Clockwise from top left: Clipping., Nile, Stephen Malkmus, Taylor Swift, The Futureheads, The Claypool Lennon Delirium, Coldplay, The Flaming Lips featuring the Colorado Symphony, Lights and The New Pornographers. We’ve reached the end of 2019, meaning the time has come to look back over all the great music the…

Like all art, music leaves a cultural imprint representing the events, feelings, successes and failures of the time that birthed it. While various styles of music capture the experience of the groups that listen to it, Top 40 pop speaks for the masses. With 2020 around the corner, let’s…

Taylor Swift’s seventh album, Lover, exceeds expectations, as she takes a different path through her emotional cycle of valleys of love, heartbreak and moving on. On the 18-track opus, she blends her classic love ballads with more recent forays into electro-pop. Swift’s flavorful array of styles serve her mature, self-aware…

Taylor Swift finding her inner rainbow at a concert at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California on May 11, 2018. Photo: Roman Gokhman. A common criticism I get on Twitter about this column, other than that I hate Europeans, is that I’m stuck in the past and hate modern…

Bruno Mars performs at BottleRock Napa on May 27, 2018. This is the final in a three-part series. Read how I’m scoring my list and find out about my “special consideration” acts in PART 1 and 10 through 6 in PART 2. Favorite Shows 2017 | Favorite Shows 2016 | Favorite Shows 2015 Favorite Shows 2014 |…

Taylor Swift, singing about yet another ex-boyfriend. One of the complaints I often get about my selections for this column is that I hardly include any pop music. “Danny,” people tell me, “pop is consistently the biggest commercial force in music, with the most widespread awareness and biggest cultural…

Liz Huett didn’t meet her birth mom and siblings until she was 19, but the singer-songwriter’s life has always been full of love. Huett, a former child actor whose music career began in earnest by singing backup for Taylor Swift, has big goals for her life, and not all of…

Taylor Swift performs on the Reputation Stadium Tour at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California on May 11, 2018. Photos: Steve Carlson. SANTA CLARA — On her 2017 album Reputation, “the old Taylor” Swift is dead. But on the Reputation Stadium Tour, which arrived at Levi’s Stadium Friday for…

Roman Gokhman’s Favorite Concerts of 2015 This is the second in a three-part series. Read the introduction to learn how I’m scoring my list and find out about my “special consideration” in PART 1. 10 – TAYLOR SWIFT at Levi’s Stadium – Aug. 14. At this point in her career,…

Taylor Swift performs at at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., on her 1989 Tour, on Aug. 16, 2015. Roman Gokhman/STAFF. SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Taylor Swift has hits for miles. Nearly every one of the 18 songs she performed Friday, at the first of two sold-out shows at Levi’s…