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If you assembled a focus group of today’s country artists and asked them to list their biggest influences, a few names would probably rise to the top: Johnny Cash and Hank Williams; Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn. More contemporary icons like Shania Twain and George Strait would come up, and even underappreciated legends like Billie Joe Shaver and Tanya Tucker. But even if you sat this focus group down and locked them in a room for 24 hours, it’s likely not a single one of them would utter the...

After providing the raw fodder for Charlie Kaufman’s characteristically cryptic I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Canadian novelist Iain Reid serves up more brain-bender material in Garth Davis’ Foe. Anchored by emotionally raw performances from Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal, with Aaron Pierre as a stranger bringing equal parts seductive charm and understated menace, this brooding psychological sci-fi about a dying planet and a floundering marriage is initially unsettling but steadily devolves into sappiness, confusion and self-important solemnity.

A parched area of inland Australia dotted with trees like gnarled skeletons effectively stands in for the decimated American heartland in the arresting visuals of Hungarian Dp Mátyás Erdély (Son of Saul). The year is 2065, and with fresh water and habitable land in short supply, new settlements are being developed in space. That’s where Pierre’s enigmatic character, Terrance, comes in, recruiting colonists for OuterMore, one of the corporations that...

We were quick to report Jenny Lewis’ yacht-rock era back in 2021 when she released the lovely pedal steel-filled ditty “Puppy and a Truck.” But Lewis has moved on — to Nashville, to be exact.

The singer-songwriter dropped the new single “Psychos,” the opener to her upcoming album Joy’All, out June 9 via her new label Blue Note/Capitol Records. “There are no hard feelings,” she casually announces in the blissful chorus. “How I can help you?/It’s time I get away.”

Joy’All marks Lewis’ fifth solo album, following the excellent On the Line,...

The first James Bond film, ‘Dr. No,” starring Sean Connery, Ursula Andress, Jack Lord and Joseph Wiseman, opened in England on Oct. 2, 1962. But the 007 classic didn’t open in New York and Los Angeles until May 29, 1963. Let’s travel back almost six decades to look at the top events, movie, TV series, books and other cultural events of that year in James Bond history, which was punctuated by the tragic assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22.

35th Annual Academy Awards

Best Picture: “Lawrence of Arabia”

Best Director: David Lean, “Lawrence of Arabia”

Best Actor: Gregory Peck, “To Kill a Mockingbird

Best Actress: Anne Bancroft, “The Miracle Worker”

Best Supporting Actor: Ed Begley, “Sweet Bird of Youth”

Best Supporting Actress: Patty Duke, “The Miracle Worker”

Top 10 highest grossing films

“Cleopatra”

“How the West Was Won”

“It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”

“Tom Jones”

“Irma La Douce...

Marvel’s first full-length Eternals trailer doesn’t reveal much about the plot, but it sets a mood. The film is directed and co-written by Chloé Zhao, who won Best Picture and Best Director for Nomadland, a heart-wrenching journey through a desolate landscape. The song featured in the Eternals trailer has been evoking tragic isolation for years. It played on an endless loop in 1999’s Girl, Interrupted. It foretold the zombie apocalypse in the first teaser trailers for The Walking Dead. But the song has even sadder roots than that.

“Throughout the years we have never interfered, until now,” we hear a disembodied female voice (likely Salma Hayek’s Ajak) observe in the trailer. If gods or goddesses stopped bad things from happening to good people, a lot of great music may never exist. The music for the song “The End of the World” was composed by New York City-born Arthur Kent.

The Simpsons aired a rather unusual episode on Sunday night where Lisa befriends an imaginary version of Eighties Morrissey who goes by the name Quilloughby, only to turn on him when she realizes he’s a sullen malcontent who’s incapable of joy. It ends with her encountering the modern-day Quilloughby at a festival where he spouts racist drivel onstage and reveals that he’s no long a vegetarian by eating a pastrami sandwich and firing sausages into the audience.

The episode seemed custom-made to infuriate Morrissey, and he responded...

Nikki Lane first toured with Lana Del Rey back in 2019, when Del Rey was on the road in support of her album Norman Fucking Rockwell! “It was really cool, because I saw that Robert Ellis went out, and Lukas Nelson went out, and Weyes Blood and Zella Day,” Lane recalls. “She was taking a lot of people in our world, and so I was really excited for my opportunity.”

But the Nashville country outlaw has known Del Rey for what she calls “a long time,” and their friendship has led...

There may be no toilet paper available and a general sense of doom prevailing across the planet, but at least music fans will go out singing.

Athens, Ga. band R.E.M.’s 1987 song It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) has reentered the iTunes charts this week, reaching No. 72 as of today. Perhaps the catchiest tune from the band, the song became a staple of its shows in the days before its 2011 split after 30 years of music-making.

