Table of contents for November 2018 in Rolling Stone

In 1966, the Velvets played a fabled run at Andy Warhol’s club the Dom in downtown New York. Now, just around the corner is the Velvet Underground Experience, a huge exhibit with rare films, photos and multimedia spaces, including a “greenhouse” where you can step inside the Banana Album cover. There are letters from a young Lou Reed about New York (“so many sad, sick people and I have a knack for meeting them”) and meeting bandmate John Cale (“a starving viola player”). Co-curator Christian Fevret hopes the exhibit shows young artists “how it’s important to go beyond the boundaries.” WILL HERMES TREND WATCH The Music-Film Gold Rush A Star Is Born is now a major Oscar contender. But it’s not the only serious music movie hitting theaters. From…

IT USED TO BE EASY to crown a song of the summer each year, back when major labels and radio programmers called the shots. But what was the biggest summer song of 2018? Thanks to the dizzying buffet of ways that fans find music today, it’s harder to name a winner. From May through August, radio stations in the U.S. blasted crowd-pleasers like Post Malone’s “Psycho” and Taylor Swift’s “Delicate”; over on streaming services, fresher tracks from Juice Wrld and Ella Mai reigned supreme. Much of that difference comes down to the fact that on-demand streaming has a young audience that bumps promising hits to the top very quickly. The AM-FM radio market is bigger and broader — 93 percent of adults tune in at least once a…

Gutting Fuel Standards The hit on gas mileage is Trump’s most dangerous rollback yet Donald Trump is promising every American a less-efficient car, so they can spend more money at the gas pump, breathe in more air pollution and cook the globe quicker with carbon emissions. “This is one of the single most damaging rollbacks attacking climate and clean-air safeguards in American history,” says Vickie Patton, general counsel at the Environmental Defense Fund. Standards set in 2012 by Barack Obama would have doubled gas mileage by 2025, but Trump is freezing those improvements (a decision even automakers like Ford and Honda have spoken out against). Plus, he’s trying to strip California of its legal right to set its own standards, which have historically functioned as a national benchmark. The…

IN A NONDESCRIPT bedroom in Toronto, Erika is being prepped to meet her first john. Before her appointment, an attendant washes her, dresses her in a white tank top and black thong, and puts her into position on her back. One last touch: a spray of perfume. Every time the john smells it, he’ll think of her. Erika, of course, is a $120-an-hour sex doll. At Aura Dolls, and in similar brothels — from Russia to Canada and soon the U.S. — the “world’s oldest profession” is being reborn, without the sticking point of anti-prostitution laws. “The main thing is that our customers won’t have to feel ashamed of trying their sexual fantasies,” says Aura Dolls marketing director Claire Lee. Others might like the novelty, or feel that sex…

UPDATE LATIN POP’S NEW LOOKS Three artists create global mash-ups and make vintage sounds feel vibrant Ozuna Aura Rosalia Malamente Trending Tropics Elintelné PUERTO RICAN singer Ozuna is a reggaeton radical, embracing sounds from all over the pop landscape on Aura; “Ibiza” is a handsome collaboration with the bachata star Romeo Santos, and “Comentale” finds Ozuna harmonizing with the Senegalese-American singer Akon over a beat that hints at disco. While Ozuna creates hypercontemporary global pop, Rosalia, a Spanish singer trained in flamenco, channels a traditional sound through modern electronics. Her El Mal Querer mixes flamenco’s hand-clap rhythms and pitch-manipulated vocals that trace ghostly lines, and “Bagdad” alludes to Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River.” The Puerto Rican-Domincan duo Trending Tropics do it all at once; their…

SPY GAMES, REDUX AMC goes back to the “John Le Carré novel + beautiful international scenery + beautiful international actors” formula that proved so successful with The Night Manager. This time, Lady Macbeth’s Florence Pugh plays an actress lured by a reluctant Israeli spy (Alexander Skarsgård) and his pugnacious commander (Michael Shannon) into going undercover to help stop a Palestinian terror cell. Pugh is riveting as a young woman who’s not nearly as smart or fearless as she keeps telling the world. Shannon gets to play to both the loudest and quietest ends of his range, while Skarsgård again uses his stoic good looks to conceal and then reveal inner turmoil. All are great, but the secret weapon is Park Chan-Wook, who directs all six episodes. There’s already a…

