Table of contents for June 29, 2017 in Rolling Stone

TO EXPLORE OUR ARCHIVES, VISIT  ROLLINGSTONE.COM/COVERWALL  MUSIC LIST METAL’S GREATEST ALBUMS FESTIVAL MONTEREY POP TURNS 50 MOVIES INSIDE ‘THE BEGUILED’ MUSIC MAKING OF A RAP SUPERSTAR ‘MUSIC NOW’ PODCAST ALL THIS AND MORE AT  ROLLINGSTONE.COM/PODCAST POLITICS MATT TAIBBI CULTURE ROB SHEFFIELD MOVIES PETER TRAVERS ROCK & ROLL DAVID FRICKE…

Thomas and his band Matchbox 20 are launching their first tour in four years this summer, featuring co-headliner Counting Crows. The Boomtown Rats “I Don’t Like Mondays” A lot of people don’t realize this is a song about a school shooting. You can see Bob Geldof’s social awareness coming out even back then. The Rolling Stones “Ruby Tuesday” This was a great experimental time for the Stones. There’s nothing special about a Tuesday, so you might as well start with this song. The Cure “Friday I’m in Love” This song is pure candy, especially for such a morose band. Robert Smith smiles through the whole video like a lunatic. Rob Thomas “Sunday Morning New York Blue” Stylistically, I was going back to the Eagles’ “New Kid in Town” with this.…

JACK ANTONOFF HAS BEEN GETTING a lot of shit today. It’s late May, the same day news breaks that both Chris Cornell and Roger Ailes had died. From his Brooklyn apartment, Antonoff reacted with a tweet: “Roger Ailes was a sexual predator who ruined many lives,” he wrote. “Chris Cornell was a brilliant artist. World was made better and worse today.” Reaction has been swift. His Twitter mentions have lit up with people calling him “stupid” and “terrible,” and insulting his girlfriend, Lena Dunham. “A surprising amount of people are saying, ‘But it’s a human life!’ ” says Antonoff, sitting on a couch at Electric Lady Studios. “Well, what if you spent your human life ending and ruining other people’s human lives? How many cops shot black kids because of…

“All of the things we’re taking, ’Cause we are young and . . . ashamed Send us to perfect places. All of our heroes fading.”—Lorde, “Perfect Places” Lorde Throws an Epic House Party On her long-awaited second LP, the pop diva proves she’s in for the long haul Lorde Melodrama Lava Republic HHHH BY WILL HERMES On her debut, Pure Heroine, Lorde ridiculed pop music while glorying in it. The former Ella Yelich-O’Connor displayed an honor-roll-brat-in-detention-hall flow, a goth sense of drama and the sort of supreme over it-ness that only an actual 16-year-old can muster. Full of heart and nuanced writing, the LP was a small masterpiece and a massive hit as well. You could tell the Auckland, New Zealand, kid was in for the long haul, and after…

Lorde’s Next Act A REALLY WELL-WRITTEN and well-executed interview with Lorde [“Lorde’s Growing Pains,” RS 1288]. I love her music. And just like Rolling Stone, professional but not to the point of being boring. Bravo. Tony, Via the Internet I ENJOYED LORDE’S “PURE Heroine,” but . . . the “album that changed pop”? Hardly. I’m not sure if it’s with naiveté or willful ignorance that she talks about how she “reinvented the wheel.” Maybe it’s just that she’s bought into her own hype. Chris Mirabueno , Via the Internet AS A 61-YEAR-OLD MUSICIAN who’s not achieved a fraction of Lorde’s success, I can’t help but feel her artistic feats at such an early age are mainly due to being the child of an award-winning poet. How lucky can one person…

