Table of contents for Aug-27-15 in Rolling Stone

It’s Kim’s World I WAS GENUINELY SURPRISED by the Kim Kardashian cover story [“American Woman,” RS 1239/1240]. Vanessa Grigoriadis wrote a funny, subtle profile about an American reality star who, it turns out, is charmingly self-aware. Toni Royce, via the Internet KARDASHIAN’S CONCEPTUalization of world affairs – Vladimir Putin’s annexation of the Ukraine, the crisis in the Middle East and her “obsession with contouring” – was breathtaking. David Kutz, Santa Fe, NM BRAVO TO KANYE WEST FOR his supportive response to Caitlyn Jenner’s transition. I’m sorry that she made Kim keep her secret for so long, though. That was totally unfair. Ed Lancaster, via the Internet VERY DISAPPOINTED TO SEE Kardashian on the cover of RS. I had no issue with the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev cover, but Kardashian showcasing her cleavage…

Lily Tomlin is hot. The 75-year-old comedian’s Netflix show, Grace and Frankie (which co-stars Jane Fonda), earned her an Emmy nomination. Her new film, Grandma, a comedy about a lesbian who helps her granddaughter get an abortion, opens on August 21st. As Tomlin once said, “The road to success is always under construction.” Grace and Frankie is a show about two older women rebooting their lives after finding out their husbands are having an affair with each other. Why do you think it’s clicking? We embrace issues that old people have to deal with that, truthfully, aren’t so different from what younger people deal with. You can start over at any time, you know. In Grandma, your character helps her granddaughter get an abortion at a time when access is…

Julien Temple had a front-row seat during the London punk revolution of the Seventies, directing two classic Sex Pistols documentaries, 1980’s The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle and 2000’s definitive The Filth and the Fury. This summer, 11 Temple docs are screening at New York’s Lincoln Center, including Never Mind the Baubles, a Christmas-themed Pistols doc, and The Clash New Year’s Day ’77. (Several of the films are also on YouTube.) “It was a kinship,” says Temple of his love for punk. “Like punk, it was born out of necessity: I had no money.” Among the films in the series, there’s a documentary about Ray Davies of the Kinks (and one about his brother Dave) and a couple of examinations of the Glastonbury festival. “When I look at the ’77…

IN 2012, CARLY RAE JEPSEN’S “Call Me Maybe” lodged itself in the global brain for an entire summer, topping the charts for nine weeks and establishing Jepsen as a budding teen-pop star. Then things started to go wrong. Jepsen claims her label rushed out her next album, Kiss. “We pushed it through in two months to chase that song,” she says. Kiss’s sales were disappointing, and Jepsen’s next move was to take a role on Broadway in Cinderella. She found herself somewhat allergic to new music – instead, she’d listen to jazz and Eighties hits by Cyndi Lauper, Prince and Madonna as she jogged around Manhattan. “I saw Cyndi [Lauper] play in Osaka and was amazed that her songs still sounded so fresh, so yearning and painful,” she says. “I…

Nashville may never get over Taylor Swift abandoning country for pop, but Kelsea Ballerini is doing her best to ease the pain. The 21-year-old singer’s flirty, self-assertive debut hit, “Love Me Like You Mean It,” is the first song by a female artist to debut at Number One on the country chart since Carrie Underwood’s 2005 weeper, “Jesus, Take the Wheel.” Ballerini is an avowed Swift admirer, and the admiration goes both ways – Swift took to Twitter to praise the younger star. When Ballerini was a teenage songwriter, one record exec even told her she was too much like her hero, criticism she ended up using to her advantage. “You can’t be who your inspirations are,” she says. Ballerini recently proved that “Love Me Like You Mean It” wasn’t…

