Jim Beaugez is a music, audio and features writer with bylines in Rolling Stone, Smithsonian, Guitar Player, Guitar World, Pro Sound News and other media. He created "My Life in Five Riffs" for Guitar Player, a documentary series that traces contemporary musicians back to their sources of inspiration.
David Byrne has built a career on movement. Sometimes that's literal, like the folding bike he rides through New York traffic or into the lobby of a world-class museum. More often, though, it's the creative momentum that has carried him from one medium to another for nearly five decades. The prolific musician, visionary and performer is still happily in motion…
Some musical artists are so associated with a specific geography, it seems impossible to separate them. Would Christopher Wallace be The Notorious B.I.G. without his beloved Brooklyn, or could James Marshall Hendrix have become Jimi without the psychedelic London club scene? The same is true of singer/songwriter Tyler Childers, whose roots in rural eastern Kentucky — often characterized as an…
In the back of his tour bus somewhere in Toronto, country music star Dierks Bentley is overcome by the baggage he's accumulated. But despite the way it sounds, he's not looking for a way out. Instead, he simply tosses it out of his way and finds a place to sit. "You know, we don't call this the back lounge, we…
Time may be the great equalizer, but the concepts of equality and unity at the core of the Doobie Brothers' creative partnerships are truly timeless. And on their new album, Walk This Road — the first to feature the foursome of Tom Johnston, Michael McDonald, Pat Simmons, and John McFee in 40-plus years — the group's melting pot of funk-informed…
When Jimmy Buffett passed away on Sept. 1, 2023 at age 76, the decorated singer/songwriter, performer, author and entrepreneur left behind a legacy that unified a swath of musical genres and people. The man behind "Margaritaville" — the song and later the brand — and so many other tunes that bridged folk sensibilities with country and rock touches, sometimes called…
Haters take note: nothing fires up a country boy like HARDY more than a naysayer. And this redneck has a long memory. Despite the coveted catalog of country music hits to his credit — tunes he wrote for artists like Florida Georgia Line, Blake Shelton and Morgan Wallen, plus his own work as a solo artist — HARDY's third album…
Editor's Note: This article was updated on Feb. 7, 2025 to reflect Jimmy Carter's posthumous win at the 2025 GRAMMYs. Presidents and politicians aren't the first people usually associated with GRAMMY season, but surprisingly, several of them — and first ladies, too — have added golden gramophones to their collections of awards. In fact, at the 2025 GRAMMYs, the late…
If 2023 wasn't the biggest year ever for mainstream success in country music, it came mighty close. Across the three major fronts in the music industry — live concerts, music streams and sales, and chart performance — country music reminded audiences why it's a vital American music form and a conversation starter in our culture. According to Billboard, 48 years…
Country singer/songwriter Charlie Worsham didn't find immediate success after arriving in Nashville in the late aughts — but 15 years later, he couldn't be happier about his luck. "One of the best gifts I could have ever had was a practice run at all this, where I shared the victories and the losses with this band of brothers," says Worsham, who…
For Pamela Dawson, the recipient of the 2023 Music Educator Award, making music isn’t just about creating sound waves — it’s about how the movements a person makes can affect the sounds they create. As director of choral music at DeSoto High School in DeSoto, Texas, she uses kinesthesia to help her students find their own voices. “With choral music,…
Since 2015, FOR KING & COUNTRY have won four GRAMMYs and only lost twice. One of those losses came in 2017, when Hillary Scott & The Scott Family's "Thy Will" took home the golden gramophone for Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song. The artists meet again in the same category at the 2023 GRAMMYs — but this time, their names are…
Country music isn't always heralded as a haven for artists who fall outside the genre's accepted mainstream. But 2022 saw country music claim a bigger piece of the cultural pie than it has in recent years. Artists are discovering new paths to success, driven by the meme-ification of culture and music and templated by stars like Walker Hayes, whose GRAMMY-nominated…
Country music's evolution is well represented in the 2023 GRAMMY nominees for Best Country Solo Performance. From crossover pop hooks to red-dirt outlaw roots, the genre's most celebrated elements are on full display — thanks to rising stars, leading ladies and country icons. Longtime hitmaker Miranda Lambert delivered a soulful performance on the rootsy ballad "In His Arms," an arrangement…
Nathaniel Rateliff knows the power music can have in a young person’s life. After all, the leader of the soulful Denver-based octet Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats gained the confidence he now uses onstage from his middle school choir class. "My teacher was super helpful and also saw [that] I wasn't very confident as a singer," the charismatic crooner…
Editor's Note: *The 2022 GRAMMYs Awards show, officially known as the 64th GRAMMY Awards, has been rescheduled *to Sunday, April 3, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. The below article was updated on Tuesday, Jan. 18, to reflect the new show date and location. The highest compliment a fan could pay AC/DC's 2020 album Power Up — the band's first without founding rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, the…
Editor's Note: The 2022 GRAMMYs Awards show, officially known as the 64th GRAMMY Awards, has been rescheduled to Sunday, April 3, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. The below article was updated on Tuesday, Jan. 18, to reflect the new show date and location. There's no denying that the social ills that came out of 2020 and 2021 had a profound impact on…
Thrash's takeover of heavy metal wasn't complete in the mid-1980s, but its dominance and influence on the genre can be traced to the events of one triumphant and tragic year: 1986. An aggressive collision of punk rock energy with a generation's worth of hard rock riffs, thrash metal had already been peeling the paint off underground rock clubs in San…
It's the one with "Stairway." That's all millions of fans have needed to know when picking up Led Zeppelin's best-selling fourth album, which was released 50 years ago this month. That's true in part because the record sleeve itself didn't give them much else to go on. The packaging was intentionally mysterious, without any words or insignias on the cover,…
If rock bands earned royalties every time someone declared "rock is dead," there would be no need to gripe about Spotify's payment structure. The claim is made. A lot. At the dawn of the 21st century, popular music experienced yet another predictable "rock is dead" moment, the latest in a long line of allegations made by artists and the media…
Second chances are hard to come by in the music business, and the 1990s alt-rock gold rush was no different. For every Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots success story, there were bands like Fig Dish and For Love Not Lisa, whose albums failed to launch. And yet there was Jimmy Eat World, an emo-punk band scooped by Capitol Records…
