After more than 30 years together, Wilco still puts on a hell of a live show.
Waxahatchee opened the concert with a full backing band, including Jeff Tweedy’s son, Spencer, on drums. Her 45-minute set included songs from her last two studio albums, Saint Cloud and Tiger’s Blood, though she did throw in her newest single, “Mud,” which was released in March.
Wilco took the stage around 8:45 p.m. — Jeff Tweedy casually waving to the crowd, wearing a bright red button-down shirt, dark jeans, and a denim jacket. They launched into “Spider (Kidsmoke)” and then “Wishful Thinking,” from the band’s 2004 Grammy winning A Ghost Is Born.
The band played some newer songs, such as “Evicted” from 2023’s Cousins and “Bird Without a Tail/Base of My Skull” off of 2022’s Cruel Country. But they knew everyone was there to see Wilco play their classic, older stuff, which Tweedy acknowledged as he nonchalantly introduced the more recent material. And they didn’t disappoint, blazing through “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” “War On War,” and “Jesus, Etc.,” balancing the old with the new.
(Credit: Akash Wadhwani)
One of the highlights of the show was guitarist Nels Cline, fresh from an afternoon side gig at the local community performing arts theater Barking Legs, ripping through “Impossible Germany.”
Being Mother’s Day, Tweedy dedicated “I’m My Mother,” from Cruel Country, to all of the moms in the audience, and to those who were missing theirs. “I miss mine,” he said.
The theme of the night seemed to revolve around the passage of time. Before they played the next two songs—“Box Full of Letters,” from the group’s first album, 1995’s A.M., and “Annihilation,” from their 2024 EP Hot Sun Cool Shroud — Tweedy told the audience that they had been playing them together lately to show their artistic growth over the years. “The capo goes from here to here. The Beatles didn’t do that,” he said, referring to the small device on the fretboard of a guitar that changes the pitch of the instrument.
Tweedy, noting how nice it was to be back in Chattanooga, shared a story about passing through on a family road trip to Florida when he was 8 or 9 and visiting one of the city’s most famous tourist attractions, Lookout Mountain. “I don’t remember Florida, but I remember Chattanooga.”
(Credit: Peter Crosby)
Throughout the show, Tweedy took note of how far along we were in the evening. “We’re getting close to the end,” he said. The audience, unhappy with that, heartily booed, to which he responded, “I mean in general.”
When the lights did go down and the band waved goodbye, we knew there would be an encore. They reemerged to play four songs, starting with “California Stars” from their 2001 collaboration with Billy Bragg, Mermaid Avenue. Ensuring everyone that the show was finally over this time, Tweedy announced, “Okay this is it!” and ended with the rousing “I Got You (At the End of the Century)” from Being There. An appropriate choice, reinforcing the idea that the older we get, the more we should take stock of how far we’ve come.
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
“I never, never, never saw so many people in my whole life.”
This is what Jenny Lewis said after singing “I Never” about halfway through Rilo Kiley’s set Saturday night, and yeah, it makes sense. The last time the L.A. natives played their hometown was the summer of 2008, for what turned out to be their then-final show. The band split shortly after due to the romantic and creative tensions between Lewis and lead guitarist Blake Sennett. And with Lewis since moving onto a successful solo career, it felt likely to remain their final show.
So this reunion was a surprise to everyone, including Lewis, who at one point told the audience: “It’s amazing to be here with you all, but mostly…” She then gestured to her bandmates and said: “It’s amazing to be here with you all.”
They picked the right time, though. Their music remains hugely influential on both modern indie (Phoebe Bridgers) and pop (Olivia Roderigo) music, while fans from their original run are now in their 30s and 40s and ready to revisit the songs that provided a caustically witty soundtrack to the flirtations, relationships, and heartbreaks of their 20s.
To put it simply, Rilo Kiley was the clear draw of this year’s Just Like Heaven, the annual Pasadena music festival dedicated to the indie rock and electropop of the 2000s/early 2010s. Or, in terms of mood and aesthetics, making the Rose Bowl’s Brookside Park feel like the 2005 Coney Island Siren Music Festival. As someone in his mid-40s who loves indie rock (and was at those old Siren Festivals), every detail of the fest felt catered to me, from the food to the merch to a dance floor where the very same DJ I danced to every weekend in my 20s was spinning.
