Table of contents for March 22, 2018 in Rolling Stone

Migos on Top FANS ARE SAYING THAT Migos are “better than the Beatles” [“Migos Take You Higher,” RS 1306/1307]. But why compare? Why do they need to be better? It’s apples and oranges. Just enjoy their music and their success. Ken McNeillVia the Internet I HAVE NO ISSUE WITH THESE guys spending their money like drunken sailors on cars and jewelry. But I do hope they’re giving back to their community as well. Michael MacchiBethel, CT​ THE THEO WENNER COVER photo of Migos is beautiful – one for the archives. Unfortunately, Migos keep using casual homophobia in their lyrics. Can’t one of their pals like Donald Glover show them Moonlight so they can get woke already? Damn. Frank RodriguezLos Angeles Jack’s New Groove I LIKE JACK WHITE SIMPLY because he’s…

Lorde Melodrama World Tour DATES Through April 15th OPENERS Run the Jewels, Tove Styrke, Mitski TICKET PRICES $40–$100 “I’ve really stepped up my game,” says Lorde, describing her first U.S. arena tour. “I even dance kind of like a real pop star.” The singer is aiming for shows as emotionally charged as last year’s Melodrama, even if that means reliving the breakup that inspired the songs. “I have to go through the emotional arc of it every night, which is exhilarating and grueling all in one,” she says. She’s become used to “crying, hands covered in glitter, leading 10,000 people in a singalong.” Lorde conceived of pretty much every detail of the show, from the neon astronaut sign (which she drew at her kitchen table) to the rectangular “terrarium” that…

London Pops Off “Long live rock & roll,” Dave Grohl proclaimed as Foo Fighters performed at the BRIT Awards, England’s version of the Grammys. Chris Stapleton and Justin Timberlake (above) opened the show backed by a massive choir, and Ed Sheeran took home the Global Success Award. Ronnie Wood presented it, calling Sheeran “one of the best talents we have.” <div class="thick-border"></div> <div class="thick-border"></div> <div class="thick-border"></div> Oscar Night Rocks After attending the 2017 Oscars as part of the Moonlight cast, Janelle Monáe was able to party this year with no pressure. She hung with fellow soul-diva-turned-actress Mary J. Blige. Monáe will release her long-awaited album Dirty Computer in April. <div class="thick-border"></div> <div class="thick-border"></div> <div class="thick-border"></div> <div class="thick-border"></div> <div class="thick-border"></div> <div class="thick-border"></div> <div class="thick-border"></div> <div class="thick-border"></div>…

“I’m all right today. You gonna find a way to cross and you gonna get there. I’m on fire today.” —NATHANIEL RATELIFF AND THE NIGHT SWEATS, “You Worry Me” Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats Tearing at the Seams Stax HHH Three years before Justin Timberlake stopped shaving and retreated to a cabin in the woods, bearded Colorado singer Nathaniel Rateliff was already showing the appeal – and power – of rustic-white-dude soul. Rateliff looked like Garth Hudson, and his woodsy take on vintage Southern R&B was on point enough to get him signed to iconic Memphis label Stax Records. But his self-titled 2015 debut with the Night Sweats was about more than reverent growling. Rateliff, who started his career playing folk and alt-rock, brought raw introspection to songs like…

What piece of advice would you give to a young songwriter? Don’t worry so much about rhymes. Try to please yourself, and don’t think about commercial stuff. I think if you write from your own gut, you’ll come up with something interesting, whereas if you sit around guessing what people want, you end up with the kind of same schlock that everybody else has got. What lyric of yours are you most proud of? “There’s a hole in Daddy’s arm where all the money goes/Jesus Christ died for nothin’, I suppose” [1971’s “Sam Stone”]. I was trying to say something about our soldiers who’d go over to Vietnam, killing people and not knowing why you were there. And then a lot of soldiers came home and got hooked on drugs…

1. Kacey Musgraves “Space Cowboy” Musgraves is a country truth-bomber in finest Loretta Lynn tradition. But she delivers this gorgeous breakup ballad with a gentle touch, giving her cowboy all the space he needs so she can find the freedom she craves. 2. Swae Lee feat. Rae Sremmurd “Hurt to Look” Beloved hip-hop duo Rae Sremmurd are about to release a triple album; this elegiacally spacey disco nugget suggests it might be the psych-trap Sandinista! we never knew we needed. 3. Sade “Flower of the Universe” Light some candles, pour that bubbly – Sade’s first song in seven years shows why she’s still the queen of satin slow jams. 4. Yo La Tengo “For You Too” Three decades into their run and Yo La Tengo are still finding awesome new…

