Ken Tucker
Ken Tucker reviews rock, country, hip-hop and pop music for Fresh Air. He is a cultural critic who has been the editor-at-large at Entertainment Weekly, and a film critic for New York Magazine. His work has won two National Magazine Awards and two ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards. He has written book reviews for The New York Times Book Review and other publications.
Tucker is the author of Scarface Nation: The Ultimate Gangster Movie and Kissing Bill O'Reilly, Roasting Miss Piggy: 100 Things to Love and Hate About Television.
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A former microbiologist and Golden Gloves boxer, Wilson is also one of the more distinctive new sounds in country. He's broken through not with huge record sales but via viral clips on social media.
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Whether you're anxiously awaiting Christmas or already wishing the holidays would be over, here's a selection of music that lets you know you're not alone.
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These love songs — Neko Case's "Oh, Neglect...," Valerie June's "Runnin' and Searchin'" and Olivia Dean's "Man I Need" — each express a refreshingly realistic ambivalence toward romance.
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Smith's debut album ushered in a new era of rock and roll. Critic Ken Tucker reviews the new anniversary edition of Horses, plus we listen back to Terry Gross' 1996 and 2010 interviews with Smith.
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Swift's previous albums focused on the love she yearned for. The dozen songs on her latest release combine to form a picture of true love found, tested and proven strong.
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In 1973, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, then struggling musicians, released an album that inspired Mick Fleetwood to invite them to join his band. Buckingham Nicks has just been remastered.
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Big Thief has a new album, as does Zach Top, a young country singer with roots in old country. And the Icelandic-Chinese singer Laufey brings a classical-music and jazz influence to her pop songs.
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Clinton is the leader of two important funk bands, Parliament and Funkadelic. In 1975, Parliament released Mothership Connection, a loose concept album about funk musicians as galactic invaders.
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The three-sister band HAIM and pop singer and TikTok star Addison Rae are practicing "emotional passive resistance" this summer — and it sounds great.
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At its best, this capacious grab-bag of 83 songs, some dating back to the 1980s, yields not just good music, but songs that seem unlike anything else Springsteen has ever done.