Bands started playing at noon, but the nearly 100-degree heat kept the daytime crowds thinner than years past. Which was a shame, because the temperature didn’t stop most artists from giving it all on stage. London’s Block Party played their first US show in years, with lead singer Kele Okereke showing (across hits like “Helicopter” and “This Modern Love”) that his voice can still go from sharp post-punk speak-singing to soaring theatricality on a dime.
Perfume Genius, a newer artist by this festival’s standards, swayed and sashayed with emotional vocals and and core-defying moves even during sun’s hottest hour. The also recently reunited TV On The Radio delivered a tight, propulsive set and (surprisingly) the only political messages of the day, with an intro of “Fuck these fascists comma fuck these fascists comma fuck these fascists comma fuck these fascists ” for “Trouble” and guitarist Kyp Malone’s “Somebody I Love is Palestinian” T-shirt.
(Credit: Ashley Osborn)
However, by 8:40pm, the sun was down and the crowds seemed to have doubled in size for Rilo Kiley. More than that, from the first notes of “The Execution of All Things,” the audience was re-energized and ready to dance. The band returned this energy in kind, as across the next hour, you’d never guess this group hadn’t played regularly together for years. From a brightly shimmering “Wires and Waves” to a darkly grooving “The Moneymaker,” they played songs from all their albums, even going back to their early cult hit “Frug,” complete with Lewis doing the song’s signature dance moves and the audience joining her bandmates for their backing vocals.
Numbers like this and the indie rock torch-song “I Never” were dramatically thrilling reminders of why Jenny Lewis was and still is the queen of her scene (hence her actual tiara). Her every gesture and expression made the audience go wild. She elicited cheers with a mere eyebrow raise on “Paint’s Peeling,” made hearts swoon with a kiss and middle finger during “Does He Love You?”’s explosive outro, and got the crowd singing for “With Arms Outstretched” to only then immediately silence them for the start of “A Better Son/Daughter.” Maybe it’s her past as an actor, but Lewis knows exactly what choice to make in each moment to work an audience.
This wasn’t a Jenny Lewis solo show, though, as her bandmates shined just as brightly. Sennet effortlessly commanded the crowd on each guitar solo and his lead vocal number “Dreamworld.” The lively interplay between him, bassist Pierre de Reeder, and drummer Jason Boesel was infectious, too. From the easy flow to the genuine smiles, all four members seemed to be having what you want most from a favorite band on their reunion tour: fun.
By the time they closed with their “our relationship is fucked, isn’t it?” anthem “Portions For Foxes,” Rilo Kiley’s set had been so electric and fulfilling that, honestly, it’s hard to figure out why they weren’t the headliners. Nothing was going to top them, especially not on their turf.
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
** Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds will assemble Sept. 20 for the 40th anniversary of Farm Aid, which will take place Huntington Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. Billy Strings, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, Trampled by Turtles, Waxahatchee, Black Pumas‘ Eric Burton, Jesse Welles, Madeline Edwards and Margo Price will also perform.
“Family farmers are the heart of this country, and we depend on each other for good food and strong communities,” says Nelson, who helped found the organization in 1985. “For 40 years, Farm Aid and our partners have stood with farmers, supporting them to stay on their land even when corporate power, bad policies and broken promises make it harder to keep going. This year, we’re proud to bring Farm Aid to Minnesota to celebrate the farmers who sustain us and to fight for a food system that works for all of us. Family farmers aren’t backing down, and neither are we.”
** Mumford & Sons are reprising their 2011 Railroad Revival tour this summer for four outdoor shows in New Orleans (Aug. 3), Spartanburg, S.C. (Aug. 4); Richmond, Va. (Aug. 5) and Burlington, Vt. (Aug. 7). The venues for each are located near local train stations. Mirroring the concept of the original run, Mumford will be complemented by different guests at each gig, including Nathaniel Rateliff, Chris Thile, Trombone Shorty, Madison Cunningham and Lucius.
