Table of contents for Dec-03-15 in Rolling Stone

“When I think of torch songs, I tend to go to a bygone era,” says the crooner, whose LP First Comes the Night is out now. “They remind me of that wistful, lonely feeling.” Elvis Presley “Can’t Help Falling in Love” A very romantic song, sung perfectly. There’s a richness and a believability in Elvis’ voice that nobody else can touch. Roy Orbison “It’s Over” Whisper secrets to the wind. . . . You won’t be seeing rainbows anymore.” If you’re breaking up with somebody, it’ll bring a tear to your eye. Vera Lynn “We’ll Meet Again” Singers now go for the high notes, but nobody goes for those low baritone notes anymore like this song does. Bing Crosby “True Love” What a haiku of a pop song! “Suntanned, windblown,…

ELTON JOHN HAS SPENT THE past few years making mostly reflective and piano-based albums like 2010’s Leon Russell collaboration The Union and 2013’s sparse, somber The Diving Board. But earlier this year, he decided to head in a radically different direction. “I was in Honolulu playing a show with my band, and I said to my guitarist Davey [Johnston], ‘Go out and buy 12-string guitars,’ ” he says. “ ‘I want to hear lots of them on this record. We’re going to make an up record.’ ” John asked longtime songwriting partner Bernie Taupin to come up with a batch of joyful, uplifting lyrics. “I think he felt there’s enough pain and suffering in the world without my contributing to it,” says Taupin. “I wanted to write things that were…

Run, Alicia, Run Alicia Keys had already run one marathon in her life – in 2007, in Greece – and swore never again. So when her brother urged her to join him in the New York City Marathon, “My first instinct was ‘hell no,’_” said Keys, “but [then] I thought, ‘Why not?’_” As part of her training, Keys meditated, listened to Eckhart Tolle books and ran for about an hour a day. She finished in a respectable five hours, 50 minutes: “What got me through was seeing incredible runners with prosthetic legs or a man leading a blind runner. This was the surge of strength I needed!” Patti’s Biggest Fan Bono welcomed one of his heroes, Patti Smith, at London’s O2 Arena to deliver a joyous “People Have the Power.”…

‘I STILL FEEL LIKE I’M FLOATING,” says Alessia Cara. It’s less than 24 hours since Taylor Swift invited Cara onstage in Tampa, Florida, to belt Cara’s smash single, “Here,” for 55,000 screaming fans, and the 19-year-old Canadian has barely caught her breath. “I was so high on adrenaline, I practically started crying,” she says. “Everything that’s happened in the past year hit me all at once.” “Here” is one of 2015’s most unexpected pop hits – a sullen, midtempo song about feeling like an “antisocial pessimist” at a party. Clearly, it’s struck a nerve: The song has passed 19 million views on YouTube and set high expectations for Cara’s debut LP, Know-It-All. A self-described shy kid from “a very traditional Italian family” in suburban Ontario, Cara began quietly uploading acoustic…

Tropical House WHAT A sun-kissed strain of EDM – what Jimmy Buffett would spin if he traded his guitar for turntables. WHO’S DOING IT German producer Felix Jaehn; Norwegian producer Kygo, who ruled festivals in 2015. KEY TRACK Jaehn’s remix of Omi’s “Cheerleader,” which topped the Hot 100 this year. CROSSOVER CHANCES It already has: Just check the umbrella-drink beats underneath Justin Bieber’s “What Do You Mean.” Blackgaze WHAT Indie rock at its noisiest meets metal at its most gnarled – “black” comes from black metal, “gaze” from shoegaze, with roots in the distortionmad sound of My Bloody Valentine. WHO’S DOING IT Bay Area art-metalers Deafheaven; Vattnet Viskar; Bossede-Nage. KEY TRACK Deafheaven’s furiously intense 2013 opus “Dream House.” CROSSOVER CHANCES You’re not gonna hear this stuff on rock radio anytime…

