weekender Festival?
It was a grand experiment—bring New York’s underground to the country, trading the city’s sweaty clubs for a lakeside locale nestled in Pennsylvania’s Poconos Mountains. The Ray-Ban x Boiler Room...
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10 Pitchfork Staffers on Songs that Ease Election Anxiety
About a month ago, the American Psychological Association announced that 52 percent of adults in this country are coping with high levels of election-related stress. Apparently it has grown so bad, we...
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Tracing Lorde’s Little Clues About Her Sophomore Album
A little-known 16-year-old from New Zealand owned the summer of 2013 with a catchy song that criticized lifestyles of the rich and famous. Naturally, she was rewarded with riches and fame. But Ella...
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Moses Sumney Believes in the Life-Affirming Powers of Oprah
Our interview series Icebreaker features artists talking about things—some strange, some amusing, some meaningful—that just might reveal their true selves. This edition features otherworldly L.A....
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What Pitchfork Is Listening to Today
For many, today has been difficult to endure. Though Pitchfork is not a political publication and music may seem like a trivial topic right now, certain songs and albums are what helped many of us get...
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Toni Braxton’s “Un-Break My Heart” Is the Perfect Karaoke Song
People who say karaoke is art are both precious and wrong. Karaoke is a sport. It involves turning art into a very fun and loud game. Like other sports, the premise of karaoke is predicated on an...
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Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”: Music’s Greatest Work in Progress
It was 2014, a few days before his 80th birthday, and despite his reputation as the poet laureate of despair, Leonard Cohen was in a jovial mood. His album Popular Problems was coming out later in the...
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7 Covers Leonard Cohen Made His Own
With news last night of Leonard Cohen’s death at age 82, less than a month after releasing his new album You Want It Darker, the air will be thick with the many powerful covers of Cohen’s songs. So...
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Leonard Cohen’s Grand Tour and His Brilliant Final Act
Pity the man who doesn’t travel with his own Persian rug. That was the first sign of Leonard Cohen at Coachella 2009—a deep red relic, unfurled carefully on a dusty side stage, then fussed over and...
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After the Election, With the Julie Ruin and the Thermals
Less than 48 hours after Donald Trump became President-elect of the United States, Kathleen Hanna was dancing. The Julie Ruin singer and feminist punk icon appeared onstage at New York’s Irving Plaza...
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10 Classic Songs from the Loft, David Mancuso’s Influential Dance Party
David Mancuso slipped off this earth last night, another sadness to add to the litany of 2016. While Mancuso never sang, played an instrument, or produced an album, his influence on music is as seismic...
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Kim Gordon, tUnE-yArDs, and 6 Other Musicians on Why Yoko Ono Matters
For the times when we feel the most misrepresented, powerless, and alone, we need art made by outsiders. We need songs and films and performances that tell us there is something more than the status...
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At Club to Club Festival, Dance Music’s Growing Embrace of Futurism Reigns
At the southernmost Metro stop in Turin, Italy, Lingotto’s fading star attraction towers four stories high across a half-kilometer of urban space. The architectural marvel, also named Lingotto, stands...
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Let Classic Reggae Album Covers Show You London, Then and Now
Any history of reggae going global must trace a path directly from Kingston to London. It’s this connection that photographer Alex Bartsch hopes to make clear in his forthcoming book, Covers: Retracing...
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“Uptown Funk” Lawsuit Could Be Crucial Amid Pop’s Copyright Wars
Last year, a jury found that Robin Thicke’s 2013 song “Blurred Lines” had copied from Marvin Gaye’s 1977 hit “Got to Give It Up,” and a judge ordered Thicke and co-writer Pharrell to pay more than $5.3...
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