Table of contents for March 23, 2017 in Rolling Stone

Canadian singer-songwriter Mac DeMarco has finished work on the follow-up to 2014’s Salad Days. Leadoff singles “This Old Dog” and “My Old Man” are as wonderfully chilled-out and quirky as his earlier work. “Just wanted to keep this puppy real, kept it pretty simple, kept it pretty clean,” DeMarco says. “Found myself putting lipstick on a chimp a couple of times, but wound up letting the songs be what they wanted to be, used a lot of demo material and first takes as final recordings. Had a good time ripping it together, Jah bless it.”…

Last year, katy perry was recording in L.A. with Max Martin when the producer played her “Lion,” a track he had worked on with Bob Marley’s grandson, Skip. Perry was so impressed, she summoned Marley to contribute a guest verse to her single “Chained to the Rhythm.” “It shocked me,” says Skip, who’s just 20. As the son of Cedella Marley, Bob’s daughter, Skip grew up around music, often touring with his uncles Ziggy and Stephen. He never sang in public until Stephen pushed him onstage during a show to spontaneously perform a bit of his grandfather’s “One Love.” “I was shy before that,” Skip says. “But that experience confirmed that music is what I should be doing.” After a friend went through a breakup, Skip wrote the mournful ballad…

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Dr. x is a dad. Appropriately – boringly – at 4:37 p.m. on a national holiday, he is lighting a charcoal grill, about to grab a pair of tongs with one hand and a beer with the other. His kids are running around their suburban patio, which could be anywhere; Dr. X, though impressively educated now, grew up poor in a town that is basically nowhere. Like most Americans, he is a Christian. Like a lot of health-conscious men, he fights dad bod by working out once or twice a week, before going into his medical practice. Somewhat less conventionally, two hours ago, he was escorting a woman around his yard, helping her walk off a large dose of MDMA. He’s the one who’d given it to her, earlier in…

Future  Future  Epic HHH <div class="thin-border"></div> Future HNDRXX Epic HHH½ <div class="thin-border"></div> There have always been two Futures. There’s the pill-popping trap god whose hypnotic, watery vocals seem to reflect a darkness of the soul, and then there’s the jumpy, ecstatic kid who just wants to fuck up some commas. These two albums, released within a week of each other, explore his dark and light sides, with Fun Future coming out on top. Future is at once downcast and ruthless: “Gotta be in a rush/I can’t be running out of time,” he tells us on “Outta Time.” The beats are fantastic (see Metro Boomin’s screwed-and-dusted sample loops on “Mask Off”), and he shows off gruff working-class humility on “Good Dope.” But it’s depressing to hear Future…

What’s the hardest part of success? I work very, very hard. I have a piece of typewritten paper here that says, “You keep going and you don’t stop.” You do your vocal lesson. I have a lot of friends from high school and college who want to hang out when I play in their city. I have to rest for my show. It breaks my heart, but what comes first? Don’t endanger my show. That’s been my mantra my whole life: Don’t endanger my show. Who is your hero? Michelle Obama, because she has such an optimistic outlook and she was able to move into the White House with kids and do such a beautiful, graceful job. That had to be really hard. After spending two weeks with my family…

Paris Speaks Out paris jackson is a beautiful young lady [“Paris Jackson’s Family Secrets,” RS 1280] who clearly has some issues, but she’s seemingly overcoming them. Let her believe that Michael is her biological dad. Gary Schuran, Middleburg, FL it must be incredibly tough for Paris Jackson and her siblings to live a normal life, especially when they constantly live in the shadow of their legendary father. Her cover story was a great look into how she has adapted to life in the spotlight. Jeff Swanson, Everett, WA jackson does honor to one of our nation’s greatest artists and kindest men. Here’s hoping she and her brothers will continue to follow their father’s example of decency and resilience against hate. They are poised to help make the world a better…

In the last months of George W. Bush’s presidency, Roger Waters wrote a poem of hope. “It was me musing on the idea that possibly, if Obama won, things would get better,” he says. Nine years later, with the presidency held by a man Waters calls a “true sociopath,” a “nincompoop” and an “unending source of absurdity,” the former Pink Floyd singer-songwriter has repurposed his old poem’s title, “Is This the Life We Really Want?” for a new concept album, due May 19th – his first solo rock LP since 1992’s Amused to Death. The decision to finally make another “rock & roll record,” as he calls it, came from collaborating with longtime Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, who first worked with Waters on his recent Roger Waters: The Wall movie…

Willie nelson’s first album of new material in three years features guest vocals by the late Leon Russell (“God’s Problem Child”), a response to Trump (“Delete and Fast-Forward”) and a reminder that he’s alive, on “Still Not Dead.” “Two or three times in the last couple of years, I read the paper where I’d passed away,” he says. “So I just wanted to let ’em know that’s a lot of horseshit.”…

For paul mccartney, it was an all-too-familiar feeling. There he was, paired with an acerbic, rough-voiced co-writer with Liverpudlian roots, sitting face to face as they strummed acoustic guitars, finishing each other’s musical phrases and lyrics, singing in comfortable harmony. “We would write in the same method that me and John used to write,” says McCartney, recalling his wildly productive late-Eighties collaborations with Elvis Costello. “I figured, in a way, he was being John. And for me, that was good and bad. He was a great person to write with, a great foil to bounce off, but here’s me, trying to avoid doing something too Beatle-y!” Those sessions, at McCartney’s rustic Hog Hill Mill Studio in East Sussex, England, were intended to yield songs for what became the ex-Beatle’s 1989…

