Ken Tucker
Stories
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A roundup of holiday music includes offerings from Brad Paisley and others
Whether you're anxiously awaiting Christmas or already wishing the holidays would be over, here's a selection of music that lets you know you're not alone.
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3 new songs sound nothing like the pop music currently dominating the charts
These love songs — Neko Case's "Oh, Neglect...," Valerie June's "Runnin' and Searchin'" and Olivia Dean's "Man I Need" — each express a refreshingly realistic ambivalence toward romance.
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'Fresh Air' marks the 50th anniversary of Patti Smith's landmark album, 'Horses'
Smith's debut album ushered in a new era of rock and roll. Critic Ken Tucker reviews the new anniversary edition of Horses, plus we listen back to Terry Gross' 1996 and 2010 interviews with Smith.
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'The Life of a Showgirl' spotlights Taylor Swift as she moves away from heartache
Swift's previous albums focused on the love she yearned for. The dozen songs on her latest release combine to form a picture of true love found, tested and proven strong.
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Fall's music highlights include new releases from Big Thief, Zach Top and Laufey
Big Thief has a new album, as does Zach Top, a young country singer with roots in old country. And the Icelandic-Chinese singer Laufey brings a classical-music and jazz influence to her pop songs.
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50 years after 'Mothership Connection,' George Clinton remains an artistic force
Clinton is the leader of two important funk bands, Parliament and Funkadelic. In 1975, Parliament released Mothership Connection, a loose concept album about funk musicians as galactic invaders.
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The sound of summer is women who've had it with problematic men
The three-sister band HAIM and pop singer and TikTok star Addison Rae are practicing "emotional passive resistance" this summer — and it sounds great.
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On 'Tracks II,' Springsteen shares a host of lost albums -- and a new part of himself
At its best, this capacious grab-bag of 83 songs, some dating back to the 1980s, yields not just good music, but songs that seem unlike anything else Springsteen has ever done.
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Willie Nelson and Ken Pomeroy make beautiful music for tumultuous times
On Cruel Joke, Pomeroy, age 22, sings with an acoustic twang about farms and cowboys. The 92-year-old Nelson's Oh What a Beautiful World is an album of covers of songs by Rodney Crowell.
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Remembering Pere Ubu's David Thomas, a frontman who preserved chaos
Thomas' April 23 death at age 71 brings to a close one of the most significant avant-garde experiments ever conducted within the confines of pop music. Rock critic Ken Tucker reflects on his legacy.