Rolling Stoneの February 2022 の目次

ONE OF THE hardest things to grasp about the climate crisis is the connectedness of all things. One recent drizzly afternoon, I drove from Charleston, West Virginia, to the John Amos coal-fired power plant on the banks of the Kanawha River, near the town of Nitro. In the rain, the plant looked like one of the dark satanic mills that poet William Blake wrote about, with three enormous cooling towers that steamed like giant witches’ cauldrons. Across the river from the plant, mobile homes cluttered the bank of the Kanawha, streaked black with pollution that rained down on them 24/7. I had visited the plant 20 years ago, on my first reporting trip to West Virginia. Back then, the plant seemed like an indomitable monument to the power of…

MITSKI HAS BEEN having nightmares. The 31-year-old musician has always suffered from performance-anxiety dreams, but lately they’ve gotten more terrifying, more elaborate. During one in particular, her cat was stuck in a tree, and she was late to soundcheck. When she finally arrived at the venue, she found out she’d be performing with an orchestra she’d never rehearsed with. “Everyone was side-eyeing me,” she recalls. “As I was trying to do vocal warmups, the whole orchestra was like, ‘That’s a good idea!’ and started doing vocal warmups too. I couldn’t hear myself, so I kept trying to go deeper and deeper into the venue … and then I got lost.” Perhaps the dreams are about the fact that Mitski is preparing to return to the road after nearly two…

You reunited with Guns N’ Roses five years ago, but you’re about to release your second solo album since then. What do you get out of leading your own band at this point? None of the other bullshit that goes with being in a rock & roll band, and having recognition and having this and that and the other, and all the stuff that people get so preoccupied with — none of that exists in this band. All anybody wants to do is get together, play, record, and go out and tour. I just keep it going because we have a good time doing it, and it’s really stress-free. Rock & roll isn’t as popular as it once was. Have you ever been tempted to change things up? I’m…

A LYNDA SEGARRA HAD almost gotten through a full take of a new song called “Pointed at the Sun” when they began to cry. “And I crucify myself” went the outro refrain, Segarra’s voice breaking. By the time Segarra, who records as Hurray for the Riff Raff, entered the studio in the fall of 2020, they had become wary of self-martyrdom. Their previous album — 2017’s The Navigator, which mixed Patti Smith-inflected punk with conga drumming and samples of Nuyorican poetry — launched them into a yearslong artist-activist crusade. They organized benefit shows for asylum seekers, wrote essays on abortion access, and started to get questions like “How do you have hope?” in interviews. “I didn’t feel big enough to do that anymore,” says Segarra, 34. The hero complex…

It probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the Puerto Rican star Rauw Alejandro, with his billions of streams and sold-out mega-shows, doesn’t half-ass things. Even so, his commitment to victory is startling as he walks across a dystopian-looking paintball field near Miami one blazing-hot morning, carrying himself with the gravity of a highly decorated general. The 29-year-old artist, usually quick to flash an ice-white smile that twinkles with actual diamonds a dentist drilled into his teeth, is lethally serious as he eyes his teammates, who include me, assessing abilities and assigning duties. Rauw had an opening in a grueling schedule that’s loaded with back-to-back rehearsals, performances, and studio sessions, so he’s organized a group of about 15 friends, among them Luis Jonuel Gonzalez Maldonado, or Mr. NaisGai,…

WE’LL COME TO THE HOMEGROWN TERRORISTS HE foiled and the race war they tried to foment. To the journalists he saved from assassination and the synagogue marked for carnage in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. To the gun-rights march on the steps of a state capitol, where they planned to pick off cops and rallygoers. There’s time enough to valorize the work of Scott B., an undercover fed who breached far-right death squads and squashed their national web of terror cells. (Scott requested that his surname not be used for the sake of his family’s safety.) Last summer, when he retired at 50 from the FBI, Scott left the bureau as one of the most storied agents since Joe Pistone, the real-life Donnie Brasco. For two-plus decades, he cracked landmark…

Edward Cullen, Twilight (2008) A 100-year-old forever stuck in the body of a teenager, Edward (Robert Pattinson) is a “vegetarian” vamp who only eats animals and attends high school to creep on young girls. Miriam and John Blaylock, The Hunger (1983) Trapped in a loveless marriage to an ancient vampire (Catherine Deneuve), New York socialite vampire John Blaylock (David Bowie at the height of his MTV-era fame) wants nothing more than to finally die. Angel, Angel (1999) Buffy’s boyfriend (David Boreanaz) is a kindhearted vampire who becomes a PI in this spinoff. Think Barney Miller with fangs and sex appeal. Michael Emerson, The Lost Boys (1987) Don’t you hate it when you move to a new town and the local teens trick you into drinking blood you think is…

‘IT’S A NEW chapter in my life as a storyteller,” says Questlove, fresh from reinventing the concert movie with Summer of Soul. His directorial debut, which embedded much-needed Black-history lessons inside jaw-dropping, long-buried performances from Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, B.B. King, and many others, was one of 2021’s most acclaimed movies, and an almost certain Oscar contender (it already made the best-doc shortlist). There’s a soundtrack album out Jan. 28, and Questlove is already working on a follow-up film, focused on Sly and the Family Stone. But that’s just the beginning of the new career he’s embarking upon at age 51; there are numerous other Questlove productions on the way. “Right now, there are six projects down the line that will keep me busy, realistically, to probably…

“IF YOU really want to entertain an audience,” David Bowie told an interviewer in 1976, “you have to look the part.” And from the Beatles’ moptops to the Ramones’ leather jackets to Run-DMC’s Adidas, the look of music has been every bit as impactful as the sound. This has never been more true than today, when trendsetters like Beyoncé or A$AP Rocky or Doja Cat can create huge viral moments that instantly reshape the zeitgeist. As a result, fashion has become one of music’s fastest-growing revenue centers — whether that means artists inking major deals with established brands (as BTS did when they became ambassadors for Louis Vuitton) or bumrushing the boardroom with their own innovative lines (like Rihanna’s Fenty and Kanye West’s Yeezy). That’s why Rolling Stone will…

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SPOON A consistently excellent Texas indie-rock band takes it to a whole new level By JON DOLAN Spoon Lucifer on the Sofa MATADOR SPOON ARE the most reliable great American rock band of the past 25 years. That might say more about American rock than it does about Spoon, but facts don’t lie. They’ve been at it since the mid-Nineties, and they’ve never made a dull record, thanks to leader Britt Daniel’s brilliant songwriting and a knack for nuancing their Texas indie rock. They do jittery guitar bangers; they throw in some soul; they try out electronics; they nod to Prince and the Kinks and Motown and Wire. But it always comes out sounding like Spoon: casually stylish and stunningly catchy, opaque but openhearted, bristling…