“We felt we had some unfinished business on the great American railroad,” says Marcus Mumford. “So, we’ve spent a lot of time cooking up this idea for another rolling festival to rip through the south and east of the U.S. The spirit of what we do, at its core, is always about people and collaboration. So, every show will be a collaborative performance from a bunch of our favorite people on the planet, and every show will be different. This will, without doubt, be the coolest house band we’ll ever get to play in.”
Tickets go on sale Friday (May 16). Mumford will also tour behind their newest album, Rushmere, in standard venues beginning June 5 in Bend, Or.
** Flying Lotus and Nubya Garcia have been added to the lineup for the Newport Jazz Festival, which will be held Aug. 1-3 at Fort Adams State Park in Newport, R.I. The event takes place the weekend after the Newport Folk Festival on the same grounds. Previously announced performers include Janelle Monae,the Roots, Jacob Collier, RAYE, Jorja Smith, Esperanza Spalding, the Yussef Dayes Experience. Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Kokoroko and De La Soul.
For Flying Lotus, Newport is the only upcoming show on his calendar beyond Friday’s (May 16) Cosmic Music: The Celestial Songs of Alice Coltrane at New York’s Carnegie Hall. There, Lotus, who is Coltrane’s grandnephew, will join Ravi Coltrane and several other family members to perform world premiere orchestral arrangements of her compositions.
** A stellar lineup of electronic music performers and DJs will head to Philadelphia’s Fort Mifflin from Sept. 19-21 for the long-running, DIY Making Time ∞ festival, now in its 25th year. Four Tet, ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U, Boy Harsher, Panda Bear, and Moodymann will headline, with Ben UFO, Optimo (Espacio), Moor Mother, Suzanne Ciani, Windy & Carl, Laraaji, John Talbot,Avalon Amerson and VTSS also on board. Loidis and DJ Python will team for a B2B set, which will follow the former staging an ambient live show under his Huerco S alter-ego. Click here for all the details.
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
In this series, we highlight independent radio stations across America which are keeping alive the dream of human DJs, unpredictable playlists, and free airwaves.
“Raised By Sound” is WYXR’s tagline, but it could also be the mantra for Memphis, Tennessee as a whole. This is a city best known for being home to Beale Street, Sun Studios, Stax Records, and countless iconic blues, jazz, gospel, rock, and hip-hop artists. So it’s only appropriate that Memphis have a freeform independent radio station that can play music from all of these diverse genres and eras… but WYXR’s existence is actually a fairly new phenomenon.
“We are four years in. Our fifth birthday will be October 5th,” says executive director and co-founder Robby Grant. For two decades prior, the frequency had been a University of Memphis jazz station, but after declining student involvement, the school looked to the wider community for partnership. In came local nonprofit news organization the Daily Memphian and the historic building Crosstown Concourse with ideas on how to create a station covering what program manager and co-founder Jared “Jay B.” Boyd describes as, “A wide spectrum of all kinds of sounds, and not just Memphis stuff, but real Memphis music and the people who care about Memphis pulling in all their influences to the table.”
To do this and really connect with the community, Grant explains, “We moved (the station) out of the basement of the (university’s) theater building and into this million and a half square foot building that we’re in now.” Yes, WYXR is headquartered in the massive Central Atrium of the city’s famed Crosstown Concourse, allowing anyone passing by to see inside the studio while its DJs broadcast live. This keeps the DJs in VERY direct communication with the locals. For example, listening to the station as I write this, DJs Laurie and Andy joked on air about accidentally scaring a kid who was walking by the station’s window when they played a loud sound bite from X’s Exene Cervenka. These kinds of fun interactions are welcome and happen all the time according to Jay B.
Tommy Wright III at Raised By Sound Fest 2024 (Credit: Sean Davis)
“Because we’re here, in probably one of the most trafficked lobbies in the entire city,” he says. “And beyond that, there’s a nightclub that’s focused on music right around the hall, where there’s artists coming through all the time. There’s a studio also down the hall, and a record listening lounge called the Memphis Listening Lab. We’re in the middle of an ecosystem of live performance and records being cut, so there’s always somebody with a song or something going on.”
