Table of contents for February 2024 in Rolling Stone

ZELDA WILLIAMS has wonderful memories of being on film sets as a kid, watching her father, Robin Williams, shoot movies like Hook and Bicentennial Man. But that doesn’t mean she inherited his bombastic sense of humor. “I’m a bit darker,” says Williams, 34. “I’m the person who laughed during Hereditary.” Williams is putting those dark impulses on full display in her feature directorial debut, Lisa Frankenstein, in theaters Feb. 9. Written by Diablo Cody, the film is an Eighties retelling of the Mary Shelley classic (think less chemistry experiments, more Echo and the Bunnymen). It follows a high school outcast (Kathryn Newton), who recently witnessed her mom get killed by an ax murderer. When she’s not pissing off her evil new stepmom (Carla Gugino), she accidentally brings a hot…

IT WAS A PERFECT Hollywood afternoon. There was sun, a slight breeze, and some of the most famous faces on the planet. And for Demna Gvasalia, there was fear. The Balenciaga creative director has proven himself one of the most adept and blunt bottlers of our zeitgeist for the past decade, and his artistic interpretations are among the most polarizing and debated in fashion. It’s perhaps understandable then that after the brand’s first Los Angeles show in its 105-year history, he was “very afraid” to talk to the locals. “What if they were like, ‘Oh, that’s how you see what’s going on here?’” Demna says. We’re sitting in a sunlit corner of the mega mansion he’s been working out of since coming to the city from Paris a few…

BY THE MID-2010S, Daymé Arocena was a household name in her native Havana. When she’d walk down the street, people would stop her, recognizing the singer with the powerful, heart-atomizing voice. “I came from the jazz scene, and I’d built a reputation there,” she remembers. “But I started to feel like I’d hit a ceiling.” Arocena had always been an outspoken voice in Cuba’s arts scene, but around 2019, she says, her world changed after she had a few public clashes with the government’s cultural ministers. Fearing repercussions, she moved to Canada. Then the pandemic hit. “It put me in a complete state of isolation,” she says, recalling how alone she felt in a new country. (She now lives in Puerto Rico.) One night, Arocena caught Beyoncé’s Black Is…

‘THE ROUTE I’m taking to being a farmer is ridiculous,” Brittany Howard says, sitting at the William Vale luxury hotel during her press trip to New York. She’s fantasizing about a potential future, one where she would maybe own a farm like the one she grew up on. It’s one of many ways she can see herself adding to the list of non-musical hobbies in her repertoire since 2020: fixing boats, fishing. But don’t worry, music is still at the front of the former Alabama Shakes leader’s mind at 35. She has a new solo album, What Now, due out Feb. 2. She started working on it in 2020 while isolating in a rental home in Nashville. It’s a testament to newfound patience that translates into some of her…

“I AM LITERALLY GETTING THROWN INTO LIFE RIGHT NOW.” Dua Lipa is thinking about her Saturn return as she says this. At 28, she’s deep in it now, but the astrology-loving star had been anticipating the foreboding planetary event for a while. It’s a cosmic coming of age, usually when people are at the cusp of 30, marked by tons of transitions and transformations and upheaval. Lipa — who’s about to start an entirely new chapter in her career — is feeling it all. “It drags you by your feet,” Lipa says in her North London lilt, relishing the chaos a bit. “I thought 28 was going to be so cute.” We’re seated on the now-empty patio at Gjelina, a popular restaurant on Venice Beach’s trendy Abbot Kinney Boulevard.…

LOOKING OUT THE studio window of the radio station where she’d worked for 29 years, DJ “Mistress Carrie” Sarao could see a crowd gathering outside. It was a Friday night, Feb. 21, 2020, and freezing, but that didn’t stop hundreds of Bostonians from flooding the parking lot when they heard the news. There was no invitation, just an impulse, an impromptu meetup of loved ones known and unknown. At midnight, the city would lose its last rock radio station. Debuting in 1970, WAAF helped launched the careers of local bands like Aerosmith and Godsmack, and put national groups like Shinedown on the map. To many listeners, the station was as much a part of Boston as Fenway Park and clam chowder. WAAF was, Mistress Carrie’s longtime colleague and fellow…

RADIOHEAD’S SWEET SIDE HUSTLE Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood create some low-key majesty with the Smile THE RELEASE of a new Radiohead album is greeted in certain circles as a kind of holy occasion, a time to drop everything and commence Deep Listening. We have not witnessed such a hallowed event since 2016, when Radiohead dropped A Moon Shaped Pool, and a new album after such a wait sure would be welcome. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to see what the members of a great band can do when working outside such weighty expectations. That’s the story of the Smile, the excellent side band Radiohead singer Thom Yorke and lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood have formed with jazz drummer Tom Skinner. On the band’s 2022 debut, A Light for Attracting Attention,…

The tagline for Feud: Capote vs. The Swans is “The Original Housewives.” Do you watch any Real Housewives? I have never watched a single episode of a single Housewife. I don’t know who any of them are. As an actor, what’s it like to play in the Ryan Murphy pond? He’s so prolific. I remember when I was first offered American Horror Story, it was still Facebook-y days, and I looked it up and saw that all my old alternative weirdo friends were into the show. I was like, “OK, this feels right.” In the show, the Swans meet for regular gossipy lunches. Do you have any regular routines with your girlfriends? I used to have these girls’ nights where I’d only have girlfriends over and we’d drink martinis…

WHAT’S NEW, WHAT’S NEXT, WHAT’S NUTS AT THIS POINT in her career, Madi Diaz is realistic about life on the road. “I’m 37 years old, and this shit is heavy,” the Nashville songwriter says with a laugh. “I’m walking through the airport and I’m carrying a lot of pedals and cables. I’m shoving my guitar in the bathroom stall.” By the time she gets to the check-in counter, she’s dreading the task of talking an airline employee into letting her bring her gear on board. “I’m just not a good fighter,” she adds. “I’m stubborn, but I don’t have the oomph in me anymore.” Maybe that’s true when it comes to luggage, but it’s definitely not applicable to Diaz’s music. Just ask Harry Styles, who brought her out as…

FILMING A SCENE as the title mystic in Bob Marley: One Love, Kingsley Ben-Adir was striding across a room in Jamaica when he heard, “Cut!” Marley’s son Ziggy, who was on set, had some input: He told the actor that his father wouldn’t have walked that particular way. “He was going up the stairs,” Marley says, “and I tell him, ‘Listen! When Bob walks, he takes two steps at a time.’” Months later, in New York, Ben-Adir re-creates the revised move, his knees almost coming up to his chin. “Everyone was doing an example of how Bob would do it,” he says. “I had to stay open to that and be like, ‘This stuff is helping me. It’s helping me find him.’ I had to stay fluid with that.”…

AS HE TOOK his sunrise walk through a quiet Las Vegas suburb of tan stucco houses and desert landscaping in late September, Duane Davis resembled nobody’s idea of a gangster legend. A bald man on the soft side of 60 in a white Polo Sport T-shirt and loose-fitting pants, he could have been just another middle-aged neighbor plodding uphill against the ravages of time. Whatever reverie Davis enjoyed ended as officers from Las Vegas Metro’s Criminal Apprehension Team swiftly approached in tactical gear out of unmarked vehicles. “Hey, Keffe, Metro Police,” one cop said. “Come on over here. I appreciate your cooperation, though.” Armed only with a cellphone and water bottle, Davis was the picture of compliance. He’d expected this since July, when police served a search warrant at…