Few Smashing Pumpkins fans realized it at the time, but the group’s 1995 double LP, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, was the start of a loose storyline about a character known as Zero, who was reborn as Glass on 2000’s Machina/The Machines of God. Two decades later, Billy Corgan …
Read More »Mitski Had to Quit Music to Love It
M itski has been having nightmares. The 31-year-old musician has always suffered from performance-anxiety dreams, but lately they’ve gotten more terrifying, more elaborate. During one in particular, her cat was stuck in a tree, and she was late to soundcheck. When she finally arrived at the venue, she found out …
Read More »The Lost Diary of Anthony Bourdain
On June 29, 2014, at 8:02 p.m. ET, a user named NooYawkCity made the first of what would come to be many posts to a popular martial-arts forum on reddit.com. It was titled “58 year old white belt”: I’ve been training about a year, and only recently gotten solidly hooked. …
Read More »'House of Gucci'? OK. House of Gaga? Hell Yes!
We can’t confirm the exact number, but by conservative estimates, we counted roughly a half-dozen different movies going on within the chic hallways and glamorous wings of House of Gucci, sometimes rubbing up seductively against each other and often colliding head-on, leaving everyone slightly dazed. A quick rundown: -The true-crime …
Read More »Portland Cop Who Was Caught on Video Bashing the Head of a Protest Medic Won't Be Charged With a Crime
A Portland cop who chased down and beat a protest medic, in one of the most harrowing incidents of police violence from the city’s Black Lives Matter protests last year, will not face criminal charges. The decision — announced in a news dump last Friday, prior to the three-day Labor …
Read More »Rick James' 'Bitchin' Documentary: 10 Things We Learned
After years of trying to funk his way to stardom, Rick James finally broke through in 1978 on the back of a pair of dynamite singles: “You and I,” an eight-minute dance-floor workout that includes a lovely, soaring falsetto kiss-off (“they all can go to hell”), and “Mary Jane,” the …
Read More »How Vaccines and Masks Are Making Broadway Safe Again
The standing ovation was inevitable. Not just because audiences getting to their feet and applauding has felt perfunctory and expected for decades. Pass Over is being lauded as the first play staged on Broadway since the coronavirus pandemic forced all live performances to stop in March 2020. And at the …
Read More »How Noname Is Reimagining Fame (and Everything Else)
Fatimah Nyeema Warner has been a homeowner for two weeks, a fact she calls “a mindfuck, for sure.” Sunshine pours into the 29-year-old’s modest, comfortable home from a sliding door leading to a small, fenced-in yard. Better known as the rapper Noname, Fatimah is turning one of the bedrooms into …
Read More »Justin Theroux's Great Escape
“Oh man, this . . . I’m so sorry, but this is fucking crazy. It’s just … It’s so compelling.” Justin Theroux is halfway through answering a question about the price of fame before he raises his eyebrows, and, as surreptitiously as humanly possible, turns his head to glance at the person behind us. We’re sitting …
Read More »Maxwell Wasn't Sure He Wanted to Be a Star. 'Urban Hang Suite' Left Him No Choice
In the early 1990s, Stuart Matthewman, the writer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist known for his work in Sade, heard a remarkable demo: a ballad that stretched out over nearly seven minutes, making room for daredevil falsetto and a bass line as elegant as a spiral staircase, building to a description of …
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