Broadcasting like this would be proof enough of WYXR’s commitment to showcasing Memphis’s love of music, but it’s only a drop in their bucket. WYXR also organizes the annual Raised By Sound Festival, showcasing major and rising artists influenced by Memphis’s musical heritage (or in the case of the first year’s headliner, one of the city’s greatest bands ever, Big Star). They also host the innovative Meeting in the Middle conference—where musicians, industry pros, and students interested in music careers meet for conversations about the art and business of music—and launched the Dowd Awards (recognizing local Black musicians) and several educational outreach programs. In these past not-quite-five years, WYXR has become what Grant hoped for when they first started working on it at the start of the COVID pandemic: “A station that represents the Memphis community, in a way it hadn’t been represented with radio. Just a community, a meeting place for music lovers.”
Volunteer DJ Tonya Dyson talking to a group of school kids (Credit: WYXR)
What is the most Memphis thing about WYXR?
Jay B: We might be so close to it that we don’t realize it <laugh>. But I think it’s really the only place where you could have both Pastor Shipp and DJ Spanish Fly on the same station. Like here, you’ll find me, a former intern, Spanish Fly, and Pastor Shipp—who had a gospel label in the ’70s—all playing Uno, just hanging out. And, you know, these people probably wouldn’t have spoken to each other if they were in a grocery store, but they all have these very unique positions in Memphis’s musical heritage and its future.
Robby Grant: I think it’s how deep we go with the records. There are a lot of studios here in Memphis, and there were a ton back in the day. So there’s all these hard-to-find records and those people are still around, which is very unique to Memphis. Like Jay B. said, we’re amplifying that sound and those artists.
Any celebrity listeners or supporters?
Liv Cohen (community engagement and events lead): I graduated in 2023, but when I got sent home for COVID, WYXR was what kept me connected to Memphis while I was stuck at home on Zoom classes every day. And what drew me to the station was that one of my favorite artists, Andrew VanWyngarden from MGMT, had a show on the station, and still has one now!
Wilco performing live at WYXR in October, 2022. (Credit: Jamie Harmon)
Current artist that you want more folks to hear?
JC: I would say the biggest energy around artists that have a tight relationship with the station right now are probably Talibah Safiya, Cyrena Wages, and Marcella Simien.
RG: I would put in Optic Sink. Two of our DJs are in that band and they’re working on their third or fourth record. Their shows are really great and they’re artists.
LC: For me, Melinda is an artist releasing really great music this year outta Memphis on a DIY label.
Any goals for the future of the station?
RG: We just want to keep it going. Like, one of our immediate needs is we need a new antenna. So we’re working on that, which can be crazy, but I mean… we don’t want to be huge. We want to take what we’re doing, take our events, and make ’em even bigger and better. So I could see Raised By Sound Fest growing. It’d be nice to have another footprint here where we could do more education, and really just bolster our connection with new and older musicians here in Memphis. The goal for us is build, build, and get the station going, so it’s around long after the three of us are gone and it’s become a Memphis mainstay. Which we are hearing! People think we’ve been around a lot longer. Like, “Oh, y’all are only four years old?” It is a huge compliment for us and to the team here. We’ve done a lot of great work pretty quick.
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
Esteemed singer/songwriter Yusuf/Cat Stevens will tell his fascinating life story in the memoir Cat on the Road to Findout, which will be released Sept. 18 in the U.K. through Constable and Oct. 7 in North America through Genesis Publications.
After a decade of massive success thanks to such generation-defining songs as “Father and Son,” “Wild World,” “Morning Has Broken,” “The First Cut Is the Deepest” and “Peace Train,” Stevens walked away from music in 1978 and converted to Islam, after which he adopted the name Yusuf Islam and focused his efforts on philanthropy and humanitarian relief. He did not regularly record or perform in his prior style until the early 2000s.
Since then, he has been active in the studio and on the road, with his most recent release being the 1974 concert document Saturnight: Live From Tokyo earlier this month. The album was previously only available in Japan for contractual reasons.
In 2020, Stevens also reimagined his classic 1970 album Tea for the Tillerman, which will be inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame during a Friday (May 16) ceremony at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles.