WHEN SCOTT EASTwood was 18, he wanted to buy a used truck. So he asked his dad for $10,000. It wasn’t an insane request – after all, the dad in question was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood history. But Clint Eastwood wasn’t in a giving mood and turned his son down. “I remember thinking, ‘What a fucking dick!’ ” says Scott, who managed to scrape together $1,000 for a 13-year-old Crown Victoria. “But now that I busted my ass for so many years, I think, ‘I am fucking glad he did that.’ ” He’s also glad his dad said no to casting him in 2014’s American Sniper. Or, rather, simply ignored his audition: “I just didn’t get a callback.” Luckily, the younger Eastwood, 29, inherited a lot from…

JERROD CARMICHAEL ESTABlished himself with great, button-pushing stand-up bits about the Trayvon Martin trial and enjoying Chik-Fil-A sandwiches despite the company’s anti-gay politics (“I didn’t choose to like Chik-Fil-A – I was born this way”). He inspired Spike Lee to direct his first comedy special in years and held his own against Seth Rogen in Neighbors. But this year, Carmichael pulled off an even bigger coup: proving his radical voice could work on a network sitcom. NBC’s The Carmichael Show, an old-school multicamera series in the mold of Norman Lear’s All in the Family, was the surprise hit of the summer, with a six-episode run that earned high ratings and critical praise for its sharp takes on big topics like transgender issues and Black Lives Matter. (If protests are so…

AS ONE OF THE TOP FREEstyle skiers in the world – known for what many consider to be the greatest half-pipe run ever, with four consecutive doublecorks – Gus Kenworthy had to make himself at home in the testosterone-jacked world of action sports. “I wanted so badly to fit in, and I ended up doing a lot of things I didn’t want to, like sleeping with girls,” says the 24-year-old. After he won a silver medal at the Sochi Olympics in 2014, Kenworthy wanted to kiss his boyfriend on the slopes, then reconsidered. “I didn’t want to do something that would tarnish my image . . . and maybe my sponsors wouldn’t want to put my face on something,” he says. Then, at this year’s X Games in January, Kenworthy…

Eric Church Mr. Misunderstood EMI Nashville Eric Church has always been excellent at balancing whiskey-charged toughness with openhearted musical subtlety: His first great hit was 2012’s “Springsteen,” a masterwork of literary detail and melodic texture. So it’s no big shock to hear him big-upping Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy on this album, where he cleverly juggles genres and often leans on his somber singer-songwriter side. Recorded in about a month and surprise-released to fans, it’s full of casual stunners: “Mixed Drinks About Feelings” is a closing-time piano duet with Susan Tedeschi; “Chattanooga Lucy” sees Church working a soul falsetto over a stomping dance groove. Church’s warm, generous wit grounds the album, particularly on the title track, which hearkens back to Wilco’s 1996 opus, Being There, as he empathizes with a rock…

Carol Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kyle Chandler Directed by Todd Haynes IT’S THE EARLY 1950S, and Manhattan shopgirl Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) is on the phone with Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett), a married socialite who arouses feelings shy Therese can’t articulate. “Ask me things,” says Carol. And the way Blanchett, an actress of sublime beauty and brilliance, caresses the word “things,” opens up a universe of unspoken desire. That’s a specialty for director Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven), who reaches a new peak of film artistry. Phyllis Nagy adapted her delicately nuanced script from a book, The Price of Salt, that suspense author Patricia Highsmith published under a pseudonym. Sure, a lesbian love story was hot stuff in 1952, but a lesbian love story with hints of a happy ending…

It’s the Weeknd WELL-WRITTEN COVER story on the Weeknd by Josh Eells [“The Weeknd’s Dark Twisted Fantasy,” RS 1247]. I’ve been following Abel Tesfaye since Day One. When I heard his soothing falsetto and airtight production, I knew he was destined for fame. Leon Laing, Harrisburg, PA I WISH JOSH EELLS HAD hammered Tesfaye more on his misogyny, but I do love the Weeknd’s music. Beauty Behind the Madness is like dark R&B Phil Collins – the songs are supremely catchy. I’ve had some of those hooks in my head all day. Adam Lehrer, via the Internet WITH THE RELEASE OF HIS three mixtapes, Tesfaye gave kids and young adults who were completely lost a feeling of empowerment and confidence. I love all the hype and attention he’s getting –…