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R.E.M. released 15 albums during its reign, including the critically praised Murmur, Reckoning, Document, Out of Time, and Automatic For the People.

There...

By the time Dolly Parton had entered her teens, the young girl from the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee had accomplished something that most adults who love to sing country music could only dare dream: she had performed on the Grand Ole Opry.

Parton, who this week celebrates her 50th anniversary as a member of the Opry cast with an all-star salute, was officially inducted as an Opry member in January 1969, by which time she was a nationally recognized TV star alongside Porter Wagoner. But in 1959, the 13-year-old, then unknown outside of Knoxville,...

For nearly 94 years, since it began as the Wsm Barn Dance in the fall of 1925, the Grand Ole Opry has been a country-music institution. But few fans really know what the Opry is, how an artist is inducted, and what comes along with membership.

As Ken Burns’ new documentary Country Music sparks renewed interest in the Opry, we take a look back at its rich, colorful history, recalling some of its most iconic moments and spelling out what it takes to become a cast member of the longest-running radio show in American history.

On March 31st, 1969, 50 years ago this weekend, Americans got their first chance to hear Dusty in Memphis, the new album by British singer Dusty Springfield and her first after signing with the powerful R&B-centric Atlantic Records. Although the early Sixties afforded her hits “I Only Want to Be With You,” “Wishin’ and Hopin’” and “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me” significant airplay stateside, her albums didn’t sell or chart well in the U.S. And, even though its title held the promise of the beautiful...

Painter, poet and musician Joni Mitchell turns 75 years old today. Her artistry has encompassed pop, rock, folk and jazz, earning varying degrees of praise and criticism, especially for her more experimental, jazz-centric works, but she remains, unquestionably, one of the most influential songwriters of the past 50 years.

Born Roberta Joan Anderson in Fort MacLeod, Alberta, Canada, and raised in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, she began performing in public, accompanying herself on ukulele, in 1963. In August of that year, she appeared on Ckbi-tv in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, as a one-time replacement for a...

There’s something curious about the new Netflix series “The End of the F***ing World”: the kids want to be adults and adults want to be kids. Alyssa and James, two wayward teens looking for something to rebel against and to hit fast-forward on their adolescence, make for a fascinating run-and-gun team as they encounter the pitfalls of young adulthood and a lot more than they bargained for.

But aside from being an unapologetic example of onscreen teen angst, the show also has an incredible secret weapon in a truly smashing soundtrack, almost entirely populated by rock classics from decades past. By using these songs from a different time, “The End of the F***ing World” shows that the two main characters are not only lost in their own worlds, but looking for a place to belong that maybe isn’t even in their own millennium.

The best...

It has been an incredible year for singer/songwriter Sharon Van Etten, particularly when it comes to Peak TV. In addition to scoring the film “Strange Weather,” she performed “Tarifa” on “Twin Peaks: The Return,” delivered her cover of Skeeter Davis‘ “The End of the World” for “The Man In The High Castle,” and made her acting debut in Netflix’s surprise hit “The Oa.” Now Van Etten is going back to where it all began with the deluxe reissue of her debut album, (it was) because i was in love.

Continue reading Sean Durkin Directed Video For Sharon Van Etten’s “I Wish I Knew” & “Keep” [Exclusive] at The Playlist.

Lives of Quiet Desperation: Edmond’s Masterful, Eloquent Debut

“I stand in awe of my body. This matter to which I am bound,” is the poetic quote form Henry David Thoreau opening Lance Edmands’ impressive directorial debut, Bluebird. Dealing with a tragedy that has a rippling effect throughout a northern rural community in Maine, we’ve seen this type of dramatic dynamic countless times before, yet Edmands manages a haunting portrait of unhappy, increasingly desperate lives within a small community of deferred dreams and staunch facades. Originally premiering at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, the title ends its weary trek through the festival circuit to a much deserved theatrical release, though this type of grim, upsetting drama may have difficulty finding an audience due to its sobering subject matter. Dramatically restrained, Edmands deftly navigates the sadness of disconnect in our daily lives, and how terrible circumstances are often the impetus for waking up from that slumber.

This week’s Under The Dome is all about the egg-xit strategy. Here’s Frances’ review…

This review contains spoilers.

2.10 The Fall

A moment’s silence please, to mark the passing of Phil Bushey, whose leap of faith landed him not on the soft rubber of the Zenith children’s playground but on the sharp end of a massive pointy rock. Rest in peace Phil - you may have spent your final days creeping about Chester’s Mill like the most arbitrary of arbitrary Scooby Doo villains but we’ll always remember you as the gambling addict, town sheriff, Skeeter Davis-loving DJ that none of the writers knew what to do with that you really were.