“I’ve been on an amazing journey, which began in the narrow streets of London and led me through the most iconic cities, to perform upon the great stage of Western culture, ascending the dizzying heights of wealth, recognition and artistic pinnacles; freely exploring vast ranges of religions and philosophies, wandering through churches, temples, all the way to the Holy abode in Jerusalem — ignoring myths and warnings — and crossing the foreboded, desert heartlands, to arrive at the House of One God in Abrahamic Arabia,” says Stevens. “What finally elevated my perspective was a luminous Book that perfectly alchemized my thoughts [and] beliefs with human nature. It taught me Oneness, and my place and purpose within the universe.”
Stevens, who turns 77 this summer, will support Cat on the Road to Findout with a book tour this fall, although details have yet to be announced. He’ll also perform his most high-profile concert in two years on July 11 as part of a triple bill with Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts and Van Morrison at London’s Hyde Park.
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
San Francisco’s Portola Festival will once again boast a drool-worthy lineup of electronic music favorites when it sets up shop Sept. 20-21 at Pier 80 with headliners LCD Soundsystem and Dom Dolla, plus an undercard loaded with Christina Aguilera, the Chemical Brothers, Peggy Gou, Blood Orange, Rico Nasty, Moby, Underworld and the Prodigy.
Portola will be further enlivened by two days of Despacio, the high-tech dance party steered by LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy and Soulwax/2manydjs siblings David and Stephen Dewaele.
Also on the bill are the Rapture (their first proper concert since going on hiatus in 2020), Confidence Man, Duke Dumont, the Dare, Magdalena Bay, Kelly Lee Owens, Villager, Bob Moses, Marie Davidson, Mau P, Ravyn Lenae, Zack Fox, Arca, Horse Meat Disco, Chris Stussy and Caribou.
Click here for tickets, which go on sale later this week.
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
It has been 50 years since CBGB birthed the New York rock explosion led by Patti Smith, Talking Heads and the Ramones — a legacy that will be honored Sept. 27 at the first CBGB Festival. The event will be headlined by Iggy Pop and Jack White and will take place at Under the K Bridge Park, a new outdoor venue literally underneath the Kosciuszko Bridge roadway in Brooklyn.
The 21-band, three-stage lineup will also sport Sex Pistols with new singer Frank Carter, Johnny Marr, Marky Ramone, the Damned, Gorilla Biscuits, Melvins, Lambrini Girls, the Linda Lindas, Lunachicks, Scowl, Cro-Mags, Murphy’s Law and Pinkshift. Attendees will be treated such hallowed memorabilia as the original CBGB’s bar and stage
Tickets go on sale to the general public on Friday (May 16), and a trove of 350 GA tickets will be available only at the Music Hall of Williamsburg box office the next day for residents under 25. The “Young Punk” discounted ducats will sell for $73, in line with the year CBGB opened.
Pop hasn’t played a headlining show in New York in nine years, although he has appeared at such events as the annual Tibet House benefit and a symphonic celebration of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, which was held just days before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.
Other artists on the bill have longstanding connections to the music of the CBGB era, with White frequently covering Iggy and the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” and Marr featuring Pop’s “The Passenger” in his live set lists in 2024. Marky Ramone and the Damned are also no strangers to the original club, with the former having played it countless times with the Ramones and the latter among the first U.K. punk bands to visit in April 1977.
CBGB closed its doors on the Bowery in 2006 after a farewell concert by Smith. Its building is now occupied by a John Varvatos store, although the CBGB name has since been licensed for a restaurant at Newark International Airport.
In 2018, Target provoked the ire of New York music lovers by tweaking CBGB’s famous awning to celebrate the opening of a new retail location in Astor Place. The four-lettered acronym was swapped out for “TRGT” and “BANDS,” which referred not to music but complimentary Band-Aids and exercise bands with Target logos on them.
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
“See if you can spot this one,” Eric Clapton told the small audience in a Windsor television studio in January 1992, just before he began playing a dramatically different arrangement of one of his signature songs. Three seconds into the slower but still somewhat identifiable version of the opening riff of his 1970 Derek and the Dominos classic “Layla,” there was a small murmur of recognition in the audience and one guy, eager to signal to Clapton that he indeed spotted this one, yelled “Yeah!” 30 seconds later, there was a bigger cheer after Clapton sang the first line, and another small cheer when he got to the chorus.