FUNNY HOW crowd-pleasing movies bring out the snob in critics. (Think The Blind Side.) And now the hugely entertaining Green Book faces the hammer. It’s another true story supposedly tainted because director Peter Farrelly is famed for the gross-out comedies he made with his brother Bobby (dump all you want on Dumb & Dumber, but Kingpin is immortal). Set in the Deep South in 1962, Green Book had the nerve to win the People’s Choice award at the Toronto Film Festival against artful contenders such as Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War and Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk. How can a Farrelly film compete with that crowd? It can’t. But on its own terms, this buddy dramedy delivers the heartfelt and hilarious goods, with two cherries…

Blood on the Tracks has always been one of Bob Dylan’s most mysterious albums. He recorded the classic LP in New York, but then, for reasons he’s never explained, scrapped half of it and went back home to Minnesota to keep working, even though advance copies had been shipped out (everyone from Mick Jagger to Dylan’s brother David have been credited with convincing Dylan the original recordings weren’t up to par). A new box set, More Blood, More Tracks: The Bootleg Series Vol. 14, offers a window into those original New York sessions, showing exactly how his most confessional songs came together during just six days in 1974. These never-heard recordings reveal that he originally laid down the songs acoustically by himself. On the box set, raw, achingly tender…

1. Lana Del Rey “Venice Bitch” Nine minutes of sad, sweet, woozily epic California dreaming that evokes fading summers, getting high and “Crimson and Clover.” It’s got us psyched for her next LP, which reportedly will have the too-good-to-be-true title Norman Fucking Rockwell. 2. Jeff Tweedy “Some Birds” Wilco just announced they’re taking a hiatus. The predictably classy reason: Their drummer’s wife got a Fulbright scholarship to study in Finland. In the meantime, Tweedy has a fine solo LP coming out, full of cozy, introspective tunes like this one. 3. Trending Tropics (feat. Wiso G) “Elintelne” A Dominican-Puerto Rican duo take Latin pop, hip-hop and African rock and slam them all together beautifully on this addictive hyperspeed jam. It’s like eight hours of partying collapsed into a three-minute…

SUNDAY afternoon in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the neighborhood is being its Williamsburgiest self. Outside a gentrified coffee shop under the grimy elevated J-M-Z tracks, a jaywalking Hasidic man darts into the street, making a dude with dreadlocks in an SUV pump his brakes. Inside the cafe, three white twentysomethings are brainstorming about starting the hashtag #stopkillingpeople when a woman in line overhears them and says she loves it. “Oh, thanks!” one says. “We’re trying to figure out ways to promote our music video!” “Noooooooo,” says Zoë Kravitz when told of this exchange a few minutes later. “Were they serious?” She hangs her head. “Aw, man.” Kravitz, 29, has lived in Williamsburg for 10 years, and she enjoys the same pastime as many of its residents: complaining about how much…

WHEN ED SHEERAN was recording “How Would You Feel (Paean),” a ballad on his multiplatinum 2017 album, ÷, he knew something was missing. “I did a really terrible guitar solo, and I was like, ‘I bet John Mayer could do this better,’ ” Sheeran said. “So I e-mailed him, and he did it a lot better.” Mayer has become a mentor and key influence on a new generation of pop crooners in recent years, including Shawn Mendes (who asked Mayer to produce and play on his song “Like to Be You” and calls him “the best guitar player in the world” and “the god of music”) and English newcomer James Bay, both of whom are clearly influenced by Mayer’s bluesy guitar playing, sensitive singer-songwriter balladry and pop savvy. This sort…

“I WAS IN TROUBLE,” singer Elbee Thrie says, recalling the day that his R&B band, Phony Ppl, was born in 2008. It was Thrie’s 16th birthday, and he’d been grounded. So he invited some friends over from his Crown Heights, Brooklyn, neighborhood. “We recorded our first song, made it up right there,” Thrie says. “Then the next song happened, and the one after that. We didn’t realize how diverse everything was. We just embraced it.” For the next decade, through varying lineups, Phony Ppl gigged around town, studied at New York music schools, and did sideman work with artists such as Theophilus London and Gene Ween. The group — now a solid bond of Thrie, guitarist Elijah Rawk, drummer Matthew Byas, keyboard player Aja Grant and his brother, bassist…

