Music - Quillette

Eminem in a train carriage, holding a rubbish

Slim Shady’s Blues

Eminem’s music helped him to cope with his own suffering. It also helped his listeners cope with theirs.

Samuel Kronen

18 Feb 2025 · 10 min read

Closeup of isolated vinyl record Highway to Hell album of rock band AC/DC released 1979.

The Thunder from Down Under

If Bach was the sound of God whistling while he worked, AC/DC was the sound of God ordering another round in a strip club on Saturday night.

George Case

25 Jan 2025 · 9 min read

The photo shows a young Dylan in stetson and cowboy outfit in a saloon.

Unmasked and Anonymous

A brief history of Bob Dylan on screen.

Benjamin Kerstein

1 Jan 2025 · 18 min read

Ghosts of Electricity

The magisterial incomprehensibility of Bob Dylan’s ‘Visions of Johanna.’

Thomas Larson

30 Dec 2024 · 8 min read

Timothee Chalamet is a white man in his 20s, at a microphone, wearing dark glasses, with curly brown ha

Printing the Legend

The naysayers are dead wrong about James Mangold’s remarkable new film about Bob Dylan and the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early 1960s.

Ronald Radosh

26 Dec 2024 · 15 min read

S: a man in his 40s, with brown hair and round glasses, in his studio.

Death of a Repentant Iconoclast

Steve Albini and the new problem with music.

Ari Gandsman

4 Oct 2024 · 25 min read

Nick Cave, a striking man in his 50s with black hair , eyes closed, wearing a blue jacket and light blue shirt.

Talking Nick Cave Blues

As the Bad Seeds begin touring their acclaimed new album, ‘Wild God,’ Quillette chatted with Australian academic and “Caveologist” Tanya Dalziell about the artist’s music, ideas, and enduring appeal.

David Cohen

27 Sep 2024 · 13 min read

Bruce Springsteen, black and white photograph, head and shoulders, in a striped shirt

Born to Boss

Springsteen and the rock critics.

David Cohen

12 Sep 2024 · 14 min read

Elvis Costello, black and white photograph, in glasses, a shirt, jacket and tie, fingers on the neck of a guitar.

Seventy Years of Spite and Sophistication

Elvis Costello at three score and ten.

Dave Thompson

25 Aug 2024 · 20 min read

The Man Who Wasn’t There

Richard Morton Jack’s comprehensive new biography of Nick Drake offers a glimpse of a brilliant but troubled soul.

Matt Hanson

19 Jul 2024 · 10 min read

Rogers Waters, dressed in black, looking manic, against a background of a TV studio wall.

Art over Man: The Roger Waters Test Case

When we create art, we are our best selves, better than the selves we are outside of art.

Thomas P. Balazs

4 Jul 2024 · 9 min read

England’s Daydreaming

Robyn Hitchcock’s new memoir takes us back to 1967—a year the British singer-songwriter never outgrew.

Dave Thompson

2 Jul 2024 · 12 min read

The Road Out of Nowhere

A new book celebrates Springsteen’s stark 1982 classic, ‘Nebraska.’

Matt Hanson

13 Feb 2024 · 6 min read

Master of Reality

“Things were bleak, they really were. Yet nobody was singing about that side of life, which is why we thought we should.”

George Case

22 Jan 2024 · 8 min read

Leonard Bernstein Deserved Better Than ‘Maestro’

Netflix somehow managed to turn the most talented, beloved, and complex American musician in history into a two-dimensional domestic villain.

Daniel Lelchuk

16 Jan 2024 · 9 min read