Table of contents for February 2021 in Rolling Stone

“This is the cover that she deserves and the information I need. I love the rock era everyone seems to be going to now.”—Summer Jaime, via Twitter Miley’s Rock & Roll Ways When Miley Cyrus first appeared on the cover of ROLLING STONE seven years ago, she was still navigating the transition from being Hannah Montana, America’s sweetheart, to declaring her own identity. For our January issue [“Miley’s Rock & Roll Heart,” RS 1347], Cyrus talked with Brittany Spanos about finally getting the respect she deserves as an artist, plus the struggles she overcame to get to this point. Our readers had lots to say in response. “Best damn interview,” wrote Sammie D. Fox. “She is a living legend. I am happy for her.” Twitter user Alyssa wrote, “I…

THE FOLLOWING two statements stand in complete opposition to each other, and yet they are both true: The Democratic Party is dominant. The Democratic Party is screwed. Consider these facts. In 2020, Joe Biden received more votes than any other presidential candidate in U.S. history. He rebuilt the “blue wall” of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin; turned Georgia blue for the first time since 1992; and clinched Arizona thanks to a commanding performance in the state’s most populous county, Maricopa, which no Democrat had carried since Harry Truman in 1948. It was a banner year for progressive policies, with red and blue states voting in November to approve a $15 minimum wage, new taxes on the rich for education, and legal weed. And after two victories in the January Georgia…

RINA SAWAYAMA FROM London SOUNDS LIKE Boldly original pop music that flits between sounds like turning a radio dial GIVEN ALL THE strange and terrifying events of 2020, it may not surprise you to learn that a pop star chose to mash up Christina Aguilera-style Y2K melodies with Disturbed-ish nu metal on her debut album. Even so, Rina Sawayama’s SAWAYAMA is still an unlikely — and exciting — pairing of genres. “It was like, ‘I only get one debut record, so what do I want it to sound like?’” says the Japanese British singer, 30. Among the album’s major themes is what family means to Sawayama — whether growing up with divorced immigrant parents, partying with indie-rock bands as a teenager, or finding a new queer community as an…

WHEN DUA LIPA’S disco-drenched Future Nostalgia came out on March 27th last year, the timing could hardly have seemed worse. With the terrifying scale of the Covid crisis just coming into focus, and much of the world going into lockdown, who wanted an album of high-energy, dance-all-night club music? As it turns out, we all did. As disconnected as the album seemed from the moment, Future Nostalgia was undeniable—euphoric, cheeky, and defiantly ready to party: an escape, for sure, but also a joyful portent for a time when we can all be together again. The album made Lipa into a global superstar, with more than 3 billion streams (Future Nostalgia peaked at Number Four on ROLLING STONE’s album chart) and six Grammy nominations. Unlike her first album, which mashed…

ONE DAY in the spring of 2018, Jenn Marie Earle was washing dishes in her Portland, Oregon, home, when her husband, Justin Townes Earle, walked into the kitchen with his guitar to play her a song he’d just written. As Justin started singing, Jenn Marie began to cry. On its surface, “Ahi Esta Mi Nina” was the tale of a Puerto Rican father attempting to reconnect with his estranged daughter after a long prison stint. But Jenn Marie realized that the song was ultimately about her husband’s pain. His career had leveled off in recent years, and a sense of isolation had set in as he became increasingly worried about being able to provide for his wife and baby daughter. Justin was locking himself inside a dark room off…

THE FOO FIGHTERS’ POP PARTY The alt-rock standard-bearers’ 10th album is the most upbeat music they’ve ever made Foo Fighters Medicine at Midnight RCA FOO FIGHTERS have been a reliable alt-rock institution for more than 25 years. A band with that kind of august track record could get bored or complacent with their job. But Dave Grohl and Co. just keep happily chugging along, putting out solid-to-great records, satisfying their enormous fan base with killer stadium shows, and keeping things fresh for themselves by coming up with interesting concepts (like their 2014 HBO doc series/album Sonic Highways) and tossed-off collaborations with pals like Justin Timberlake, Rick Astley, or Serj Tankian. The Foos’ 10th album is upbeat even by their uniquely well-adjusted standards, returning to their core Nineties alt-rock sound…