David Byrne American Utopia Todomundo/Nonesuch HHH½ Ex-Talking Head throws a very weird party in his mind David Byrne’s distinctive vision illuminates best when trained on disturbing things; lately, there’s no shortage of material. Abetted by old comrade Brian Eno and new one Daniel Lopatin (a.k.a. Oneohtrix Point Never), this LP is willing to go there. See “Bullet” (“His skin did part in two/Skin that women had touched”). There are bracingly kinetic moments (the electronic spaz-out in “Doing the Right Thing”), though they recede too soon, supplanted by downtempo bits. Yet it’s the most agitated parts, oddly, that are most comforting. WILL HERMES Stone Temple Pilots s/t Rhino HH½ Minus late singer Scott Weiland, the grunge rockers carry on The first Stone Temple Pilots album since Scott Weiland died in 2015…

The Phish bassist is wrapping up a solo tour. In the summer, he’ll head back out on the road with Phish. The Beatles “Here Comes the Sun” When I was seven, those harmonies oozed off the grooves of my scratchy record like pure, sunny longing, tinting the world electric yellow. Grateful Dead “Weather Report Suite” Teenage me blasted this, winding through New Hampshire mountain roads at midnight, getting out of my car in dense fog to look at darkness. King Sunny Adé “Easy Motion Tourist” How can 20 musicians be so telepathically entwined, the pedal steel levitating on top? Tune-Yards “Water Fountain” Merrill [Garbus] created this by banging on random things at home and around Oakland. How can that many flowing phrases be so catchy? The Louvin Brothers “Hoping That…

DAN AUERBACH CAN’T EVEN make it to the dressing room before he has to stop to talk about the gig he just played. “This is the most fun I’ve had onstage,” he says in the hallway of Seattle’s Showbox nightclub. “This band, these players, these legends – this is exactly why I love music.” He’s talking about his Easy Eye Sound Revue, named after his Nashville studio, where Auerbach has been making music with longtime session pros like drummer Gene Chrisman and keyboardist Bobby Wood since the Black Keys went on hiatus in 2014. “These guys played with Elvis, and were on ‘Son of a Preacher Man,’ ” Auerbach says. Those players take the music from his 2017 album, Waiting on a Song, to new heights live, performing explosive versions of tracks…

KELLY CLARKSON HAS A clear memory of standing outside an American Idol audition room in Dallas, 16 years ago, and seeing ominous portents. “Everybody was walking out crying,” she recalls. “And they were like, ‘There’s this British man, and he’s awful!’ ” One popular-vote victory and eight hit albums later, Clarkson is now a not-quite-so-scary singing judge (and coach) in her own right, wielding one of those giant red buttons on The Voice. Clarkson, who released the R&B-laced album Meaning of Life last year, says everyone keeps asking what she’d tell a young Kelly if she got to coach her. “As a joke, I’m like, ‘Run!’ ” says Clarkson, who often clashed with her old label, RCA – her new album is her first on Atlantic. “Obviously every joke has some seriousness…

MEEK MILLS LOVES DIRT BIKES the way Mick Fanning loves big waves and Jimmy Chin loves hanging off four-mile-high towers. It’s an inconvenient passion that may one day maim or kill him – but if you’d seen as much death as he did by 18, you wouldn’t be particular about your poison. “It’s the only time I ever feel peace,” he says, “kicking wheelies on the freeway, doing 60. You’re out there 20 deep, just a brotherhood of dudes. No gang shit. There’s like this … freedom you can’t get from nothing else.” Meek, the fiercest and most prolific rapper to come out of Philadelphia in two decades – millions of albums sold, multiple high-end beefs provoked, and one very public breakup with Nicki Minaj – picks at a bulbous…

Jack White Boarding House Reach Third Man/Columbia HHH½ Jack White’s first LP in four years is a messy, sprawling, daffy, howling set that’s easily his strangest record. Per usual, it shows a man devoted to rock’s dark arts – its tangled roots, recording traditions, self-righteous fury and appealingly deranged megalomania. The LP looks less to White’s adopted city of Nashville than to his mighty hometown of Detroit, the land of George Clinton and the Stooges, pushing the acid funk he nodded to on 2014’s Lazaretto even further out. Electronics figure prominently – see the triptych of “Hypermisophoniac,” “Ice Station Zebra” and “Over and Over and Over,” a groove storm with state-of-the-digital-art synth squalls, heavy-metal blast beats, sick guitar excursions, old-school rap flows and jazz-piano asides. Some experimental detours are dead…