When MTV Unplugged debuted in 1989, the acoustic concert series was primarily a showcase for smaller acts, and the first episode was split between Squeeze, Syd Straw, and Cars guitarist Elliot Easton’s solo work. Over the next couple of years, however, the series attracted bigger names like Aerosmith and Paul McCartney while helping raise the profiles of new bands like Pearl Jam, becoming the most popular prestigious outlet for live music on television.
Clapton’s appearance had the highest ratings of any Unplugged episode when it first aired in March 1992. And while the British guitarist was reluctant to release the performance on CD—he’d just released an electric live album, 24 Nights, in October 1991—Clapton eventually relented, and his Unplugged album, released in August ’92, was a blockbuster.
Eric Clapton’s Unplugged eventually sold 26 million copies worldwide, including over 10 million in the U.S. alone. It’s the biggest live album of all time, overshadowing past behemoths like Frampton Comes Alive! and Bruce Springsteen’s Live/1975-85. Unplugged also won three Grammys in 1993, becoming only the third live album to win Album of the Year (Clapton also played on one of the two previous winners, George Harrison’s 1971 release The Concert for Bangladesh).
An expanded 90-minute version of the episode, Eric Clapton Unplugged… Over 30 Years Later, was released in select movie theaters in January. And on May 9, Clapton is releasing Unplugged: Enhanced Edition, a double CD featuring the remixed and remastered album with never-before-heard interviews with the guitarist from the day of the taping. Listening back to the album that was once ubiquitous both in pop culture and in my mother’s Delaware condo, however, I thought about how much Clapton’s once-towering place in the rock canon has shrunk in the last 30 years.
June 20, 1967. (Credit: Eric Harlow/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)
I don’t remember what grade I was in, but I was in elementary school in the early ’90s one day when my fellow students and I had a classroom activity in which we built structures by gluing sugar cubes together. As a nascent music geek, I decided to make a wall and write the words “CLAPTON IS GOD” on it, recreating the famous graffiti scrawled on a wall in London in the mid-’60s. Clapton was a member of the Yardbirds at the time, and that graffiti slogan became part of the British guitarist’s profile legend as he went on to make classics with Cream, Blind Faith, Derek and the Dominos, and as a solo artist.
Now, I didn’t think Clapton was God. Even at that young age, I preferred Jimi Hendrix, and when I listened to Clapton’s guitar solos, I found him a little boring compared to flashier contemporary lead guitarists I loved like Slash and Mike McCready. These days, I hold his influences like Buddy Guy and B.B. King in higher esteem than Clapton, and if I want to listen to a great ’70s record by a white blues guitarist, I’m more likely to reach for something by Duane Allman or Lowell George. But as a prepubescent kid, I was already obsessed enough with rock music, and conversant enough in my Boomer parents’ favorite oldies, that I was familiar with Clapton’s reputation and the “CLAPTON IS GOD” wall, more as a meme than a belief system.
Clapton’s elite status in the rock establishment continued unchallenged until at least 2000, when he became the first (and still only) person to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three times: with the Yardbirds, with Cream, and as a solo artist. Slowhand’s grip on the monoculture has noticeably loosened since then, however.
With Pattie Boyd at the premiere of Ken Russell’s film version of The Who’s rock opera ‘Tommy’ at the Leicester Square Theatre in London, March 26, 1975. (Credit: Michael Putland/Getty Images)
In 1998, VH1 ran a special called The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, featuring a list that had been voted on by a large electorate of recording artists and music industry professionals. In 2010, VH1 ran the poll again and presented another special with a new version of the list. The Beatles were unsurprisingly No. 1 on both lists, but lots of ’60s acts like the Byrds and the Four Tops dropped off the later edition to make way for younger artists like Radiohead and Beyonce. Eric Clapton was the highest ranked artist on the 1998 list, at No. 15 between Marvin Gaye and John Lennon, who fell out of the top 100 in 2010. Cream fared better, making a small drop from No. 52 to No. 61.
Last month, Consequence published a list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time that once again served notice of Clapton’s eroding status. Plenty of his contemporaries, including two other Yardbirds alumni, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, were in the top 10, while Clapton was down at No. 45.