THERE’S SOMETHING deeply satisfying about getting high and drooling over images of a gorgeous, marijuana-infused dinner — and a new crop of shows offer a look into how these intoxicating feasts are made. Take Viceland’s Bong Appétit, one of only three in-studio shows nominated last year for a James Beard award, a top honor in the cooking world. The first two seasons featured lessons in how to infuse fats and oils with marijuana, culminating in a giggle-ridden dinner party. For its third season — now led by former Cypress Hill rapper B-Real — the show is shifting to a competition model, but the goal of normalizing edibles remains the same. “I think the more cannabis there is on different platforms, it takes away the stigma,” says chef Vanessa Lavorato.…

IN HARD TIMES, we’re told, people don’t go to movies and TV for reality; they go to escape it. That may explain the rise of the Marvel, DC and Star Wars empires, but now that the real world is dominated by a reality-TV supervillain who spouts more lies than Emperor Palpatine, a rebel alliance of nonfiction is rising up, pulling the once-dusty genre of documentaries off the PBS sidelines and thrusting it front and center. “I suspect it’s because we all need a little fucking context,” says veteran documentary producer Marilyn Ness of the genre’s explosive growth. “People are craving clarity.” The boom has made hits of series like Wild Wild Country, The Keepers and O.J.: Made in America. And while only 28 documentaries have made more than $10…

‘HOMECOMING” IS A hypnotic blend of old-school and new. It’s fronted by Julia Roberts, one of the last of the capital-M Movie Stars hailing from an era when the idea of doing a TV series would be unthinkable. It’s directed by Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail, who makes half of each episode look like a loving Hitchcock pastiche and the other half like it was shot on an iPhone. Its story is adapted from a Gimlet Media podcast, and it remains taut as part of the welcome new trend of half-hour dramas. Parts of it take place a few years from now, yet it’s startlingly low-tech. (Its chief sleuth, a clumsy Columbo-type civil servant played winningly by Shea Whigham, relies on paper files, a flashlight and a pair of…

Bohemian Rhapsody STARRING Rami Malek DIRECTOR Bryan Singer PUT RAMI MALEK high on the list for best film performances of 2018. As Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of the British band Queen, the Mr. Robot star performs miracles, catching the look, strut and soul of Mercury, who died of complications from AIDS in 1991. Sadly, the film itself shows signs of a difficult birth. Sacha Baron Cohen was set to play Mercury before he left over creative differences. Director Bryan Singer (X-Men) was fired for not showing up on set (an uncredited Dexter Fletcher replaced him). So, yeah, Bohemian Rhapsody moves in fits and starts as we follow Mercury, born Farrokh Bulsara of Parsi descent, from baggage handler to co-founder of Queen with guitarist Brian May (Gwilym Lee) and…

OZZY OSBOURNE’S pre-show routine is a little quieter than it used to be: First he does vocal warm-ups, then he prays. “I say a few words to my higher power, which, if you want to call him God, I don’t care,” he says in his dressing room at PPL Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on opening night of his North American tour. “If something goes wrong, it was his decision, not mine.” The stakes are greater this time, since the former Black Sabbath singer and reality-TV star declared that this world tour will be his last. Its name, No More Tours II, references his No More Tours farewell run in the early Nineties. Back then, Ozzy had been diagnosed with “a little bit of” multiple sclerosis. “Sharon said, ‘A little…

TWO YEARS AGO, when Brothers Osborne beat out Florida Georgia Line to win Vocal Duo of the Year at the Country Music Awards, many Nashville scene-watchers saw it as a hugely pivotal moment. FGL had defined the slick “bro country” sound that had ruled radio for years. Brothers Osborne hearkened back to a tougher, rootsier side of country. Underdog realness took home the hardware. “All genres of music get to be repetitious after a while,” says the bearded John Osborne, 36, sitting next to his younger brother in an East Nashville cocktail bar. “And sometimes a bomb needs to be detonated.” On November 14th, the Brothers are up for their third consecutive Best Vocal Duo CMA. Along with artists like Ashley McBryde and Chris Stapleton, they’re part of an…

WHEN I FIRST heard Donald Trump on the campaign trail, I thought, “What a joke!” When I last heard Donald Trump on the campaign trail, I thought, “How long will it take for my children to learn Icelandic?” I underestimated Donald Trump once. I’ll never do it again. Even if Congress gets hit by a blue tidal wave, don’t think that has any bearing on the 2020 presidential run, which horrifyingly will begin right after the midterms. Campaign-trail reporters like myself (at least, those of us who don’t do the smart thing and off ourselves before the race starts) would do well to remember the mistake we made in 2015-2016. Last time, Beltway prognosticators kept selling reporters like me on lines such as, “The math is impossible, he can’t…

