Features
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It's All Good for Kate Pierson
It\’s hard to believe that the B-52s will mark their 40th anniversary next year. With one of the most recognizable voices in any generation floating atop some of the most classic novelty songs in all of music, one of the band\’s founding members, Kate Pierson, long ago carved out her place in the pop pantheon.…
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From Day Drunks to Diehards, Cory Branan Makes His Way
In alt-country circles, singer-songwriter Cory Branan is as respected as they come — even outside the city limits of Nashville. Like most budding Southern musicians, the Mississippi native made his way to Tennessee and, eventually, carved out a place for himself in the broad country music scene. But in his younger years, he was playing…
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Meghan Trainor Is More Than Playing
Listening to Meghan Trainor, it is hard to believe she hails from Nantucket, Massachusetts. It is easy to believe, though, that she only recently turned 21. The Grammy-nominated pop singer and songwriter gushes with youthful exuberance over the phenomenal success she has had in the past nine months. Indeed, 2014 was quite a year for…
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Brandi Carlile: More to the Story
Most singers blessed with robust voices these days are content to fly their melodies as high and wide as possible, forsaking the song for the histrionics and allowing auto-tune to do the rest with no real craft to be found anywhere in the process. But, for Brandi Carlile, her voice is the instrument through which…
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Let Freedom Sing: At the Top of Their Lungs
“All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.” – George Bernard Shaw As the 1990s rolled in, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) continued to employ…
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Let Freedom Sing: A Change Is Trying to Come
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.\” – Harry S. Truman…
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Let Freedom Sing: When Roots Music Says the Unsayable
As history continues to repeat itself in the race-plagued streets of the United States, and on the war-weary battlefields of the Middle East, people are again turning toward music to voice feelings that cannot be spoken, to comfort hearts that cannot be healed. Music has always been a touchstone for trying moments such as these…
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Folk Alley's Top 10 Folk and Americana Albums Of 2014
From legends to upstarts, the year in roots music had something for everyone, with highlights ranging from the solo acoustic sketches of Steve Dawson to the orchestra-backed epics of First Aid Kit. One of the threads tying together several of our top 10 albums (chosen by our friends at Folk Alley) was artists who\’d made…
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The Autumn of Annie Lennox
Although their first album, 1981\’s In the Garden, didn\’t catch on fire, the Eurythmics lit the world all the way up with their second strike, 1983\’s Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). And, for the past 30-something years, Annie Lennox has continued to prove herself worthy of our collective adoration and admiration for her work…
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Kelly Does Her Best: Top 10 Roots Music Records of 2014
In a year chock full of truly great records, it\’s hard to narrow it down to 10 stand-outs. But what\’s wonderful about the leveling field of music is that newcomers like Jonah Tolchin, Hozier, and Parker Millsap who really deliver the goods can sidle up alongside icons like Ani DiFranco, Rosanne Cash, and Lee Ann…