Eight years after teaming up with director Peter Bogdanovich for the documentary Runnin’ Down a Dream, Tom Petty is delving even deeper into his past by cooperating with his longtime friend and Del Fuegos guitarist Warren Zanes on Petty: The Biography (due November 10th). Zanes even got estranged former Heartbreakers drummer Stan Lynch to break his long silence and dish on their bitter split. “Petty’s story is a band story,” says Zanes. “That meant I didn’t just need his participation, I needed that band to open up to me. And I needed Stan Lynch to be among them.”…

I Am Cait Sundays, 8 p.m., E! I Am Cait is reality TV’s bombshell of the year – if only because it’s one of those rare fluke moments when reality TV slips over the line and starts to overlap with something that feels like real life. Not that Caitlyn Jenner is an ordinary person in any way, but her story has actual emotional content – which is the last thing any fan expects from Brand Kardashian. It’s touching to see her stumble into her new life as America’s most famous trans woman, especially since she never really got a handle on the celebrity hustle in the first place. Watching Cait try to figure out the things we all try to figure out – how to walk, how to talk, how…

Ashley Monroe The Blade Warner Bros. ★★★★ Ashley Monroe refuses to choose sides in the feud between commercial country and the “alt” variety. Her third LP imagines a 2015 mainstream by reflecting what it once was – Loretta and Dolly in the Sixties, sure, but also Emmylou in the Eighties and Reba in the Nineties. Witness the title track, which flips a shopworn love-hurts metaphor (“You caught it by the handle/And I caught it by the blade”) into a polished ballad that bares its scars right through to the final, pained “baby.” The song is all impeccable phrasing and sweet-tea tone; its brilliance is almost a dare, refusing to dangle radio-bait carrots or Twitter-bait punchlines. KEY TRACKS: “The Blade,” “Winning Streak” Monroe’s writing hasn’t lacked for wit – see…

1. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis featuring Ed Sheeran “Growing Up” Seattle’s finest rap duo have been laying low for a year – just long enough for you to stop humming “Thrift Shop” in your head. Get ready to do it all over again with their new single, a hella-sweet ballad dedicated to Macklemore’s baby daughter. Awww! 2. The Weeknd “Can’t Feel My Face” video Remember when this guy was all about druggy bedroom jams? Now he’s gone all Michael Jackson – witness the clip for his latest unbelievably catchy pop smash, where he’s so hot he literally catches on fire. 3. Laura Marling “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind” YouTube After seeing this clip from the English folk singer’s recent tour, where she covers a lovely old Dolly Parton tune,…

In his first story for the magazine, Ben Woff ord profiled Ben Schlappig, star of a global online community of travel obsessives and gamers who target airlines’ loopholes to fly around the world first-class for free [“Up in the Air,” RS 1239/1240]. ROLLING STONE readers responded. SUCH A WELL-WRITTEN article about a very interesting guy. But is nonstop champagne and caviar really all that glamorous when you’re sleeping on a plane every single night? How well-traveled can you be when all you’ve explored in a country is the airport terminal? Kim Thompson, Corning, NY I FLEW CONSTANTLY FOR work in my twenties and thirties, international and domestic, but my body couldn’t withstand the toll. I find the game of playing the airlines fascinating and might just go delve back into…

The streaming future of music is taking shape – but which service should you choose? Here’s a guide to the three biggest contenders Apple Music Biggest strengths: Beats 1 radio is unique. Service integrates with iTunes. Deep, smartly curated playlists. Biggest weakness: Interface can be confusing for casual users. Free option: Nonsubscribers can use radio – including Beats 1 – and Connect, but can’t access the on-demand library. Exclusive content: Growing – from Dr. Dre’s Compton to Taylor Swift’s entire catalog. Spotify Biggest strengths: Easy to use. Elegant, welldeveloped mobile app. Lightning-fast streaming. Biggest weakness: Discovery features are weaker than Apple’s. A few major artists (Taylor Swift, Thom Yorke) aren’t available. Free option: PC users can listen to any track (with ads); app users only get Pandora-like radio. Exclusive content:…