A FEW YEARS AGO , Chris Martin was feeling “depressed and overwhelmed.” He was in the final stages of his 10-year marriage to Gwyneth Paltrow, and he felt increasingly insecure about the music he was making. “I wasn’t looking at things in a healthy way,” he says. Then a friend gave him some books, including Man’s Search for Meaning, a memoir by psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, and a volume by the 13thcentury Persian poet Rumi. Martin says one poem, “The Guest House” – which suggests “inviting in” dark thoughts – helped him get through the period around his divorce. “It kind of changed my life,” he says. “It says that everything that happens to you is OK. The idea is to accept what happens to you and not…

When Dan Auerbach was finishing the Arcs’ debut, he called this 13-member all-female crew, who update traditional mariachi with pop, soul and funk. “They came in for an interlude but ended up playing on half the album,” he says. No wonder: “With mariachi, you have to jump in and know you’re going to fly,” adds Shae Fiol, who plays the Mexican vihuela.…

LILY-ROSE DEPP PARENTS Johnny Depp, Vanessa Paradis STORY SO FAR Following in the footsteps of her Chanel-model mom, Depp, 16 (who came out as “sexually fluid” on Instagram this past summer), was named the French brand’s new face in July. WHAT’S NEXT Depp stars alongside her dad in Kevin Smith’s Yoga Hosers as a convenience-store clerk who battles a monster army to save her Canadian town. MARGARET QUALLEY PARENTS Andie MacDowell, Paul Qualley STORY SO FAR Model Qualley followed an apprenticeship at the American Ballet Theater with a role as Justin Theroux’s daughter on HBO’s The Leftovers. WHAT’S NEXT The 21-year-old will star with Ryan Gosling in next year’s The Nice Guys, as a 1970s L.A. girl whose disappearance could be connected to a porn star’s apparent suicide. BILLIE…

‘I LEARNED FROM THE streets,” says actress Léa Seydoux, perched on a plush sofa in the bar of New York’s Bowery Hotel. “I mean, I’m not, like, Jay Z,” she adds, laughing through the gap in her front teeth. “But in a way, I really did my own education.” The “streets,” in Seydoux’s case, were the boulevards of Paris’ Saint-Germaindes-Prés neighborhood, historically the city’s cultural center, where, thanks to her parents’ bohemian tendencies, Seydoux was often left to her own devices. “I’ve always felt like an orphan,” says Seydoux, who was one of seven kids. “I didn’t have any structure.” It was “the life of freedom, being your own boss” that drew Seydoux, 30, to acting. She had her breakout performance in the 2013 French film Blue Is the Warmest…

WHEN KRYSTEN Ritter looks in the mirror, she might see a model, a sass-talking romcom sidekick or the kind of irreverent funny person who would star in a sitcom featuring the phrase “Don’t Trust the B----” in the title. All of which she has been. “[But] I would not see what the culture described to me as a female superhero,” she says. “Like Wonder Woman or someone in those, like, slutty costumes? No way.” Which is exactly why the 33-year-old is the perfect choice for the starring role in Netflix’s new show Jessica Jones – it’s far darker than your typical men-in-capes melodrama. The series, based on a Marvel comic from the early 2000s, follows a superhero who, after a traumatic experience, ditches the costume and becomes a private investigator.…

DEATH STAR TYPE OF HIGH Up and down. “It’s going to hit you like a sativa – more of an energetic high – for the first 10 to 15 minutes,” says Jake Heym, storefront manager of the Dank-Colorado dispensary. “Then it’s going to come in with a nice knockout punch and really mellow you out.” RECOMMENDED FOR Dinner with friends, followed by four hours of Animal Planet. G6 TYPE OF HIGH Energetic. Fusion magazine recently called G6 “the cocaine strain.” It smells like “a cheesy foot,” says Kala Williams, whose family owns the Medicine Man dispensary. But it tastes better than it smells, and there are other benefits. “It’s more uplifting and giggly – not a downer at all.” RECOMMENDED FOR A big night out – think Phish…