‘Do you always do that?” James Hetfield asks Lars Ulrich with a hint of agitation in his voice. The two are facing each other in the “Tuning Room,” where they typically rehearse before a show. They’re trying to get their 1991 classic “Wherever I May Roam” right, but Ulrich is playing a strange off-kilter rhythm. Fifteen years ago, this might have resulted in a long, teary group-therapy session. But today, Hetfield drops the issue and lets Ulrich play the song his own way while exchanging grins with the rest of the band. This is how Metallica are operating on their first North American tour in eight years (and first stadium run in nearly 20): loose and easygoing, but also sensitive to one another’s feelings. “We know where all the nuclear…

Lil yachty has emerged as one of hip-hop’s biggest stars of the moment: the 19-year-old’s first album, Teenage Emotions, debuted at Number Five, after his single “1 Night” racked up more than 107 million YouTube views. But Yachty is a polarizing figure: for his casual indifference to hip-hop’s traditions and history (he single-handedly exposed a genre-wide generation gap last year by calling Notorious B.I.G. “overrated” and saying he couldn’t name many Tupac songs) and for the deliberately juvenile irreverence of his music (he rapped over the Rugrats theme). At the same time, he’s won over Kanye West, Chance the Rapper and countless young fans. “You shouldn’t expect one lane, like a hip-hop album,” says Yachty, whose real name is Miles McCollum, of his new LP. “If that’s what you’re looking…

WHY IS EVERYONE ALWAYS PICKING on Machine Gun Kelly? It keeps happening, in ways big and small. Like right now, in New York, where he can’t even strut the quarter-block between his chauffeured SUV and the entrance to the glittery downtown sushi-nightclub Tao without getting hassled. Twice. On his way in, a homeless dude shouts “New Kids on the Block!” at him. When MGK emerges a couple of hours later, stuffed full of tequila and yellowtail, a drunk frat boy gets right in his face, asking if he’s Justin Bieber. “Dude,” MGK says, “everything is my fault when you’re me. I don’t know why.” And if so much success wasn’t finally coming his way, if he weren’t quite so high most of the time, it might really bother him.  Truth…

Del McCoury Auerbach recently started having “picking parties” at his home in Nashville’s West End neighborhood. One guest was McCoury, 78. A veteran of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys, he is one of the last living links to bluegrass’s golden era. “He flies Bill Monroe’s flag hard,” Auerbach says. “I was raised on the Stanley Brothers. I didn’t know that you can’t be in both camps – bluegrass beef, man.” Those parties pushed Auerbach to start writing on acoustic guitar. “It couldn’t be a fragment supported by studio magic,” he says. “I wanted to be able to sit down and just play ’em and have them work. I’ve never been able to do that.” Charlie Feathers Auerbach loves both garage-punk icons the Cramps and swamp-blues great Junior Kimbrough. Both have…

THE OBAMA YEARS SPARKED a Washington renaissance, transforming the District of Columbia from a jumble of wealth and blight into a gilded capital, one frankly worthy of heartland resentment. Glassy condos rise from a once-derelict warehouse district now called “NoMa.” On gentrified 14th Street, brasseries like Le Diplomate cater to the city’s elite. Anything that isn’t under construction is gleaming – including the Capitol dome, fresh from a $60 million face-lift. But at the dawn of the Trump age, one complex just south of Capitol Hill stands out. It looks like it missed the Obama boom entirely, which is hard to fathom because it’s the headquarters of the Democratic Party – home to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) as well as the Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). The sprawling three-story concrete-and-glass…

What are the best and worst parts of success? The best part is that you get to live your dream. The only downside – maybe – is that someday you’re not as relevant as you were. There are times when I go, “Wow, I can see it winding down. I’m not gonna have a big hit record, I’m not gonna be this hottest-rock-star-in-the-world kind of guy ever again.” I’m not having a hard time, but some people can’t deal with that. Who is your hero? Elvis, man. He was a great singer, and he dressed far-out for his days; people wanted to beat him up. The Beatles were fantastic, but they were four guys that got away with what they were doing. Brian Epstein kind of created it. Elvis created…