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How Al Green and Questlove Created “Lay It Down”: The Story Behind the 2008 Comeback Masterpiece
By 2006, Al Green had nothing left to prove and every reason to stay comfortable. He was the Reverend now, a pastor in Memphis, a Kennedy Center Honor waiting in his future, his place in the pantheon of soul secure since the day “Let’s Stay Together” first slid across the radio. He had already made…
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Eurythmics: The Hearts Behind the Ice-Cool Image
On stage, Eurythmics were the coolest thing in eighties pop: Annie Lennox with her cropped orange hair and tailored suits, staring down the camera like an android with a soul voice, and Dave Stewart beside her, the quiet architect with a guitar. The image was all control, all ice. Off stage, the reality was far…
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How Eurythmics Ended Up Scoring “1984”: The Soundtrack Nobody Wanted
In 1984, at the peak of their powers, Eurythmics were handed one of the most prestigious assignments in film music: scoring the big-screen adaptation of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” released in the very year of its title, a once-in-a-century alignment of art and calendar. What should have been a triumph became one of the messiest…
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Genesis: The Schoolboy Bond That Outlasted Fame
On March 26, 2022, at London’s O2 Arena, Phil Collins sat in a chair at center stage and told the crowd it was the last show Genesis would ever play. He could no longer stand for a full concert, let alone play the drums. His son Nic sat behind the kit instead. And out in…
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How Genesis Made “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”: The Album That Broke the Band
In the summer of 1974, Genesis rented a crumbling country house, moved in with their instruments, and tried to make the most ambitious record of their lives. What came out, four months later, was “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway,” a double album about a Puerto Rican street kid’s surreal journey through a subterranean New…
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Jon Bon Jovi: The Rock Star Who Married His High School Sweetheart
Rock stardom and lasting love are supposed to be incompatible. The road, the fame, the temptations, the decades, they are supposed to grind every romance into tabloid dust. Jon Bon Jovi never got that memo. The frontman who has spent forty years singing about runaways and prayers has been married to the same woman since…
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How Bon Jovi Survived the Nineties: The Making of “Keep the Faith”
In the autumn of 1991, the biggest rock band in America was barely a band at all. Bon Jovi had spent most of the previous decade on the road, sold tens of millions of records, and played to stadiums on every continent. They were also exhausted, estranged, and staring down a musical landscape that had…
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Janet Jackson: The Private Heart Behind the Spotlight
For four decades, Janet Jackson has been one of the most watched women on earth, and one of the least known. She grew up on television, became a pop revolutionary, survived a career-threatening public shaming, and did it all while keeping her inner life locked away from the cameras. The 2022 documentary that finally bore…
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How Janet Jackson Made “The Velvet Rope”: The Bravest Album of Her Life
By 1996, Janet Jackson had everything a pop star could want and almost nothing she actually needed. She had just renegotiated her Virgin Records contract for a reported $80 million, the largest recording deal in history at the time, making her the highest-paid musician in the world on paper. She was coming off a world…
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Gloria Gaynor: The Survivor Behind the Anthem
Everybody knows the voice. For nearly fifty years, Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” has been the soundtrack to breakups, recoveries, and second chances, sung in some twenty languages by people who may not know a thing about the woman singing it. But the anthem didn’t come from nowhere. It came from a woman who had…