I’m happy to see that new music is forthcoming from Josh Rouse, whose last album (Love in the Modern Age) came out in 2018. Rouse returns this summer with a side project called Isla, and a 9-track album titled The Mediterranean Gardener.
Isla is a solo effort, but different enough in sound and approach for Rouse to record it under a new name. He describes it as “improvised electronica” that he whipped together during his pandemic quarantine.
I was very excited last week to hear from John Mayer, in the form of both a new single and details about his next album, Sob Rock, due in July. Mayer’s last full-length album, The Search for Everything, dropped in early 2017, making this the longest draught between releases in his career.
Mayer did trickle out a few singles over the past four years, and it turns out all of them will be on this album. That’s a bit disappointing, as I’d prefer a whole batch of new songs. But I’ll take what I can get.
Happy birthday to frequent commenter Dana! And what better way to celebrate than with the new hit by global K-pop sensation BTS?
‘Butter,’ the band’s second English-language single, is rewriting the record books. It set world records for biggest YouTube music video debut and most streams for a music video in its first 24 hours (in both cases, the previous record holder was their previous English-language track, ‘Dynamite’).
Has a lineup change ever had a more profound effect on a band than the addition of Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks to Fleetwood Mac?
Before Buckingham and Nicks joined the band, Fleetwood Mac released ten albums over seven years, and most music fans wouldn’t recognize a single song from that span. Or at least not the Fleetwood Mac version — they did write and record ‘Black Magic Woman,’ which was a hit for Santana.
Following his record label’s tepid reaction to what might be his best album, 1993’s Human Wheels, John Mellencamp decided to go in a different direction.
1994’s Dance Naked is a bare-bones rock record. Recorded over two weeks, with most of its songs captured in one or two takes, its best-known track is a cover of the Van Morrison song ‘Wild Nights.’
