Scenes from Madonna’s first major tour and an author struggling to explain the 26-year-old’s massive, surging appeal.

“By the time we got to Woodstock 99 …” In a grim finale, the nineties get their Altamont.

The most successful songwriter of the last twenty years is a forty-four year old Swede, Max Martin.

A day in the life of Mount Eerie’s Phil Elverum, in the wake of the sudden death of his wife when their daughter was four months old.

Twenty-five years after her career-making album, Liz Phair is still writing songs first and foremost for herself.

“Success for us will be determined by our ability to move faster than everyone else in this space.”

Steven Tyler, Julien Baker, Ben Harper, Jason Isbell, Joe Walsh, and other sober musicians on how to thrive creatively without drugs or booze.

Where words fail, there is music.

A profile of the songwriter.

National economies collapse; species go extinct; political movements rise and fizzle. But—somehow, for some reason—Weird Al keeps rocking.

Musicians are in peril, at the mercy of giant monopolies that profit off their work.

On Taylor Swift’s passive-aggressive lyrics, the life of the writer, and the pain of middle school.

Joyce Hatto, unknown to even the most ardent classical music collectors until late in her life, released a string of incredible performances of great works, distributed by her husband’s mail-order CD business. But how was it possible for her to record difficult works at such a dizzying rate? And if wasn’t her playing, who was it?

A youth set to the shifting sounds of CCM, Christian Contemporary Music:

This, by the way, is considered the ultimate sign of quality CCM, even amongst Christians: the ability to pass as secular. Every band’s goal was to have teenagers stop their grooving mid-song and exclaim, like a soda commercial actress who’s just realized she’s been drinking Diet, “Wait, this is Christian?”

Nobody noticed Connie Converse when she was trying to get a record deal in New York in the 1950s. Nobody stopped her when she left her life in Michigan in 1974, never to be seen again. Today, her music is heard by tens of thousands.

A profile of Prince as Diamonds and Pearls was released, based mostly off a brief phone call, all the access he’ll allow.

Inside North Dorcester’s RJam Productions studio, where Nate and Gary Smith churn out rap demos for $500/tape.

A profile of the D.O.C., the rapper’s rapper, who ghostwrote for Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.

Kaskade is a 44-year-old devout Mormon father of three who has never touched a drink. He makes over $500,000 a night as an EDM performer.

A profile of Killer Mike, the self-described “gangsta rap suburban father” whose speech about Ferguson went viral last fall.

The rocky career and enduring appeal of country legend Charlie Rich, “the missing link between Elvis Presley and Ray Charles.”

A decade later, on the then twenty-three-year-old Van Morrison’s 1968 album Astral Weeks.

On Abbey Road studios, the Beatles, and modern record production.

A profile of the singer as he returns to the stage for the first time in a dozen years.

The bizarre story of the disappearance of “downtown legend” John Lurie after a former friend resolved to take his life.