IN ONE CORNER SAT GORE VIDAL, author and liberal bon vivant; in the other was William F. Buckley Jr., talk-show host and founder of the conservative National Review. It was 1968, and ABC News, desperate for ratings, invited them to debate the presidential conventions over 10 nights. ABC was hoping for some fireworks – and got them. By the time Vidal called Buckley a “crypto-Nazi” and Buckley threatened to sock his “queer” opponent in the face on live TV, ABC realized it had struck gold. That is the centerpiece of Best of Enemies, a documentary directed by Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville that suggests this clash of celebrity intellectuals gave birth to the shouting matches that dominate today’s punditry. “As soon as I saw the first debate, I thought, ‘My…

“PEOPLE CALL ME a pop artist,” says Marina Diamandis, the U.K. singer who makes music as Marina and the Diamonds. “But the music I’m making isn’t pop in terms of being bubblegum or current.” That’s certainly true of the ambitious, intimate dancetinged songs on her new album, Froot, which recently became the first release in the 29-year-old singer-songwriter’s career to hit the Top 10 in America. We caught up with Diamandis the day before her official performance at Lollapalooza, where she checked out the Art Institute of Chicago before playing an intimate acoustic gig at a Rolling Stone party. To see an exclusive video of Marina’s day in Chicago, including behind-thescenes footage and live clips, visit RollingStone.com/dawntodusk.…

ON JULY 16TH, WILCO SHOCKED THEIR fans in the best way possible: by releasing Star Wars, the band’s first album in four years, for free on its website, with no advance warning. The album is Wilco’s best in at least a decade, full of loose, poppy rockers like “Random Name Generator” and “The Joke Explained.” Frontman Jeff Tweedy credits a tiny five-watt Fender Champ amp as his muse: “It just sounds like the biggest fuzzbox on Earth – those sounds reminded me of glam rock and T. Rex,” he says. “I adore that stuff, but I always thought I wasn’t androgynous enough to pull it off, you know?” After recording the basic tracks himself in the Wilco loft in Chicago, Tweedy brought in the other members of the band separately…

THERE WAS A MOMENT LAST YEAR WHEN BEEKEEPER JIM Doan was ready to concede defeat. He stood in the kitchen of his rural New York home, holding the phone to his ear. Through the window, he could see the frigid January evening settling on the 112-acre farm he’d just been forced to sell two weeks earlier. On the other end of the line, his wife’s voice was matter-of-fact: “Jimmy, I just want to say I’m sorry, but the bees are dead.” ¶ By then, Doan was used to taking in bad news. After all, this was long after the summer of 2006, when he had first started noticing that his bees were acting oddly: not laying eggs or going queenless or inexplicably trying to make multiple queens. It was long…

Future DS2 A1/Freebandz/Epic ★★★½ Last year didn’t go the way Future planned. The Atlanta croonrapper’s much-ballyhooed, underperforming Honest failed to make him the Trap King of Pop, and his relationship with R&B star Ciara fell apart. To regroup, Future went back to the strategy that drove his 2011 come-up: f looding the market with mixtapes, one of which, Monster, bore a surprise hit in the woofer-busting “Fuck Up Some Commas.” Or as Future tells it on his third studio album, “Tried to make me a pop star and they made a monster.” KEY TRACKS: “I Serve the Base,” “Groupies” DS2 maintains some of the ragged edges and raw nerves of his mixtape work (its title makes it, technically, a sequel to a street-classic tape from four years ago). It…

CLASSIC Patti Smith “Free Money” This is actually one of the better-written songs on Horses. Patti sounds plaintive, and then she spits out the lyrics, which she does better than almost anyone. The Kinks “Dedicated Follower of Fashion” One of my all-time favorite bands. I wish more modern bands listened to and absorbed the Kinks. The Bee Gees “I Started a Joke” The pre-disco-era Bee Gees wrote and recorded some of the great pop songs, almost on a Beatles level, like this Robin Gibb lead vocal. NEW Kendrick Lamar “For Free?” Hilarious. “This dick ain’t free,” Lamar says. Indeed! Lesson well learned. Lamb of God “512” While I like the backing track here, I must confess this type of vocal styling – what would happen if a werewolf tried singing?…

