An instrument’s impact on a handful of Texans.

Inside the cluttered Los Angeles apartment of lo-fi auteur Ariel Pink.

How the icon’s personal struggles with identity fed his art.

A few days in the life of Miley Cyrus.

A profile of Brian Eno as he transitioned into installation art.

On the business of Muzak.

An oral history of Gucci Mane’s many rises and falls.

Looking for the ghosts of the Allman Brothers Band in Macon.

Kurt Cobain’s suicide sent his fans – and the local media – into a tailspin.

Alanis Morissette, before the making of Jagged Little Pill.

A posthumous profile of Whitney Houston.

A profile of Fiona Apple.

The story of an opportunity missed.

Watching the jazz singer in New York.

"And far from the ivory towers of music academia, mostly on his blog, Elgar’s Enigma Theme Unmasked, Bob Padgett has emerged as perhaps the most prolific and dogged of all Enigma seekers. His solution, which has caught the attention of classical music scholars, lies at the bottom of a rabbit hole of anagrams, cryptography, the poet Longfellow, the composer Mendelssohn, the Shroud of Turin, and Jesus, all of which he believes he found hiding in plain sight in the music".

A week with DJ Avicii.

The singer is more uncompromising than ever.

The making of Blonde on Blonde in Nashville.

Reimagining the sound and slang of Los Angeles.

A singer keeps getting close to stardom. And then something falls apart.

Afternoons with Altman and Allen.

For a year or two during the mid-1970s, living in New York, I was a moviegoer. I was in my early 20s then, working off and on, driving a cab, setting up the stage at rock shows, writing occasional pieces for The Village Voice. But there were also long empty spells. I tried to write some fiction and couldn’t, tried to read and could—but only for so long. I ended up going to the movies.

Why our old narratives about race and culture “just don’t fit anymore.”

The early days of Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers.

A profile of Scooter Braun.

The legacy of a phantom bluesman.