Pope Francis Wake Up! Believe Digital Pope Francis’ message of peace and economic justice has been an inspiration to millions of people all over the world. How’s his music? Um . . . infallible! Wake Up! sets his speeches and prayers (in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and English) to pop, rock and classical compositions performed by Italian session musicians, several with roots in the country’s Seventies rock scene. You can hear that influence in the tubular synth noodling that opens “Annuntio Vobis Gaudium Magnum!” Other songs nod to Francis’ South American background. The only song in English, “Wake Up! Go! Go! Forward!” is the most rocking, riding heraldic metal riff s and a fire-tongued solo into a sermon on activism. Usually, the music – some of which is quite lovely…

The Danish Girl Eddie Redmayne Directed by Tom Hooper CAITLYN JENNER IS A transgender icon. But nearly a century ago, Danish painter Einar Wegener became a pioneer in gender-reassignment surgery. You can’t take your eyes off Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything), who is flat-out fabulous as Einar. As he is as Lili Elbe, the woman who begins to emerge when Einar’s artist wife, Gerda (Alicia Vikander), asks him to model in stockings and heels. Director Tom Hooper dodges the biopic clichés in Lucinda Coxon’s script by pushing the actors to live in the spaces between words. Vikander does wonders as a wife who stands by her woman. And Redmayne deserves every superlative, showing Lili experimenting with her new feminine wiles. Through Redmayne, we feel Lili’s power in a room…

1. Cage the Elephant “Mess Around” Dan Auerbach produced the Kentucky crew’s new LP – and you can hear it in the way this killer fuzz-bomb of a song tightens up their sound for maximum catchiness. 2. Coldplay “Adventure of a Lifetime” The sad balladeers who made “The Scientist” are a distant memory on this sequin-spangled tune from Coldplay’s upcoming LP. It’s their sweetest plunge yet into full-on disco bliss. 3. Missy Elliott “WTF (Where They From)” video No one makes a video like Missy, whose latest clip features uncanny-valley puppets, freaky dance moves and so much more. 4. Aurora “Half the World Away” Over in England, this 19-year-old Norwegian singer-songwriter’s superpretty, bittersweet Oasis cover is already a big deal. Give her version a listen, and you’ll fall in love…

THE PAST YEAR HAS BEEN very good to Brittany Howard. In April, she topped the charts with Alabama Shakes’ second album, Sound & Color; five months later, her side project, Thunderbitch, released a debut LP that sounds like a rowdy late-night party in the back room of a Memphis bar. Howard recently played a rare show with that group, appearing on a New York club stage astride a motorcycle, costumed in white face paint, dark shades and a black leather jacket. But don’t ask her to acknowledge her alter ego – she’ll talk about Thunderbitch in the third person only. “I’ve heard of them,” she says with a wicked laugh. “I know they’ve got this singer that dresses up like a ghost, and I know they play rock & roll…

BEOPLAY A6 WIRELESS SPEAKER Don’t hide it on a shelf: The stylish A6 deserves prominent placement in any living room, but the Wi-Fi-enabled speaker is designed to produce optimum, room-filling sound no matter where you put it. $999 APPLE TV It’s no longer just a way to stream TV (although it does that pretty well) – with Siri control and a touch-pad remote, it turns any flatscreen into an addictive portal for games and apps. $149 REGA RP10 TURNTABLE This skeletal turntable looks cool, but there’s a method to the madness: Stripping away unnecessary mass means less vibration for sweet-sounding vinyl. $6,495 (with cartridge) PEACHTREE NOVA 220SE DIGITAL AMP Audio nerds will lose it for this jack-of-all-trades amp that provides up to 350 watts per channel of power to any…

