Ken Tucker
Stories
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3 new songs sound nothing like the pop music currently dominating the charts
These love songs — Neko Case's "Oh, Neglect...," Valerie June's "Runnin' and Searchin'" and Olivia Dean's "Man I Need" — each express a refreshingly realistic ambivalence toward romance.
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'Fresh Air' marks the 50th anniversary of Patti Smith's landmark album, 'Horses'
Smith's debut album ushered in a new era of rock and roll. Critic Ken Tucker reviews the new anniversary edition of Horses, plus we listen back to Terry Gross' 1996 and 2010 interviews with Smith.
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'The Life of a Showgirl' spotlights Taylor Swift as she moves away from heartache
Swift's previous albums focused on the love she yearned for. The dozen songs on her latest release combine to form a picture of true love found, tested and proven strong.
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Fall's music highlights include new releases from Big Thief, Zach Top and Laufey
Big Thief has a new album, as does Zach Top, a young country singer with roots in old country. And the Icelandic-Chinese singer Laufey brings a classical-music and jazz influence to her pop songs.
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50 years after 'Mothership Connection,' George Clinton remains an artistic force
Clinton is the leader of two important funk bands, Parliament and Funkadelic. In 1975, Parliament released Mothership Connection, a loose concept album about funk musicians as galactic invaders.
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The sound of summer is women who've had it with problematic men
The three-sister band HAIM and pop singer and TikTok star Addison Rae are practicing "emotional passive resistance" this summer — and it sounds great.
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On 'Tracks II,' Springsteen shares a host of lost albums -- and a new part of himself
At its best, this capacious grab-bag of 83 songs, some dating back to the 1980s, yields not just good music, but songs that seem unlike anything else Springsteen has ever done.
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Willie Nelson and Ken Pomeroy make beautiful music for tumultuous times
On Cruel Joke, Pomeroy, age 22, sings with an acoustic twang about farms and cowboys. The 92-year-old Nelson's Oh What a Beautiful World is an album of covers of songs by Rodney Crowell.
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Remembering Pere Ubu's David Thomas, a frontman who preserved chaos
Thomas' April 23 death at age 71 brings to a close one of the most significant avant-garde experiments ever conducted within the confines of pop music. Rock critic Ken Tucker reflects on his legacy.
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With 'Luther,' Kendrick Lamar stakes his claim as a great hip-hop ballad singer
Lamar's duet with SZA samples Luther Vandross' 1982 hit "If This World Were Mine." The song was written by Marvin Gaye, who himself recorded it in 1967 as a duet with Tammi Terrell.