Music Bank
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Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift is that rarest of pop phenomena: a superstar who managed to completely cross over from country to the mainstream, becoming an enduring pop culture icon and conquering the world in the process. Swift shed her country roots like they were a second skin, revealing that she was perhaps the savviest populist singer/songwriter of her generation…
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Joe Jackson
Arriving in the middle of the rush of angry young men during the late 1970s, Joe Jackson swiftly established himself as one the great unpredictable talents to emerge during rock’s new wave. Initially playing nervy, punk-inspired pop/rock — his breakthrough single “Is She Really Going Out with Him?” married a smooth melody with barbed lyrics, the racket of “I’m the Man” rivalled the Clash — Jackson branched out into reggae and jump blues before settling into the sophisticated songsmith of Night & Day…
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Jonas Brothers
A bright, buoyant band who savvily blend classic pop with fashionable dance flair, the Jonas Brothers are the rare teen idols who not only sustained their popularity as they matured, they built upon it: Happiness Begins, their R&B-influenced 2019 comeback record, matched the peaks they had a decade prior. During those early years, the Jonas Brothers played neo-bubblegum with a fizzy Y2K verve that made them Radio Disney staples during its heyday…
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The Radio Dept.
The Radio Dept. were one of the more successful shoegaze-influenced indie rock bands to come out of Sweden in the early 2000s, making waves among indie aficionados on the strength of their critically acclaimed first release, Lesser Matters. Elin Almered and Johan Duncanson formed a prototypical version of the group in Lund, Sweden, in 1995 while they were in high school, naming the group after a gas station called Radioavdelningen…
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Gaz Coombes
As the exuberant frontman for the boundlessly imaginative Brit-pop group Supergrass, Gaz Coombes at one point seemed to be an eternal teenager — a man destined to never slow down. But time has a way of aging even the irrepressibly youthful, and by their second decade Supergrass had started to expand sonically; by the time he released his solo debut, Here Come the Bombs, in 2012, just two years after the disbandment of Supergrass,
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Ron Sexsmith
Ron Sexsmith has a talent for catchy but graceful melodies that’s matched by his skills as a lyricist, drawing compact sketches of love and the trials of everyday life that are heartfelt and compassionate even when he’s being witty, and warm without becoming overly sentimental. Sexsmith’s songs are fine examples of pop classicism and his work as a recording artist has found him maturing steadily throughout his career…
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Vic Chesnutt
Though Michael Stipe had been a fan of Vic Chesnutt since the late ’80s, producing his first two full-lengths, it took the Sweet Relief Two tribute album to make a star of him in mid-1996. The album featured artists such as Madonna, Hootie & the Blowfish, Smashing Pumpkins, and R.E.M. covering the songs of Chesnutt, a paraplegic who was injured in a car accident when he was 18. The singer/songwriter began playing contemporary acoustic folk around Athens, GA, soon after his injury…
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Glenn Tilbrook
Glenn Tilbrook is an English singer, songwriter and guitarist, best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the English new wave band Squeeze, a band formed in the mid-1970s who broke through in the new wave era at the decade’s end. He generally writes the music for Squeeze’s songs, while his writing partner, Chris Difford, writes the lyrics. In addition to his songwriting skills, Tilbrook is respected both as a singer and an accomplished guitarist…
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Colin Blunstone
As the lead singer for the Zombies, Colin Blunstone’s breathy, controlled vocals could range from tender and restrained to energetically soulful. Blunstone’s voice was one of the defining elements of the Zombies’ sound, and when the band dissolved in the late ’60, he retired from music briefly before returning as a solo artist with the graceful chamber pop of his 1971 debut One Year. Blunstone would remain active as a solo artist throughout the ’70s and ’80s…
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Chris Stapleton
Chris Stapleton’s blend of throwback country, classic rock, and soul, along with his ability to craft memorable and meaningful songs — both as a behind-the-scenes journeyman and as a solo performer — have made him a well-regarded, highly rewarded part of the country music scene. Before his 2015 breakthrough debut album, Traveller, he worked in Nashville for years…
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