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The R&b veteran Kem hasn’t released a new album since 2014: He took time away to get married, have two kids, change management, and chase a life of domesticity rarely conducive to the rigors of being a working musician. After returning from that sort of hiatus, most singers would try to keep risks to a minimum. But “Not Before You” arrives as a pleasant jolt on Kem’s latest album, Love Always Wins — a traditional ballad enlivened by unexpected, enticing choices.

The song starts with a tender acoustic guitar riff,...

Each week, through my “Somewhere in Time” column, I hop in my GIFfy DeLorean and travel back to a moment in our pop-culture past to reevaluate just what we as a nation thought was good. Inspired by the Reality Rumble going on at Vulture, I set a course for May 21, 1992, when seven strangers stopped being polite and started being real, and in the process ushered in an entire industry. Life before reality television was a profoundly different one than after MTV uncorked The Real World, and the top 40 pop songs from that week sound like a transmission from another dimension all these years later. Let’s go through them together, shall we?40. Atlantic Starr, “Masterpiece”The ’80s really did a number on a lot of ’70s bands. Heart and Aerosmith turned into faceless corporate hitmakers. Robert Plant gave us the Honeydrippers and “Tall Cool One.” And funk stalwarts Atlantic Starr...

The first round of the NBA playoffs begin tomorrow with a 3 p.m. showdown between the Boston Celtics and the New York Knicks. The Knicks — who secured the second seed in the Eastern Conference — had their best regular season in 15 years, due in no small part to Carmelo Anthony, the NBA’s leading scorer. We’ll leave the more intricate hoops talk to the experts, but EW caught up with Anthony to ask about his must-see-tv, what’s on heavy rotation on his iPod, and the last movie he saw with his son. (Hint: a different kind of ballgame).

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Revisiting 18 years of pop culture, from Britpop to the Spice Girls, via Father Ted

1994: Mad fer it!

Issue No 1 Previously a broadsheet section in the newspaper, The Guide was expanded into a magazine proper on 27 August 1994. Nobody bothered to archive a copy, though, so the best we can do is show you a Xeroxed reproduction of the cover. At the time we were concerned with the weird state of science shows on TV and had a wander around the Notting Hill Carnival.

Spotted! All Saints From a review of their single Silver Shadow: "Born in the same year and in the same area of London, what else could these girls do but form a swingbeat group? Their debut is a sickly Atlantic Starr cover with an idiotic number of mixes, encompassing every dance style bar Morris. Eternal may rest easy in their Timberlands." Note: swingbeat was a form of...

Season 11 of American Idol kicked off with a reminder that, like East German Olympic speed-skaters of the 1970s, this year’s crop of contestants has been groomed for singing-competition glory with scientific rigor and a singular focus. They’ve been listening to renditions of “A Moment Like This” and “Flying Without Wings” from inside their mothers’ wombs. They executed their first Whitney Houston-style runs before the age of three. And if they’re not up to following in Scotty McCreery’s footsteps, then by golly, at the very least they can ably replace Ryan Seacrest — at half the cost...