Ilana Kaplan is a music and culture writer/editor who lives in Brooklyn. In the past she was a culture reporter at The Independent and a contributing editor at PAPER. She has written for The New York Times, NPR, Rolling Stone, Billboard, Vanity Fair and more.
When it came to making his latest album, When the Music Stops, jxdn knew wanted to return to the art of storytelling. No chasing hits or trying to go viral on TikTok — it was all about the songs once again. "It's more valuable for me to love music than it is for my music to work online," jxdn, whose…
Long before Twenty One Pilots developed a cult following, the Columbus, Ohio natives were determined to not be put into a box. From their first EP, 2009's Johnny Boy, they've blended elements of emo, rap, alt-pop, electronica, incorporating hardcore and hip-hop into their shows. "No one knew where to put us," drummer Josh Dun told USA Today in 2014. "But…
Deryck Whibley didn't know Heaven :x: Hell was going to be Sum 41's final album when he began the process of making it. "I was just listening to it as a finished record to see how close it was to being done — and it was almost done — but I thought, 'This to me feels like a record that…
Back in the early aughts, pop-punk was largely homogenous: a sea of predominantly white men who took over the stages of Warped Tour in their black Converse, lamenting their ex-girlfriend or small-town existence with few exceptions. But 20 years later, the genre has shape-shifted and redefined itself — and it may be more omnipresent than ever. While pop-punk isn't necessarily…
The Song Of The Year GRAMMY Award honors the best releases in the music business, and the eight nominees for the golden gramophone at the 2024 GRAMMYs come from a variety of established singer/songwriters. From dance anthems to pop bops, ballads and R&B smashes, the nominees for Song Of The Year showcase the breadth of emotions of the past year.…
Olivia Rodrigo probably never imagined that a drive through the suburbs would become a rallying cry for anyone who's ever mourned a relationship. But when she released her debut single, the racing power ballad "drivers license," in January 2021, suddenly she had the biggest song in the world. "drivers license" broke streaming and chart records upon its release, debuting at…
Not every artist can say they've been on a sold-out arena tour before their debut album has even been released. But Eddie Benjamin can. The 20-year-old Australian singer/songwriter is currently opening for Justin Bieber on the first North American leg of the Justice World Tour — a slot he earned all on his own. First gaining attention in a rock…
The instant the power ballad "drivers license" was released in January 2021, Olivia Rodrigo ignited an internet craze. Perhaps it was her chilling vocals, or the nostalgia and pining so familiar to many listeners' teenage experiences. Whatever the hook, Rodrigo created a connection people were craving during the first half of the pandemic — and it was the beginning of…
The Strokes were impossible to ignore in the early aughts: they were synonymous with rock and roll. Formed in 1998, the band — comprised of Julian Casablancas, Nick Valensi, Albert Hammond Jr., Nikolai Fraiture, and Fabrizio Moretti — led the indie-rock revival, shaping a sound and ethos other artists would try to emulate. The group’s common thread happened to be Casablancas:…
Bebe Rexha has never been averse to sharing raw emotion. But with Better Mistakes, her second album, she dug even deeper. "I was coming to an acceptance of myself and being like 'This is what I've gone through, this is who I am,'" the singer/songwriter tells GRAMMY.com over Zoom from her home in Los Angeles. What that meant, Rexha says, was dissecting…
There are a few specific motifs that come to mind when reminiscing about the '90s: grunge, Spice Girls and, of course, boy bands. While the inception of boy bands had come long before the era, bringing along electric fandoms decades before, the '90s were really the first time when the boy band craze peaked. The first ones to lead the…
For Women's History Month 2021, GRAMMY.com is celebrating some of the women artists nominated at the 2021 GRAMMY Awards show. Today, we honor Dua Lipa, who's currently nominated for six GRAMMYs. There was so much to mourn in 2020: The last time we hugged our families, traveled to new places and swayed among sweaty strangers on a dance floor. But…