TOTO’S “AFRICA” IS RIDICULOUS by definition: an Eighties ode to Africa, by a bunch of L.A. studio-session dudes. But something about “Africa” speaks to our moment. Like “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” a decade ago, it’s a mega-cheese classic with a bizarrely popular afterlife. Its fans in 2018 run the gamut from dank-meme enthusiasts to moms to tone-deaf karaoke singers screaming “I bless the rains down in Africa!” — not to mention Weezer, who scored their first Hot 100 hit in years after covering it in response to a fan petition. Love it or hate it, you’ve probably heard “Africa” today. You’ll hear it tomorrow. This damn song follows you everywhere, like the sound of wild dogs crying out in the night. Back in February 1983, when “Africa” hit Number One,…

QAnon has gobbled the front line of not-smart right-wing celebrities. WERE IT A government plot — a dazzling scheme to keep the public stupid — QAnon would be a great achievement in the otherwise relatively undistinguished history of the CIA. Alas, it is not. Like most things these days, if it seems like 4D chess, it’s probably just stupid. So it is with Q, the anonymous executive-branch staffer who is said to be leaking “breadcrumbs” across the bowels of the Internet, illuminating a vast subterranean effort to expose Donald Trump’s enemies for everything from pedophilia to killing Princess Diana to causing Hurricane Katrina. It’s a thrilling fantasy that takes the rightist paranoia of The Turner Diaries and mixes it with the gore of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Killer and the…

“It became very practical: Like, OK, what do I do to feel good about music again?” “SOMETIMES IT’S NECESSARY to not function,” says Robyn in the most functional, Scandinavian way possible: quiet and measured and with the soothing tone of some sort of woodland creature emerging after a long, restorative sleep from a cave of mystical wonders. In fact, it’s been four years since Robyn stopped touring for her beloved 2010 Body Talk trilogy, four long years in which her legend has lived on, out of step with her actual self. “When I was challenged before, I would go into this mode where I was pushing through the challenges and getting off on that liberated feeling of being able to explore desperation and passion and frustration and all that.”…

IF YOU BUILD it, they will, apparently, rock. Even as guitar-based rock faded in the mainstream, an educational infrastructure teaching kids how to play it has flourished. Options range from the for-profit School of Rock chain (which existed prior to the Jack Black movie) to dozens of rock summer camps across the country, a lot of them aimed at girls — Tegan and Sara, Haim and many others have raised money for the Girls Rock Camp Foundation. It probably shouldn’t be surprising that all that schooling has begun producing actual rock stars: Two of 2018’s hottest indie acts, Soccer Mommy and Snail Mail, are rock-camp veterans. Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan, 19, started out at a now-defunct rock camp at age seven, becoming wildly competitive with “boys who wrote me…

THERE’S THIS THING about Claire Foy’s face: It is constantly changing, highs and lows passing over it like a fast-moving storm. With a wordless glance she projects, instantly, the emotional temperature of the character she is playing. It’s a quality that makes Foy, 34, one of the most compelling actresses of her generation. Perhaps it can be traced back to childhood: At 13 years old, Foy, who was born in Stockport, England, and raised in Buckinghamshire, was afflicted with juvenile arthritis. At age 17, doctors discovered a benign tumor behind her eye. “From a very young age I had the experience of your body failing you in some way,” she says. “It’s haunted me my entire life, but at the same time it’s a blessing because you learn to…

THESE two young bands are doing something vaguely startling in 2018: They play undiluted, largely unironic classic rock, defiantly fighting for a style of music that keeps getting written off as irrelevant, even as it never quite goes away. Greta Van Fleet seem like they leaped fully formed from the skull of a rock critic in 1975. Three brothers and a bud from Michigan, they come bearing shamelessly recycled Zeppelin-isms with a frontman who seems to have heard Rush’s 2112 a few times. There’s an element of the ridiculous in this (they were roughly kindergarten age when School of Rock premiered). But there’s also a charm to their guileless, retro-fetishist conviction. And dudes have chops. “Age of Man” is lighters-up prog-rock spirituality. “The Cold Wind” and “When the Curtain…