Your memory would be almost full too if you’d lived a life like McCartney’s, experiences from which form the foundation of this satisfying new album. The Beatle great plays most of the instruments here, conjuring the simple pleasures of albums like 1989’s “Flowers in the Dirt” on the mandolin-flavored “Dance Tonight” and the bubbly […]
“Ring the Alarm,” Beyonce’s disgruntled-female anthem of 2006, was designed to take the normally tame vocalist out of her comfort zone and reveal her aggression. Rihanna’s third album, “Good Girl Gone Bad,” is like that times 10. The Barbados-bred singer eschews her signature Island-flavored joints, opting for poppy anthems and upbeat grooves. Playing the […]
Between an unshakeable screw-you personality, his eternal irritation of wholesome types everywhere and simply the fact that he’s still determined and uncompromising more than a decade into an uneven career, there is something very likable about Marilyn Manson. It’s easy to root for him, and he makes it even easier on this cinematic soundtrack […]
As Big & Rich’s hick-hop sidekick leaps toward rap-metal on his second album, his country influence shrinks to occasional fiddle fills and square dance calls while his charmingly clueless rhyme flow triangulates through a ’90s top 40 universe bounded by Coolio, Crazy Town and Fun Lovin’ Criminals. The most energetic track, “Blackneck Boogie,” sounds […]
The epitome of vocal interpretation was embodied in Ella Fitzgerald. Whether getting her jazz groove on, scatting nimbly across a few bars or colorfully reinterpreting pop standards, Fitzgerald, who died in 1996, could do it all. That versatility is at the heart of this album, one in a series of releases that are part […]
Marty Stuart plays Rick Rubin to Porter Wagoner’s Johnny Cash on this 17-track set, which brings the legend back to secular country for the first time in seven years, after a series of gospel releases. Like Rubin, Stuart is smart in not overproducing the disc, instead letting the 79-year-old Wagoner rule the proceedings with […]