‘I DON’T KNOW WHY I’m telling you the footnotes of my thesis,” Julien Baker says, stopping herself to apologize midsentence. It makes sense that Baker has slipped into full academic mode, talking about jazz and “the subjectivities of language” — because, lately, the 25-year-old singer-songwriter has spent much more time in a classroom than onstage. In 2019, feeling worn out and struggling with some long-brewing personal issues after three years of nonstop touring, Baker decided to pause her career and complete her studies at Middle Tennessee State University. “We canceled Austin City Limits, and I went back to school,” she says. Baker was relieved to attend lectures with students who did not care, or even know, that their classmate was one of the most heartbreakingly perceptive indie singer-songwriters of…

DONALD TRUMP may have welcomed Kanye West and Kid Rock into the White House, but Trump himself never seemed like pop’s biggest advocate; he even incurred the wrath of classic rockers like Neil Young, the Stones, and John Fogerty by using their songs at rallies without their go-aheads. Will the Biden administration be more inclined to rock the house? A guide to the musical predisposition of its key players, rated on a scale of one to four guitars.…

NO ARTIST had a bigger year in 2020 than Bad Bunny. The world shuttered shortly after the release of the Puerto Rican superstar’s acclaimed second album, YHLQMDLG, last February, but he still found a way to keep his career — and his fans — moving. In May, he dropped an LP of outtakes, and in September, he came to New York for a spectacular, Covid-appropriate mobile concert, where he rode through the Bronx, Washington Heights, and Harlem on the flatbed of a truck and got a hero’s welcome. The grand finale came in November, when he shared El Último Tour del Mundo, which made history as the first all-Spanish-language LP to top charts such as ROLLING STONE’s Top 200 Albums. “The truth is, I enjoy [making music]; it’s what…

WE’RE STANDING NEXT TO a 15-ton meteorite when it occurs to Dua Lipa that, for maybe one of the first times in many months, her life is back to an approximation of what it might be in that very moment if the coronavirus pandemic had never happened. That is not to say that her day — which has involved waking up on luxuriant sheets in Manhattan’s Bowery Hotel, wearing a black silk bralette as a bona fide shirt, eating a dessert that looks like a gilded egg atop a nest in a private dining room on the 101st floor of Hudson Yards, doing an interview for the Grammys, and wandering after hours in the American Museum of Natural History, a locale chosen for its tenuous connection to the disco-space…

WHEN DAVID FINCHER sat down with Netflix executives in the spring of 2019, he did not expect to be handed the equivalent of a blank check. Sure, the 58-year-old filmmaker — a former music-video wunderkind best known for pushing the envelope with baroque serial-killer thrillers (Seven), toxic-masculinity satires (Fight Club), and social media origin stories (The Social Network) — had helped kick off the golden age of streaming with the outlet’s first original series, House of Cards. But he was used to resistance: You can’t have this budget. You can’t tell that story. ¶ So when his patrons said they’d help him make anything he wanted, Fincher thought of a long-dormant labor of love: a script his late father, Jack, had written about the making of Citizen Kane. Not…

ESSAY How Superhero TV Took Flight Comic-book series once seemed self-consciously nerdy, but today caped crusaders dominate the small screen ‘NO TIGHTS, NO FLIGHTS.” This was the mantra of the creative team behind Smallville, this century’s first significant TV show based on a comic book. The tale of a teenage Clark Kent (Tom Welling) still living on the family farm in Kansas, the series was made under the belief that it would have to end the moment he became Superman. But there was also a sense at the time that superheroes had fallen so far out of the mainstream that a cape, flying, or even using the word “superpowers” (Clark liked to talk about his “abilities”) might scare off potential viewers who found all the four-color trappings a bit…

What’s your earliest memory of performing? Probably when I was 18. I did the Ed Sullivan Show. And I did a Shirley Temple song in a big straw hat. I wore overalls. My hair was very dark brunette. It was just awful. It was live TV, in front of millions of people. I must have been out of my mind. How did you wind up making music that was so far away from that — these really cool, moody, psychedelic songs? I call the early recordings “Nancy Nice Lady.” Those records were produced by Tutti Camarata, who was the guy who produced Annette Funicello’s records. My Nancy Nice Lady records sold enough to keep me on the label. And then when they were no longer selling, the label was…