In this current series, we’ve been living in the neighborhood of giants—artists who didn’t just have hits, but re-wired what popular music could be.Today… someone different again.A man who refused categories, ignored rules, b...

In this series, we’ve spent time with giants—singers, songwriters, bands, entire movements. Some of them changed my life from a distance, through vinyl and radio and the accidental sacrament of a TV set in the living room.Today’s sub...

This is the story of Bruce Springsteen—“The Boss”—a kid from a working-class town who turned everyday American lives into epic songs, who built a career on sweat, loyalty, doubt, faith, and three-hour marathons onstage that left entire arena...

Today we are stepping straight into four decades of controversy, choreography, and calculated control.Madonna.Not just “the Queen of Pop,” but an artist who has treated her own life as a long, shape-shifting performance about...

If you've been following this series of modern day musicians, you may remember a concert I mentioned with the Rolling Stones. It is true that the Stones were able to hold the audience and follow their hands, so to speak. But even before Mick...

Today, we turn to an artist who never seemed entirely earthbound.David Bowie.For some listeners, Bowie is the sound of discovery: that first moment you realize a song, a costume, a performance can make the world feel bigger than the town you...

Tonight we turn to a musician whose name has become shorthand for guitar mastery, blues devotion, and, depending on who you ask, the very idea of the rock “guitar hero.”Eric Clapton.For some listeners, he is the ultimate guit...

In this podcast episode, we’ll walk through where they came from, what shaped them, how they crashed into the United States—and then spend some real time inside Tommy: not just as an album, but as a story that refused to stay put, leaping fr...

In this series, we’ve been spending time with artists who didn’t just make hits—they changed the language of modern music.Today, we turn to a group that took blues, folk, volume, and mystery… and built a sound so iconic that entire g...

Today we meet an artist who doesn’t blow the doors off with volume or choreography, but with something quieter—and in many ways, just as radical.A woman alone with a guitar in an open tuning.A voice that can sound like a bell, a ...

Our story begins not with sequins but with a housing project.Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard both grew up in Detroit’s Brewster-Douglass projects, one of the first federally funded housing developments for Black families. Diana Ross...

Today, we turn to a musician whose care there were moves separations long stretches were Jimmy simply simply had to figure things out on his own no one was buying but whose shadow is so long that every electric guitarist since has had to wal...

Today we turn to a voice that has become a kind of measuring stick. A singer you can’t ignore, can’t casually imitate, and certainly can’t replace.Aretha Louise Franklin.You can line up all the adjectives: legendary, iconic, ...

If you grew up in a certain era, his name isn’t just a performer on a poster. It’s a weather system. A shift in air pressure. A bulletin from the fault line where art, politics, faith, doubt, youth, age, and trouble all collided.And ...

Today’s pairing may look odd until you start really listening:The Beach Boys and The Grateful Dead.Two California bands. Two American institutions. Two completely different ideas of what a band is for.One built pop ca...

Today I want to put two names in the same frame—Joan Baez and Taylor Swift—not because they sound alike or have the same values but because they tell us how the culture around music, fandom, and accessibility to their shows have changed in l...

In a recent episode, we spent time with a man who changed popular culture and then became a warning about what fame, isolation, and addiction can do to a single human body—Elvis Presley. Brilliant, iconic, but ultimately tragic.Today...

I’d like to begin, not in Liverpool or Hamburg or Abbey Road, but in an American living room—mine, and millions of others—on a Sunday night in 1964.It’s February 9th. The television is a piece of furniture. The picture is black and w...

Today we’re stepping into complicated territory.Not a personal hero of mine.Not a composer whose scores I pore over, or a bandleader whose arrangements I quote with delight or a singer I enjoy listening to.We’ve just ...

Before we talk about charts and riffs and influence, I want to begin with a memory.Years ago, I saw Chuck Berry live at the Paramount Theatre in Manhattan. I later learned that a few years after that, the Paramount Theater was ...

Birthdays - as well as the  500th episode of a podcast - are times that generally you might want to slow down and look at the past, the present, and the future. Using that logic, I'd like to touch on the past of this podcast by calling ...

Leonard Bernstein played piano from age 10, and attended Boston Latin School and Harvard University.  So he studied music theory before studying conducting and orchestration. In 1943, he was appointed assistant conductor of the New York...

Today, we’re going to begin in Hoboken, New Jersey, walk through the apprenticeship years, and then trace how partnerships, heartbreak, movies, and business instincts turned a talented singer into a blueprint many still follow.Frank ...

Today's episode is the first in a look at several dozen musicians who lived after 1900, roughly in chronological order.  And let me emphasize this is a extremely subjective look - it seems like every time I would look at my list, I f wo...

Merci, Monsieur Bartley. I was born in 1875 in the little town of Ciboure, in the Basque country of southwestern France. My father was an inventive man, an engineer with a passion for mechanics. My mother was of Basque and Spanish descent, ...