Julian Ring is a Recording Academy/GRAMMY.com contributor.
Streaming is saving the music industry and vinyl is in. So say the numbers, anyway. According to Nielsen Music, listeners racked up 400 billion streams in 2017, a catalyst for the industry's overall growth by more than 12 percent. Meanwhile, as album sales continue to plummet, vinyl LPs have made up a larger share of the market each year since…
Arriving in New York to record her sophomore album, Lorde faced what seemed like an impossible task: to somehow create a musical statement as honest as her first. The New Zealand native — real name Ella Yelich-O'Connor — was just 16 when she released Pure Heroine, a widely acclaimed pop culture critique and snapshot of suburban youth. But after a…
The blues genre is many things to many people: a sound, a style, a spirit. It's emotion expressed in musical form, hollered and wailed by generations of singers and instrumentalists. Nearly every form of American popular song, from jazz to rock to hip-hop, has its roots in blues music and lyricism. And while its earliest innovators might not recognize the…
