Table of contents for February 9, 2017 in Rolling Stone

The jazz crooner’s new LP, Nobody But Me, features a cover of the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” and collaborations with Black Thought and Meghan Trainor. Paul McCartney “My Love” This is one of the most underrated songs of all time. There’s a recording of him doing it in a stadium that, God, may be better than the original. Donny Hathaway “Yesterday” This Beatles cover is so distinct and so different. Donny has such a rich voice, and this is a cool, funky arrangement. Frank Sinatra “Pennies From Heaven” Frank bounces, man. He’s got the swingiest band, and in his prime, full of swagger, he just kills it with his rich, deep voice. Elvis Presley “An American Trilogy” This is fucking awesome, goose-bump-inducing. It’s him completely in his moment with…

George michael was a true pop visionary, one of the great Eighties glam eccentrics. As he said to Rolling Stone in 1988, “If you listen to a Supremes record or a Beatles record... how can you not realize that the elation of a good pop record is an art form? Somewhere along the way, pop lost all its respect. And I think I kind of stubbornly stick up for all of that.” George Michael always took his pop devotion seriously, which is why he redefined the art of pop stardom in the Eighties. Even when he was draping himself with scantily clad supermodels, he made it seem like a statement of principle. Nobody else could have scored a classic like “Faith,” his biggest, best and weirdest hit. It’s one of…

Calling the trump energy and environment squad “climate deniers” is like pointing out that your local crew of meth heads has bad teeth. It’s true, and it also confuses symptom with disease. Let’s be clear. 2016 was the warmest year ever measured, smashing records set in 2015 and 2014. Global warming is no longer a worry for the future – we’re in the midst of the greatest crisis humans have yet faced. So despite the acknowledgment among some Trump nominees during confirmation hearings that “climate is changing” and “man has had an influence,” when Scott Pruitt, designated to head the EPA, said last year “scientists continue to disagree” about climate change, he was telling a big and consequential lie: Science clearly understands that burning coal and gas and oil is…

The optics were good. About 100 Carrier factory workers in Indianapolis sat in folding chairs awaiting President-elect Donald Trump, who had announced, via Twitter, he’d saved their jobs. Well, not all their jobs – 730 were saved while another 550 were heading to Mexico – but that was a small detail. (Trump also kept saying he had saved air-conditioning jobs, though the factory makes furnaces.) After a while, a silver-haired man resembling the guy on top of a wedding cake strode to the podium. “It is great to be back home again in Indiana,” said Mike Pence in the stentorian voice honed during a seven-year career in talk radio, where he described himself as “Rush Limbaugh on decaf.” “The state of Indiana is very proud. We are a proud manufacturing…

Presidential Poise thank you, jann wenner, for your interview with Barack Obama [“A Conversation With President Obama,” RS 1276/1277]. I am going to miss him. He gave us eight wonderful years as our cool, calm and collected president. Mark C. Salvaggio, Bakersfield, CA a fascinating last interview with President Obama. Very sobering. When Obama was first elected, I had never felt prouder to say I was an American. Since Trump was elected, for the first time in my life, I can say I am embarrassed to be an American. Tom Harding, Spokane, WA president obama is indeed a gentleman who believes in equality. Let us take a good hard look at him before he leaves office – because our 45th president is the antithesis of all that Obama represents. And my fear…

Last summer, u2 faced an unclear future. They had cut their highly successful Innocence + Experience Tour short in order to work on their next album, Songs of Experience, which was nearly finished. But they eventually decided that the material they had recorded didn’t properly address the chaos of current events, from the rise of Donald Trump to England’s separation from the European Union. “We realized that we needed to put the album on ice for a minute to really think about it,” says guitarist the Edge. “The world is a different place now, and we needed the opportunity to reconsider everything.” Instead, U2 decided to mark the 30th anniversary of 1987’s The Joshua Tree – the album that catapulted them from arena act into the biggest band in the world,…

Migos Culture Quality Control HHH ½ When Atlanta star Donald Glover capped his Golden Globes acceptance speech by shouting out local hip-hop heroes Migos, it was more than just a nice moment of civic pride. The trio of Quavo, Offset and Takeoff might be the most influential Southern rap crew of the past few years. Their 2015 hit “Look at My Dab” helped start a global dance craze, and their slang terms (“bando,” “piped-up”) are social-media shorthand. More important, their euphoric, frenetic flow has been emulated by Drake, Kanye West and J. Cole, among others. Glover’s claim that they are “the Beatles of this generation” might be over the top, but if he’s thinking of the dizzying blitz of “Money (That’s What I Want)” and “Twist and Shout,” the…

1. Laura Marling “Wild Fire” Marling is a restless folk searcher in the finest Joni Mitchell tradition, and this darkly pretty tune about not buying your own bullshit is one of her best. “Are you getting away with who you’re trying to be?” she sings, at once subtle and stinging. 2. The xx “Say Something Loving” An incredible single from the U.K. trio’s new LP, I See You. They flip a sample from forgotten Seventies soft-rock featherweights the Alessi Brothers into a dubby dreamlike anthem of hard-won romantic hope. 3. Jessi Colter “Psalm 136 Mercy and Loving Kindness” An outlaw country godmother’s tender benediction, gorgeously produced by Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye. 4. Flo Morrissey and Matthew E. White “Sunday Morning” U.K. singer-songwriter Flo Morrissey and retro-pop savant White pull…

Midway through opening night of the Celebrating David Bowie tour at London’s Brixton Academy on January 8th, guitarist Earl Slick, who played on everything from Diamond Dogs, in 1974, to The Next Day, in 2013, found himself so overcome with emotion he struggled to keep playing. He was backing Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott on “All the Young Dudes” alongside a 20-piece gospel choir, Spiders From Mars keyboardist Mike Garson and many others, but images of Bowie, who would have turned 70 that day, kept flashing through the guitarist’s head. “I was fighting it the whole time,” says Slick. “I was like, ‘Don’t lose it, motherfucker. I know you’ve got dark glasses on, but don’t lose it.’ ” <div class="space"></div> Slick managed to make it through the incredible three-hour show, which was repeated, with…

Maren morris stepped out as one of country’s most exciting new stars on 2016’s Hero, packed with poppy anthems that echoed every-one from Fleetwood Mac to Taylor Swift, and lyrics that didn’t hold back (“Throw his shit out in the yard,” she demands in the breakup stomper “Drunk Girls Don’t Cry”). Hero just earned Morris, 26, four Grammy nominations (more than any other country artist this year), among them Best New Artist and Best Country Album. It’s the culmination of more than a decade of work, including failed auditions for The Voice and American Idol, and songwriting credits for Kelly Clarkson and Tim McGraw. Morris finally broke through with “My Church,” a gospel-style tribute to cruising while blasting classic country. Says Morris, “I snuck in there at the right time…

Japandroids Near to the Wild Heart of LifeAnti- HHHH Even when they were screaming Vancouver scrappers recording songs like “Darkness on the Edge of Gastown,” you knew there was a classic-rock act at the punk heart of Japandroids. On their third LP, that band is out of the closet. “It got me all fired up, to go far away/And make some ears ring from the sound of my singing, baby!” hollers Brian King on the title track. The song’s about a kid leaving behind his small-ass town for big-ass dreams, and when the voices harmonize on the whoa-ohs!, you hear every cheeseball pop-metal-chorus chant in history distilled and vindicated. It’s awesome. Drummer David Prowse still plays like Keith Moon weaned on the Ramones, with stoic muscle beats full of…