Randall Roberts – Page 4

Mark Hollis from the band Talk Talk performs on the British TV show "The Tube" in a photo from the 1980s.

Talk Talk’s influential Mark Hollis, dead at 64, brought delicacy to 1980s music

February 27, 2019 at 8:47 a.m.

Mark Hollis will forever be known for the song “It’s My Life,” but among the former Talk Talk leader’s wildly devoted fan base, the British singer and songwriter will be...

Lisa Borders has announced her resignation as the chief executive of Time's Up.

Time’s Up CEO and president Lisa Borders resigns, citing ‘family concerns’

February 19, 2019 at 9:52 a.m.

The Time’s Up organization has accepted the resignation of its president, Lisa Borders, it announced in a statement issued via social media on Monday. A joint statement with Borders, who...

Taylor Swift accepts record of the year trophy at 58th Grammy Awards in 2016.

Female songwriters and producers remain ‘vastly outnumbered,’ says USC study of music industry

February 5, 2019 at 10:01 a.m.

How difficult is it to break into music production and popular songwriting if you’re not a dude? And once the studio session begins, what goes on? A wide-ranging study released...

Patti Smith photographed in New York City, 2014.

Patti Smith discusses activism in the age of Trump: ‘I’m not going down with the ship, that’s for certain’

December 12, 2018 at 4:43 p.m.

Patti Smith is speaking from a pasture in Brittany, France, she explains by way of apology at the beginning of a recent phone conversation. The musician, poet, memoirist and activist...

A first-generation Chinese American from Woodland Hills, 19-year-old Katherine Ho is a lifelong singer who has performed on the NBC singing competition show "The Voice."

How a California pre-med student came to sing — and redefine — a Coldplay song in ‘Crazy Rich Asians’

August 9, 2019 at 8:46 a.m.

After chemistry class on a recent weekday, sophomore Katherine Ho sat at an outdoor table in USC Village, and shared the chain of events that made the pre-med student’s rendition...

Charles Manson is escorted to court for a preliminary hearing in December 1969.

Charles Manson’s life as a failed musician, Beach Boys hanger-on and mediocre songwriter

August 22, 2019 at 1:42 a.m.

Starting in the 1970s, not long after Charles Manson directed his followers to murder seven people over two bloody nights in Los Angeles, the convicted killer’s music and notoriety fueled...

Nick Cave has been singing about mortality for decades, and he's really good at it. Whether the narratives are biblical or pulpy, the victims innocents or death row convicts, the circumstances comprehensible or cruelly random, Cave's songs are on intimate terms with the infinite ways a life can be extinguished. And yet, "Skeleton Tree", his latest album with his estimable band, the Bad Seeds, is a relatively concise song cycle shadowed by death that feels different than all the rest. <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/kot/sc-music-nick-cave-skeleton-tree-ent-0916-20160916-column.html" target="_blank">Read the full review.</a>

Will the Las Vegas massacre change country music’s view of guns?

June 2, 2018 at 1:21 a.m.

Country music has long idealized the gun-owning lifestyle. From Johnny Cash in "Folsom Prison Blues" to Miranda Lambert's "Gunpowder and Lead" and Blake Shelton's "Granddaddy's Gun," the genre's stars have...

Watch Coldplay dedicate new song to Harvey victims — and vow never to play it again

June 2, 2018 at 6:31 p.m.

On Monday night in Miami, Coldplay's Chris Martin drew attention to the victims of Tropical Storm Harvey by unveiling a new song called "Houston" -- and then vowed never to...

Anderson .Paak teams with A Tribe Called Quest to perform medley, and Busta Rhymes blasts Donald Trump

December 17, 2018 at 5:17 p.m.

Among the many inspiring artists who passed in 2016, the rapper Phife Dawg's death hit the hip-hop community hard. As co-founder of A Tribe Called Quest, he helped create classics...

Six miles beneath the Pacific Ocean surface, a team of oceanographers and experts discover an entire hidden ecosystem laden with species "completely unknown to science." But Meg comes calling, attacking the submersible piloted by the ex-wife (Jessica McNamee) of rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham).
<a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/sc-mov-the-meg-rev-0806-story.html" target="_blank">Read the review.</a>

The snubs, surprises and oddities among this year’s Grammy nominations

December 17, 2018 at 5:26 p.m.

Anyone who follows contemporary music might have predicted that superstars Beyoncé, Adele, Kanye West and Drake would earn a lot of Grammy nominations. And they did — to the tune...

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