To be fair, there are reasons for Clapton’s diminished status that aren’t entirely musical. In a drunken onstage rant in 1976, Clapton endorsed far-right British politician Enoch Powell’s anti-immigrant policies while dropping a series of racist slurs. Public disgust at Clapton’s remarks was one of the catalyzing events that led to the formation of the Rock Against Racism movement in the punk scene. And Clapton has continued to court controversy in recent years, recording a series of songs with Van Morrison in 2020 and 2021 that railed against public policies that mitigated the spread of COVID-19 like quarantines, masking, and vaccines.
1989. (Credit: Luciano Viti/Getty Images)
To his credit, Clapton has expressed remorse about his 1976 comments. “When I realized what I said, I just was so disgusted with myself,” he said in the 2017 documentary Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars. “I was so ashamed of who I was, I was becoming not only chauvinistic but fascistic too. I was kind of a semi-racist.” Clapton has also shown some progressive politics in other respects, including vocal support of Palestine, and he released the 2024 concert film To Save a Child to raise relief aid for children in Gaza.
The acoustic reinvention of “Layla” was the biggest hit from Unplugged, peaking at No. 11 on the Hot 100, only one spot lower than the original had reached in 1972. But the album also boosted Clapton’s single “Tears in Heaven,” released a few months earlier as part of Clapton’s soundtrack for the otherwise forgotten Jason Patric crime drama Rush. “Tears” had just entered the Top 10 days before the Unplugged episode aired, and peaked at No. 2 soon after, while both the episode and videos excerpted from it were being regularly aired on MTV.
“Tears in Heaven” was Clapton’s mournful response to his 4-year-old son Conor’s accidental death in 1991. That tragedy loomed large over Clapton’s massive success with Unplugged, and softened his image after years of being known for his divisive politics and struggles with alcoholism and addiction.
During the ‘Money and Cigarettes tour at Brendan Byrne Arena (later renamed Meadowlands Arena), East Rutherford, New Jersey, February 22, 1983. (Credit: Gary Gershoff/Getty Images)
While many artists simply played an acoustic greatest hits set for Unplugged with maybe one cover or obscurity, Clapton went off the beaten path for his episode. More than half of his Unplugged is dedicated to songs by his blues heroes including Bo Diddley, Son House, Robert Johnson, and Muddy Waters. Clapton wasn’t an especially prolific songwriter—he’d co-written only two songs on his most recent studio album at the time, 1989’s Journeyman. So it’s a little surprising that he debuted four previously unreleased original songs during the Unplugged taping, including “Lonely Stranger” and the opening instrumental “Signe.”
Two of the songs left out of the MTV broadcast and original album that were restored in the expanded re-releases, “My Father’s Eyes” and “Circus,” eventually appeared on 1998’s Pilgrim, Clapton’s only proper album of original material released that decade. Pilgrim was an overlong, overhyped, overproduced flop, and those songs already sounded as good as they were ever going to get in that Windsor television studio in 1992.
Also in 1992, Mariah Carey’s cover of the Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There” became the first and only No. 1 single from an Unplugged performance, and the series remained a pop culture staple for the next several years. Jodeci and 10,000 Maniacs also scored major chart hits with Unplugged covers, another Grammy for Album of the Year went to Tony Bennett’s MTV Unplugged, and Nirvana’s revelatory Unplugged in New York became the most beloved and enduring album to come out of the series, taking on greater significance in the band’s brief career after Kurt Cobain’s 1994 suicide.
Onstage during Day 2 of Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival at Crypto.com Arena on September 24, 2023 in Los Angeles. (Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Crossroads Guitar Festival)
The Unplugged phenomenon came along at a time when the image-conscious artificiality that’s for better or worse always part of pop music had become particularly malignant. MTV played a large role in that, constantly airing Milli Vanilli and C+C Music Factory videos that, it was later revealed, featured lip syncing performances by people that weren’t actually singing the songs. Giving audiences a chance to appreciate artists that could really play and really sing in a back-to-basics format was a necessary corrective, even if it probably also extended the dominance of the dad rock canon for another decade.
These days, artists over 45 aren’t regularly sweeping the Grammys like they once did, and it’s been a long time since a live album got an Album of the Year nod. It’s probably for the best that white British blues guitarists aren’t so central to the mainstream’s concept of good music anymore, but there are still millions of fans who can listen to Unplugged and remember the last time that Clapton was God.
