Music News

Sufjan Stevens released the video for "Mystery of Love," which he penned for the Luca Guadagnino-film Call Me By Your Name.



The video is full of footage from the movie: shots of scenic Italy in summer and the stars Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet, whose evolving relationship is the center of the plot. Pictures of imposing statues from the Museo Archeologico Nazionale of Naples are interspersed next to snippets from the film.

Stevens' song drifts gently through the back of the video, building around an airy acoustic riff. Stevens delivers hushed lyrics that blur the lines between romance and religion. "Woe-oh-woah is me/ The first time that you touched me," he sings. "Oh, will wonders ever cease? Blessed be the mystery of love."

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Jim Rodford, a founding member of Argent and bassist for the Kinks and the Zombies, died Saturday at the age of 76.



Rodford's cousin and longtime band mate Rod Argent confirmed Rodford's death on the Zombies' Facebook page, with Argent adding that Rodford died Saturday following "a fall on the stairs."

"Jim was not only a magnificent bass player, but also from the first inextricably bound to the story of The Zombies. An enormous enabler for us," Argent wrote in his long tribute to Rodford. "To the end, Jim's life was dedicated to music. He was unfailingly committed to local music - an ever present member of the local scene in St.Albans, where he had spent his whole life."

The Kinks, who recruited Rodford following bassist John Dalton's permanent exit from the band in 1978, also paid tribute to Rodford on Twitter. "It is with deep sadness that we have learned that Jim Rodford passed away - he toured and recorded with the Kinks for many years and will be greatly missed. He was much loved by all of us," the band wrote.

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Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump detailed the band's winding creative process behind cinematic new song "Church" in the latest installment of Rolling Stone's behind-the-scenes video series, Levels.

The quartet were struggling to find a creative direction for their seventh LP, Mania, and they wound up delaying the release date from September 2017 to January. But they gained crucial confidence after figuring out the final arrangement of "Church."



"One song can really change an entire album, so we were really struggling to find that one song to properly contextualize the whole album," Stump tells Rolling Stone. "And there was something about when we finally got 'Church,' it was like, 'Awesome.' It was a very stressful thing, and we didn't know it was going to be that song until it was done."

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Gary Clark Jr. and Jon Batiste united to salute late rock pioneers Chuck Berry and Fats Domino with a fiery tribute at the 2018 Grammy Awards. The blues-rock artist and Late Show bandleader formed a trio with drummer Joe Saylor, Batiste's Stay Human bandmate, honoring "two of the fathers of rock and roll that we lost last year."

Batiste opened fronting a impassioned version of Domino's 1955 hit "Ain't That a Shame." As images of the late rocker flashed behind the group, the pianist performed a flashy jazz piano solo. Clark Jr. led the band on a fervent version of Berry's 1955 classic "Maybelline," including a guitar solo full of wild bent notes.

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Various Artists, Black Panther: The Album
The Kendrick Lamar-helmed soundtrack to Marvel Studios' latest blockbuster features K-Dot collaborations with SZA, Travis Scott and The Weeknd, as well as appearances by Khalid, 2 Chainz, Future and Top Dog Entertainment crew members Schoolboy Q and Jay Rock. "At first, [Lamar] was just going to do a few songs for the film, and then he came in and watched quite a bit of the movie, and the next thing I know, they were booking a studio and they were going at it," Black Panther director Ryan Coogler told NPR. "Hats off to him and his production team – they made some really great songs," he added.

MGMT, Little Dark Age
"MGMT are back to their roots on Little Dark Age," Jon Dolan writes about the blog-beloved duo's fourth album, "with concise tunes built from cushy keyboard beats and cute, kiting melodies. ... But there's a welcome new wrinkle here: 'She Works Out Too Much' and 'TSLAMP' (a.k.a. 'time spent looking at my phone') are funny, bemusedly cranky parodies of modern screen-obsessed solipsism."

Franz Ferdinand, Always Ascending
The debonair Scots' fifth album is "a return to form the band never really lost, and if the quiet bits drag, the wit's sharper than ever," writes Will Hermes.

Dashboard Confessional, Crooked Shadows
Chris Carrabba's first Dashboard Confessional album in eight-plus years "hews to familiar formulas of Dashboard dramatics, cleverly clad in contemporizing pop production," writes Jessica Hopper. "Carrabba's lyrical focus has evolved some in his time away, having disregarded the diaristic 'I' for a unified 'we,' yet emo's heroic paternalism is still present - he's saving, he's dedicated, he won't let the love die. 'I'm always going to be/About us,' he sings on 'About Us.' His pledges of allegiance to his marriage are identical to the ones he makes to the scene."

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Solange was honored with the 2018 Harvard Foundation Artist of the Year distinction. Past winners have included Salma Hayek, Eva Longoria, Queen Latifah, Viola Davis, Shakira, John Legend and Jackie Chan.

Each year, the Artist of the Year selection is voted on by students and faculty of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations. According to its website, the foundation aims to "improve relations among racial and ethnic groups within the University and to enhance the quality of our common life." The award will be presented on March 3rd as part of the Cultural Rhythms Festival, an annual event put on by the Harvard Foundation that features "student performances and ethno-cultural cuisine from over 30 student organizations."

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Barbara Ann Alston, co-founder and lead singer of the hit-making Sixties girl group the Crystals, died February 16th in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was 74.

The singer's family told the Charlotte Observer that Alston died at a Charlotte hospital following a two-week battle with the flu.

Alston's daughter Donielle Prophete told the BBC, "She loved the Crystals. She always talked about singing with them, the work they created together. She loved the sisterhood part of it, the traveling."

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Russ Solomon, founder and overseer of the Tower Records empire, died Sunday at his home in Sacramento, California. He was 92.

Solomon's family told the Sacramento Bee that he likely suffered a heart attack. "Ironically, he was giving his opinion of what someone was wearing that he thought was ugly, then asked (his wife) Patti to refill his whisky," at which point he died, Solomon's son Michael Solomon told the newspaper.

Solomon started Tower Records – named after the local Tower Theatre – in 1960, growing the business from the back of a Sacramento drugstore to, at its peak, a CD giant with over 200 brick-and-mortar stores spanning North America to Japan.

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Gary Burden, the Grammy-winning artist who designed iconic album covers for musicians like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, the Doors and My Morning Jacket, has died at the age of 84. No cause of death was revealed.



Young penned a tribute to Burden on the rocker's Archives website, reflecting on a collaboration and friendship that spanned over five decades.
"My friend for life, Gary was my art director, creating album covers with me for almost 50 years, beginning with After the Gold Rush and ending with Paradox and Roxy, my next two albums," Young wrote.

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Brynn Cartelli and Dylan Hartigan, who were members of Kelly Clarkson's team, performed a brazen cover of Taylor Swift's "… Ready For It?" The house band turned the original track's industrial snarl into a guitar-heavy romp. Cartelli sang with raspy gravity one moment and lithe grace the next, while Hartigan emphasized his falsetto.

In contrast to the headstrong rush of "… Ready For It?", Christiana Danielle and Shana Halligan – from Alicia Keys' team – performed Kings of Leon's somber ballad "Use Somebody." At times they were singing almost a capella, moving from near-whispering on the melancholy verses to full-throated belting during the lofty hooks.

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