It’s long been noted that British folks with very thick speaking accents often sound very American when singing. In 1983, a British sociolinguist named Peter Trudgill studied the phenomenon and concluded the disparity in inflection probably owed to the fact that the British singers were so deeply influenced by…

Gang of Four guitarist Andy Gill‘s death in February marked the end of an era, and, incidentally, the beginning of a pretty crummy year. After the legendary and influential guitarist passed away of pneumonia, his obituaries noted that he was listening to mixes for a new album from his…

More than four decades in, the Pretenders have a sound. Like Willie Nelson or Louis Armstrong, lead singer Chrissie Hynde has a voice that’s instantly recognizable. The jangly, slightly overdriven guitar sound of James Honeyman-Scott, who passed away in 1982, influenced everyone from R.E.M.’s Peter Buck to The Smith’s…

Ennio Morricone at the Estadio Bicentenario de la Florida on Nov. 26, 2013. Courtesy: Gonzallo Tello/Wikicommons. Celebrated soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone died in Rome on Monday, July 6. He was 91. The famed composer scored iconic soundtracks for a number of spaghetti Westerns, most famously director Sergio Leone’s 1966…

Dave Stewart and Thomas Lindsey (Stewart Lindsey), Courtesy. Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart is a tough man to reach as he waits out the COVID-19 pandemic on a tiny island in the Caribbean, but eventually a thick northern British accent comes onto the staticky link. While he may be enjoying a…

Paul Weller is practically royalty in his native Britain. The former frontman for the punk band The Jam, and the more musically sophisticated The Style Council, sits in the pantheon of British rock gods alongside David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Roger Waters, universally acknowledged as a musical legend. On…

For millennia, humans set their course by the stars. These fiery celestial lighthouses that burned with such eternal constancy served as a compass point for our major journeys. At 86 years young, country legend Willie Nelson still burns brightly enough to set our course. First Rose of Spring Willie…

Ray LaMontagne, ‘Monovision.’ Some records make us feel more alive. It isn’t just that the music conjures something inside us when we listen to it, but rather that really good musicians reveal the depth of the emotional oceans within them. The resulting personal connection we feel with these artists…

Every white family has that uncle who adopts a Jamaican accent after a couple beers at the BBQ. His impression involves an endless recombining of the phrases, “Yah, mon,” and “Feelin’ irie.” It’s cultural appropriation and completely cringeworthy, but it’s also kinda cute to see some dude in the…

In the 1919 essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” poet T.S. Eliot writes, “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set…