IRON FIST NETFLIX Iron fist is the latest juggernaut from the Netflix galaxy of the Marvel universe, set in a New York where superheroes are suddenly spreading faster than Starbucks. To everybody, Danny Rand just looks like a hairy barefoot slob who got lost on his way to a Spin Doctors gig in 1992. But this hippie dude has the mysterious power to punch through walls. Turns out he’s the Iron Fist, inheritor of an ancient warrior tradition. When Rand’s plane crashed in the Himalayas 15 years ago, he was rescued by kindly Buddhist monks, who trained him in martial arts. Now he’s back in New York, ready to battle the forces of evil. Finn Jones (Game of Thrones) plays the kung-fu vigilante masquerading as a schlubby bro. Even in…

Hurray for the Riff Raff The Navigator ATO HHHH <div class="thin-border"></div> Rhiannon Giddens Freedom Highway Nonesuch HHH½ <div class="thin-border"></div> Valerie June The Order of Time Concord HHHH <div class="thin-border"></div> BY WILL HERMES Ever since Woody Guthrie branded his guitar with the words THIS MACHINE KILLS FACSISTS, folk music has made defining American values a mission. So it’s fitting that in this immigrant-bashing, race-baiting era, a new generation of songwriters are putting their machines to work, and doing more than slinging slogans. That’s clear on potent new sets by three of the roots scene’s most compelling voices: Rhiannon Giddens (of string-band historians Carolina Chocolate Drops), Alynda Segarra (of New Orleans roots buskers Hurray for the Riff Raff) and country blueswoman Valerie June. That these writers are women…

<div class="thick-border"></div> MUST- HAVES <div class="thick-border"></div> Honky Château 1972 Elton John had already scored a few hits as a mild-mannered piano man, but Honky Château was the breakthrough where he learned to rock. He banged out the songs in a week with his lyrics wingman, Bernie Taupin. For anyone else, this could have been a greatest-hits album: the New Orleans boogie of “Honky Cat,” the country-rock strut of “Hercules,” the slow-burn grooves of “Mellow” and “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters.” One morning during the sessions, Taupin came down to the breakfast table with a stack of lyrics he’d dashed off overnight. Elton picked one – “Oh, I quite like this” – sat at the piano and wrote a tune in 10 minutes, ready to be recorded by the time…

U2 are finally putting the finishing touches on their upcoming album, Songs of Experience. Likely song titles include “The Little Things That Give You Away,” “Red Flag Day” and “Summer of Love,” which Bono described to Mojo as “achingly beautiful and empty.” They plan to finish it at Electric Lady Studios in New York with producer Steve Lillywhite, who worked on their first three albums along with 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. “We all very much feel like it needs to be out the end of this year,” says bassist Adam Clayton.…

Last spring, khalid was an 18-year-old unsigned artist finishing high school in El Paso, Texas. He’d recorded a few tracks of minimalist R&B, full of spacious vibes and longing, uploaded them to Soundcloud and became a local hero – a change for an Army brat who’d grown up as a shy kid singing musical theater and opera. But when he moved to El Paso before his senior year, he began channeling his loneliness into his songs, working up melodies and lyrics on his iPhone, then putting them to music with friends. No studios – ideas for a track might be captured on a voice memo in the bathroom and recorded in someone’s bedroom. And Khalid had no car, so once, to get to a session, he hit up Twitter. He…

Rising pop star alessia Cara is about to get on a plane for her first trip to Tokyo, and she has big plans for the flight, which will afford her a rare 12-hour chunk of free time. “I’ll probably just watch a movie,” she says, “and eat some bread. I always eat bread on planes. And go to sleep, or maybe write some songs on my laptop.” The 20-year-old Ontario native broke through in 2015 with a distinctive ode to social anxiety, “Here,” from her debut, Know-It-All. Now, she’s writing for her next LP while reaching new audiences with a guest spot on the soundtrack to Disney’s Moana – and a bravura Saturday Night Live performance. “I kind of got too into it,” she says, “and I hit my mic…

‘Let’s go to my place for the finale!” Ed Sheeran shouts as he hops into an SUV. It’s just after midnight in London. Sheeran spent much of the evening in a bar, but even with his bright-red hair hidden under a ball cap, people started to recognize him. The DJ played one of his songs, and his friends had to create a wall around him so he could drink in peace. It all made him a little anxious, which is why we’re speeding to his West London home to keep the party going. Sheeran is celebrating tonight because he knows he’s about to score his first Number One hit in America with “Shape of You,” a sleek, funky stomper from his new album, ÷ (pronounced Divide). We’re joined by his…

The Shins Heartworms Aural Apothecary / Columbia HHH½ James Mercer has been doing his amiably anxious alt-pop nice-guy thing since the Shins’ strummy-sad 2001 debut, Oh, Inverted World, expanding his sound without diluting his signature shy intimacy. Last time out, on 2012’s great Port of Morrow, Adele producer Greg Kurstin helped give Mercer’s world-weary melodicism a sleek polish. Heartworms has more of a home-brewed feel, heavy on Beach Boys grandeur, New Wave kicks, squiggly synth-pop and warm-weather soft rock – with lyrics tenderly balanced between midlife malaise and youthful romanticism. The result is some of the most charming music he’s ever made. Crisply buoyant album opener “Name for You” is a sharp assessment of Betty Draper-style womanhood (“It’s a bland kind of torture”). Elsewhere, the lightly psychedelic “Fantasy Island”…