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Sam Beste has played with Amy Winehouse, Beth Orton, and MF Doom, but as the Vernon Spring, the British pianist-composer-producer takes a more experimental route.
On his second album, Under a Familiar Sun, Beste layers, loops, and strings together field recordings, vocal samples, spoken word, and spare piano melodies, forming an allusive/elusive collage. Beste keeps things short—the album’s 12 tracks average about three minutes in length, but the collision of widely different elements can often make each piece seem like several songs superimposed over each other. The rampant multiplicity never feels schizophrenic or jarring—the tracks often run together or float into each other, with sparse motifs recurring throughout. While the constant shifts can make this music hard to pin down, it carries an emotive warmth that keeps its mysteries approachable.
A few songs stick out from the fluid haze, such as “The Breadline,” featuring a mellow monologue by poet Max Porter and a strong undercurrent of political discontent, or the intricate “Esrever Ni Rehtaf.” By far the longest song on the album at seven minutes, “Esrever” weaves together rustling subterranean electronics, drifty vocals (from singer-astrophysicist aden), and blurred-raindrop piano notes, cohering into a kind of amniotic ambience. And though Beste is working in a more open-ended mode, hints of his pop past do surface. “Other Tongues” begins with a fluttery electronic barrage but soon morphs into a hesitant ballad with (possibly sampled) female vocals, while the title track strikes a careful balance between soul-tinged piano hooks and lithe cascades of abstraction and furry crackle. By threading gentle drones and snippets of percussion through new jack swing piano and intermittent vocals from Iko Niche, “Mustafa” somehow manages to conjure the ghost of Motown, faint and attenuated but still weirdly powerful.
Beste often appears to be rifling through a series of ideas, as on opening song “Norton,” which toggles between hip-hop-adjacent beats and an array of vocal samples from what sound like remnants of R&B hits from older days. The elegiac simplicity of “Requiem for Reem,” on the other hand, delivers a straightforward shot of emotion with only Beste’s murmuring piano melody resting on a pillow of reverb and cottony feedback. There’s a scrapbook element to these songs, as if Beste is shuffling through memories and then arranging them into some private order. Sometimes he lingers and focuses, and that’s when recognizable shapes and feelings emerge. But such clarity is brief and soon dissolves into the organic flow. On Under a Familiar Sun, Sam Beste has taken ghostly ambiguity and made it sound like the most natural thing in the world.
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The Weeknd began his After Hours Til Dawn stadium tour last night (May 9) in front of 60,000 fans at State Farm Stadium in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, during which he debuted portions of seven songs from his latest album, Hurry Up Tomorrow, and welcomed opening act Playboi Carti for two others in the middle of the set.
The show began with the Weeknd, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye, surrounded by 30 red cloaked-dancers on a set adorned with an enormous gold statue of what appeared to be a female robot made by Japanese artist Hajime Sorayam and both gold rings and ruins. The 37-song performance began with material from Hurry Up Tomorrow and its 2020 predecessor, After Hours, before incorporating older hits such as “Starboy,” “Can’t Feel My Face” and “The Hills”
Among the Hurry Up Tomorrow songs performed for the first time were “Opening Night,” “Baptized in Fear” and “Niagara Falls.” Carti joined the proceedings for the new album’s “Timeless” and a version of his own “RATHER LIE,” while the evening was rounded out with covers of Metro Boomin’ “Creepin” and the David Lynch-associated “In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song).”
During his own opening set, Carti played 11 songs from his latest LP, MUSIC, as well as the oldie “Magnolia,” which hadn’t been performed at a proper concert since 2019. Producer/artist Mike Dean started the show by airing his brand new instrumental album, 425, in its entirety. Throughout, Dean played everything from synthesizers to an effects-drenched electric guitar to saxophone.
The After Hours Til Dawn trek resumes May 24 in Detroit and runs through Sept. 3 in San Antonio, Tx. The accompanying film version of Hurry Up Tomorrow, starring the Weeknd, Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan, hits theaters May 16.
The Weekend on May 9, 2025, in Glendale, Az. (photo: Kevin Mazur / Getty Images for Live Nation).
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