DAVID GILMOUR’S UPCOMING album, Rattle That Lock, is his first solo LP since 2006’s On an Island, but it wasn’t supposed to take so long. “I meant to get back to work earlier,” says the Pink Floyd guitarist. “But certain things got in the way.” Gilmour is presumably referring to the 2008 death of Floyd keyboardist (and his main creative collaborator) Rick Wright; the arrest and four-month imprisonment of his son Charlie over a 2010 political protest; and Gilmour’s decision to transform some of Wright’s last recordings into the final Pink Floyd record, last year’s Endless River. With all that behind him, Gilmour was finally ready to focus on Rattle That Lock (due out September 18th), which he coproduced with Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera. It’s a loose concept record…

Chrissie Hynde Reckless: My Life as a Pretender SEPTEMBER 8TH Overview: Hynde chronicles her entire life, from growing up in Ohio to hanging out on the 1970s British punk scene to the wild first few years of the Pretenders. Motivation: “I’m approaching writing this memoir_._._._as I would an album,” she said. “I hope it makes you root through your closet and dust off your guitar.” Revelation: Hynde spent so much time with the Sex Pistols that she wasn’t surprised when Sid Vicious was arrested for Nancy Spungen’s murder. “We were only surprised that he’d stuck it out as long as he had. . . .” she writes. “Who could forget [Nancy’s] shriek, a sound not unlike that of an untrained cockatoo. ‘Sid – SID! WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE…

Fear the Walking Dead Sundays, 9 p.m., AMC A TYPICAL SCENE IN Fear the Walking Dead: two cops around a Los Angeles hospital bed. Some junkie kid got hit by a car while he was running down the street screaming about the undead horrors he’d just witnessed – a drug den where a halfnaked zombie girl is feasting on human flesh. One cop says, “You were raving about flesh and blood and viscera.” The dude mumbles, “I don’t know what viscera is.” Uh-oh – people eating people? This could be a bad sign. Is this just the drugaddled ravings of a zonked-out junkie? Or is our nation on the verge of a full-blown zombie apocalypse? You’ve probably already guessed the answer, with some help from the title. Fear the Walking…

Dr. Dre Compton Aftermath/Interscope ★★★★ BY JONAH WEINER Who in the world has better ears than Andre Young? Throughout his many incarnations, the common thread in Dr. Dre’s career has been his ability to hear things differently from everyone else, and his certitude that millions of paying customers will want to hear those things too. Paradoxically, he’s been both prolific and patient: It doesn’t seem like he’s ever stopped working, and yet somehow 16 years have elapsed since his last solo LP. For much of that time, he’s said, he was working on a solo record to follow up 1992’s landmark The Chronic and 1999’s lushly raucous 2001. The project – which grew increasingly mythical as time passed – consisted of a title, Detox, and little else. Now, with…

Pavement The Secret History Vol. 1 Matador ★★★★½ Nearly a quarter-century after it was released, Pavement’s 1992 debut, Slanted and Enchanted, is still arguably the greatest indie-rock LP of all time – an off hand masterwork of magic-hour guitar static, thrift-shop melodic charm and singer-guitarist Stephen Malkmus’ poker-faced romanticism. Pavement were on an amazing run at the time, keeping their ravenous fans fed with singles, EPs and much-bootlegged radio sessions. This vinyl-only rarities set is the best repackaging that material has received. The finest 10 songs here would make for their own sublime album – opening with the noir noise candy of “Sue Me Jack,” flowing into drowsily gorgeous moments like “Greenlander” and “So Stark (You’re a Skyscraper),” and ending high and lonesome with “Secret Knowledge of Backroads,” where…