Releasing an album no longer guarantees success in an industry where platinum-selling singers face the same pressures as fledgling artists. Yet, Keane frontman Tom Chaplin proved that talent and heart still matter as much as the numbers do when he kicked off a 15-date North American tour in Atlanta this weekend to celebrate his solo debut, The Wave. In a triumphant return to the U.S. after more than four years away, Chaplin raised the roof with a dozen new songs that showcase

With his new recording, Fever Dream, Ben Watt captures the pleasure and pain of a Gen-Xer caught between two fires – his youth and the future. Fever Dream is an album filled with snapshots of relationships – from the passion of new romance to the sad realization that a pairing has ended. Ben Watt, half of Everything But the Girl, is known for the textural time capsules he and singer Tracey Thorn, his partner of 35 years, created in the 1980s and 1990s; now, Watt serves as his

Thirty years ago, no one might have predicted that Nile Rodgers would be on the road with Duran Duran in 2016. Yet, this spring the producer and guitarist is playing to capacity crowds in support of the band’s latest album, Paper Gods, a surprise hit which recently spiked into the Billboard Top 10 alongside entries from Taylor Swift, The Weeknd and Ed Sheeran.Rodgers, whose iconic group Chic is opening many of the Duran Duran shows on the current tour, has shared a unique rel

Every great songwriter has a “bird on the shoulder” moment now and then. Glen Hansard says the melody of the lead track from his new album, Didn’t He Ramble, came to him in a New Zealand airport while waiting at baggage claim to pick up his guitar. “The muse shows up when it shows up,” he reckons. The song, “Grace Beneath the Pines,” is another of the Irish singer’s famously aching ballads—one that takes the listener to the bottom of the ocean before throwing out an emotional

BY KRISTI YORK WOOTEN FOR ORIGIN MAGAZINE Rufus Wainwright is an enigmatic singer from a family of Canadian-American musicians. He released his self-titled debut CD in 1998, and has recorded seven studio albums full of piano-based songwriting and emotive vocal performances, which have earned him a Grammy nomination and two Juno awards. On the heels of his recently released Vibrate: The Best of Rufus Wainwright, Wainwright is enjoying family life and writing his second full-le

BY KRISTI YORK WOOTEN FOR THE ECONOMIST FOR her latest muse, Rosanne Cash returns to the familiar world of the American South, where the ghosts of William Faulkner and Robert Johnson loom large. A Grammy-winning singer and the eldest daughter of Johnny Cash, she lives in Manhattan. But on her landmark new album, “The River and the Thread”, she embraces her Memphis birthright to deliver a mixture of music and metaphor that explores the Southern grooves of her native city and t

BY KRISTI YORK WOOTEN FOR THE HUFFINGTON POST When Spanish painter and photographer Martin Frias asks me who my favorite rock band is, I say, “The Beatles.” I can tell by the mischievous glint in his eye that this answer is far from correct. “That’s not rock ‘n’ roll,” he laughs, rolling his “r’s” in a thick Catalan accent. “That’s pop music.” I guess he would know. We’re huddled up on a sofa in the Living Room of the W Atlanta-Downtown, where Barcelona native Frias is remini