The Rennie men drove the action of The Fall (directed by E.R.'s Eriq La Salle, incidentally) by doing what the Rennie men do – making threats, pointing guns at people and locking women...

Review Frances Roberts 23 Jul 2013 - 16:00

The people of Chester’s Mill face certain extinction again this week! Do they make it? Read on to find out…

This review contains spoilers.

1.5 Blue On Blue

They made it.

This week’s ticking time-bomb in Under the Dome was of the literal variety. To celebrate the one-week anniversary of the mystery lid’s appearance, the Us government sent the residents of Chester’s Mill a thermobaric missile. Never fear though, Barbie, Dodee, Angie, Norrie, Mick & Tich weathered the attack and live to survive next week’s tension-free adventure. And the one after that. And, presumably, the one after that.

There’s the rub with these early episodes of Under the Dome. The show’s makers have wedged a case-of-the-week structure into a serial format. ‘We’re all in grave danger!’ Chester’s Mill shouts each week before the second ad break, then...

When the Dome appeared over Chester's Mill, deaths began to pile up from both the force field and then from the residents. Last Monday, they faced a new deadly threat through the spread of Menigitis. On "Blue on Blue," the threats expanded even further and now include the U.S. military.

Panic ensued when the military pulled out, but only a day later they returned and brought with them the residents' loved ones for a visit. These meetings created more conflict, but also provided answers.

Julia received word from Peter that he was sorry for leaving her behind and in financial ruin. Sad for her, but excellent for viewers. Maybe now she can move on and develop a relationship with Barbie. They were immediately at ease with each other and have amazing chemistry with each other.

She forgave Barbie for his misrepresentation with the simple gesture of taking his hand.

"Under the Dome's" action heats up on Monday's "Blue on Blue," when the military decides to try a drastic measure to get rid of the dome that is encasing Chester's Mill.

Here are some things to look forward to:

The butterfly effect comes to the dome, though in a more literal way than the normal meaning of "the butterfly effect." But it spurs the U.S. military into action, leaving the town wondering what may become of them.It doesn't take long for Junior to step into his role as Deputy Junior -- someone sure likes strappin' on a gun. Several more puzzle pieces are dropped into place about Barbie, while Julie gets a visit at the dome from her sister-in-law, Mary, who has a message from Peter. Line of the episode: "I'm excited to meet your folks. Can't wait to tell 'em you're shacking up with an underage girl and two lesbians.

When the San Francisco band Girls released its debut album, simply titled Album, in 2009, frontman Christopher Owens’ backstory threatened to eclipse his musical accomplishment. He had grown up in a religious cult and had been sheltered from pop music and pop culture for most of his life. When he escaped, he embraced the Beach Boys, Elvis Costello, Black Sabbath, Skeeter Davis, and The Ramones all with equal zeal, which allowed him to turn all those disparate elements into joyful, unassuming, endlessly catchy indie pop. For that reason, while he can pen a melody that’ll put you in mind of...

Getty Images

So the end of the world doesn’t seem like it’s happening.

But if it does happen at some point today, say after lunch or something, Speakeasy’s got you covered. Here’s a punchy Apocalypse and Rapture-themed playlist as we contemplate the end of the world (upside: not paying rent in June) and debate whether we need to invest in new leather pants for the Mad Max-y post-fallout world.

Caveat: No, Rem’s “It’s the...

In October, Robert Plant's Band of Joy played a show in Birmingham, England. The theater is not far from the suburban roads where he and his friend John Bonham once siphoned gas from parked cars so they could get to gigs. About halfway through the set, a young woman jumped onto the stage. She brushed past his guitar player and kissed Plant on the lips. Plant smiled – this is not the first time this has happened – and continued singing. After the show, Joan Bonham, John's 81-year-old mom, made her way backstage.

By Reuters

The country-folk duo of M. Ward and actress Zooey Deschanel, known as She & Him, is slated to return in 2010, proving that the 2008 collaboration wasn't just a one-off affair.

Aptly titled "Volume 2," the 13-song set is due March 23 on Merge and features 10 original songs and two covers, Nrbq's "Ridin' in My Car" and Skeeter Davis' "Gonna Get Along Without You." Deschanel wrote the originals, with Ward producing. The pair recorded the tracks over the past year in Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon.

Read more at Reuters.

Just because Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward had a busy year doesn't mean they didn't make time to work together again as She & Him. The acoustic-pop pairing has prepped a follow-up to last year's "Volume One," aptly named "Volume Two," due March 23. The album will once again combine the actress/singer's vocals and songwriting with M. Ward's talents for arrangements and production. It contains 11 originals and two covers, Nrbq's “Ridin’ In My Car” and Skeeter Davis’ “Gonna Get Along Without You.” Deschanel describes it as a "feel-good album," which wouldn't be too far off from "Volume One." She &...