Music News

Music & Culture

After Latest Album Release, Taylor Swift Will Rerecord All Her Old Songs

6:46am August 22, 2019

Taylor Swift's newest album is released on Friday. Next, Swift plans to rerecord all her old songs after she failed to secure her original master recordings when her Big Machine Records was acquired.

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Music & Culture

Turning The Tables: Drawing Inspiration From Billie Holiday

5:00am August 22, 2019

For this week's installment of the NPR Music series Turning the Tables, we hear how the music of Billie Holiday inspired a group of poets, including Caroline Randall Williams.

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Miles Davis performing at Newport Jazz Festival in 1969.

Music & Culture

Looking Back On 'Bitches Brew': The Year Miles Davis Plugged Jazz In

6:04pm August 21, 2019

NPR's Audie Cornish talks with Christian McBride about the impact of Miles Davis' seminal album Bitches Brew — an electrified sound that ushered in decades of jazz fusion 50 years ago.

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Music & Culture

Appreciation: Harmonica Virtuoso Tommy Reilly Was Born A Century Ago

6:18am August 21, 2019

Music commentator Miles Hoffman remembers classical harmonica player Tommy Reilly on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

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Billie Eilish's "bad guy" is officially the No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100.

Music & Culture

Billie Eilish's 'Bad Guy' Is The New No. 1 Song On The Billboard Hot 100

5:15am August 21, 2019

by Milton Guevara

Billie Eilish hits No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 with her song "bad guy," making her the first artist born in this century to top the chart.

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Music & Culture

Showtime Helps Motown Records Mark Its 60th Anniversary

6:37am August 20, 2019

The Showtime documentary — Hitsville: The Making of Motown — tells the story of the most successful soul/R&B record label in music history from the viewpoint of Berry Gordy and Smokey Robinson.

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John Coltrane, photographed in his backyard in Queens, New York in 1963.

A Lost Album From John Coltrane, With Thanks To A French-Canadian Director

1:24pm August 16, 2019

by Nate Chinen

Coltrane recorded the album in New Jersey, at the admiring behest of a Québécois filmmaker named Gilles Groulx, who used it to score his docufictional film Le chat dans le sac.

Fans sit atop a painted bus at the Woodstock Music Festival in Bethel, N.Y., in August 1969.

Music & Culture

How Woodstock Changed The Little Town Of Bethel, N.Y.

9:35am August 15, 2019

by Karen Michel

Fifty years later, the site of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair is on the National Register of Historic Places. For some who were there, it's a place of pilgrimage and memories.

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Music & Culture

A$AP Rocky Found Guilty Of Assault

4:31pm August 14, 2019

by Andrew Limbong

The rapper was convicted of assault by a Swedish court but will serve no additional jail time in a case that has drawn widespread attention from the music industry and President Trump.

Music & Culture

Korean Pop Superstar Boy Band Takes A Break From Performing

8:07am August 14, 2019

Some bittersweet news from the world of K-pop: The seven-member boy band BTS announced that the band is taking a break from releasing music and performing.

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