Whip/Nae Nae Difficulty ORIGINS The Whip and Nae Nae were separate in the early 2000s, until teen rapper Silento paired them in his “Watch Me” video this past summer, pushing his single to Number Three on the charts. HOW TO First Whip, with one arm out in front, like you’re driving a car and rocking to the beat. Then Nae Nae, which requires a full body shimmy as you raise your arm. “It’s for when you’ve nailed something,” says choreographer Jamaica Craft. BEST CELEBRITY RENDITION The dance hit peak saturation when Hillary Clinton attempted it on Ellen. Hit the Quan Difficulty ORIGINS Inspired by rapper Rich Homie Quan’s pelvic thrusts in the video “Flex” from earlier this year, the dance got its true start in iHeart Memphis’ “Hit the…

The U.S. may be enjoying the best year for hip-hop since Biggie and Tupac, and pasty folks behind keyboards still have most of the juice in the U.K., but in Melbourne, shaggy bands run the show. Courtney Barnett, the unofficial queen of this city of 4 million’s rock world, has one big complaint: “There’s no beach.” But that fact, along with the Seattle-like climate and recently relaxed liquor laws, may help explain the vibrancy of the music scene. Head to one of its close-to-500 venues, and if you’re lucky, you can catch garage-y acts like King Gizzard, Barnett and Total Control. Here’s a rough guide: THE RECORD LABEL MILK! RECORDS When Barnett selfreleased her 2012 EP, she put a “Milk!” label on it to make it look like she’d been…

London producer Jamie Smith (a.k.a. Jamie xx) made one of 2015’s best LPs with In Colour, an album of downtempo dance music paced to feel like one of his DJ sets. Smith’s excellent Spotify playlist collects more than 100 records he’s DJ’d himself: low-key house and obscure disco with detours into Jamaican dancehall, hip-hop and even indie folk. It’s a great deep dive that helped him organize his listening: “I have a lot of records,” he says, “and I’m not very tidy.” HOT AIMEE OSBOURNE TIFFANY TRUMP ///// HOT MICHAEL JORDAN ON THE WIZARDS NEW ‘MUPPETS’ SHOW…

Television used to have trouble getting comics right – usually by fudging the question of whether they wanted to appeal to the geeks, or to newbies who just wanted a decent TV version. But recently, networks finally cracked the secret: If the geeks ain’t happy, nobody’s happy. Even those of us who don’t know bupkis about the comics behind Daredevil or The Flash want to know we’re entering a version true to the original. It’s like the science on The Big Bang Theory: You don’t recognize the Feynman equations on the whiteboard, but the comedy depends on being able to trust it’s the real thing. Supergirl and Jessica Jones, this season’s two big superhero debuts, are miles apart in terms of mood – one is a crowd-pleaser, the other a…

“Sometimes I wake up in the morning/And it cuts me like a knife/I come face to face with my longing/For another world, another life.” —BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, “The Time That Never Was” Bruce Springsteen The Ties That Bind: The River Collection Columbia BY JOE LEVY Bruce Springsteen sang about growing up on his first album, when he was 23, with the glee of a lost boy amazed to find anyone was listening. As he approached 30, though, his idea of adult life was different – something you couldn’t necessarily run from, no matter how many songs about escaping down the highway you had. The River is where Springsteen grew his sound up. The music he made – 60-plus songs over 18 months – focused the operatic sweep of Born to…

From the Rolling Stone Vault When writer Cameron Crowe visited Pearl Jam at a Bay Area recording studio in the spring of 1993, singer Eddie Vedder was having second thoughts about their success. The band wasn’t done making Vs. – the follow-up to the multiplatinum debut, Ten – but it had already decided not to make any videos and wasn’t even willing to talk about singles. “That’s not why we wrote songs,” said Vedder. “We didn’t write to make hits.” Crowe followed them to Europe, where they opened for U2 in stadiums, though Vedder kept insisting he’d rather be playing clubs. “I feel like everybody else in the band is happier with [success] than me,” he said. “They enjoy it, even. I can’t seem to do that.” In the Issue:…