Sophie Coran Deftly Combines Jazz, Soul, and Dream Pop on ‘S P A C E’
Philadelphia singer-songwriter Sophie Coran’s debut album S P A C E is warm, sophisticated, and expertly crafted.
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40 Years Ago Rick James’ ‘Street Songs’ Signaled a New Identity for Motown
Rick James’ ground-breaking Street Songs exposed Motown’s struggle to grow and change alongside the shifting pop music landscape.
Late Show Bandleader Jon Batiste Discusses His Genre-Busting Year
Pianist and bandleader Jon Batiste is a near-perfect representative of what it means to be a millennial jazz musician in 2021.
El Michels Affair Create Soulful, Modern Mood Music on ‘Yeti Season’
El Michels Affair’s Yeti Season is soulful, modern mood music with enough twists and turns to keep things interesting from start to finish.
Nubiyan Twist’s ‘Freedom Fables’ Is a Jazzy Cosmopolitan Celebration
Nubiyan Twist’s Freedom Fables maintains a sense of fun and of engagement among the ensemble and with their invisible audience, that’s as important as the high quality sonics.
She Wants Her MTV: How ‘Private Dancer’ Made Tina Turner a Video Queen
In this PopMatters exclusive, the directors, choreographers, and dancers behind Tina Turner’s platinum-selling Private Dancer video 45 recall how the Queen of Rock went from MTV to number one.
4 Mars’ ‘Super Somali Sounds from the Gulf of Tadjoura’ Highlights Djiboutian Popular Music
These are recordings prematurely aged, but their grit belies fresh sounds that speak to Djibouti's history as a port region connecting the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean to the Horn of Africa.
What You Want, Baby, Aretha’s Got It
From January 1967 to January 1972, Aretha Franklin, one of 20th-century pop music's towering geniuses, stood the pop world on its head with a run, inconceivable today, of 11 albums. Tony Scherman's biography in progress about the Queen of Soul covers those years.
Jazz? Soul? A Bit of Both and Lots of Good Vibes on ‘I Told You So’
Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio channel the organ soul-jazz of Jimmy Smith and Booker T. on their second LP, I Told You So.
Daptone Records’ Gabriel Roth on Sharon Jones and the Power of Music
A recent compilation of rare covers by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings only highlights what we've long known. Soul music is of a rare and special breed capable of uniting people across many societal lines.
Rhye’s ‘Home’ Is Ambitious in Approach
Home is an ambitious effort and contains some of the most exciting music released by Rhye.