music

Jonathan Michael Richman is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. In 1970, he founded the Modern Lovers, an influential proto-punk band. Since the mid-1970s, Richman has worked either solo or with low-key acoustic and electric backing. He now plays only acoustic to protect his hearing. He is known for his wide-eyed, unaffected, and childlike outlook, and music that, while rooted in rock and roll, is influenced by music from around the world.

Neutral Milk Hotel was an American band formed in Ruston, Louisiana, by musician Jeff Mangum. They were active from 1989 to 1998, and again from 2013 to 2015. The band's music featured a deliberately low-quality sound, influenced by indie rock and psychedelic folk. Mangum wrote surreal and opaque lyrics that covered a wide range of topics, including love, spirituality, nostalgia, sex, and loneliness. He and the other band members played a variety of instruments, including non-traditional rock instruments like the singing saw, uilleann pipes, and Digital Horn.

Neutral Milk Hotel began as one of Mangum's home recording projects. In 1994, he released the song "Everything Is" on Cher Doll Records. The song's exposure convinced him to record more music under this name. In 1996, he worked with childhood friend Robert Schneider to record the album On Avery Island, which received modest reviews and sold around 5,000 copies. Mangum recruited musicians Julian Koster, Jeremy Barnes, and Scott Spillane for the band's second album, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Its 1998 release received mostly positive but not laudatory reviews.

Joshua Michael Tillman, better known by his stage name Father John Misty, is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He has also performed and released studio albums under the name J. Tillman.

Talking Heads were an American rock band that formed in 1975 in New York City. The band was composed of David Byrne, Chris Frantz (drums), Tina Weymouth (bass) and Jerry Harrison. Described as "one of the most critically acclaimed bands of the '80s", Talking Heads helped to pioneer new wave music by combining elements of punk, art rock, funk, and world music with an anxious, clean-cut image.

Roberta Joan "Joni" Mitchell (née Anderson; born November 7, 1943) is a Canadian-American singer-songwriter and painter. Drawing from folk, pop, rock, classical, and jazz, Mitchell's songs often reflect on social and philosophical ideals as well as her feelings about romance, womanhood, disillusionment and joy. She has received many accolades, including ten Grammy Awards and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. Rolling Stone called her "one of the greatest songwriters ever", and AllMusic has stated, "When the dust settles, Joni Mitchell may stand as the most important and influential female recording artist of the late 20th century".

Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and throughout western Canada, before moving on to the nightclubs of Toronto, Ontario. She moved to the United States and began touring in 1965. Some of her original songs ("Urge for Going", "Chelsea Morning", "Both Sides, Now", "The Circle Game") were recorded by other folk singers, allowing her to sign with Reprise Records and record her debut album, Song to a Seagull, in 1968. Settling in Southern California, Mitchell helped define an era and a generation with popular songs like "Big Yellow Taxi" and "Woodstock". Her 1971 album Blue is often cited as one of the best albums of all time; it was rated the 30th best album ever made in Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", rising to number 3 in the 2020 edition. In 2000, The New York Times chose Blue as one of the 25 albums that represented "turning points and pinnacles in 20th-century popular music". NPR ranked Blue number 1 on a 2017 list of Greatest Albums Made By Women.

Arc Iris is an American indie rock band from Providence, Rhode Island, United States, that began in 2012 as a solo project of Jocie Adams, formerly a member of The Low Anthem. Arc Iris has had several lineup changes since their inception and have since settled on a trio that is the nucleus of Jocie Adams (lead vocals, guitar), Zach Tenorio Miller (keyboards), Ray Belli (drums). They have released three albums and toured internationally.

Adams developed an interest in music at an early age and became proficient in the clarinet. She studied composition at Brown University where she graduated in 2008. While performing with the Low Anthem, Adams released a solo album Bed of Notions in 2011. Adams met Miller in 2012 and began collaborating, inviting Belli to join later that year. In 2013, it was announced that Adams had left the Low Anthem to pursue her new project, noting that she wanted "to have more creative freedom". In between, Adams briefly worked as a NASA technician.

Paul Frederic Simon is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and actor whose career has spanned six decades. He is one of the most acclaimed songwriters in popular music, both as a solo artist and as half of folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel with Art Garfunkel.

Sir George Ivan Morrison, known professionally as Van Morrison, is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose recording career spans seven decades. He has won two Grammy Awards.

Angel Olsen (born Angelina Maria Carroll; January 22, 1987) is an American singer-songwriter and musician from St. Louis, Missouri who lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

To date, Olsen has released six studio albums: Half Way Home (2012), Burn Your Fire for No Witness (2014), My Woman (2016), All Mirrors (2019), Whole New Mess (2020), and Big Time (2022).

Angel Olsen was born on January 22, 1987 in St. Louis, Missouri. At age three, Olsen was adopted by a foster family that had cared for her since shortly after her birth. The difference in years between her and her parents left an impression. "Because there are so many decades of difference between us, I became more interested in what their childhood was like," she says of her parents, both of whom died in 2021. "I fantasized about what it was like to be young in the ’30s and ’50s, more so than other kids my age." Olsen explained that "my mother just has this capacity for children."

The Mountain Goats are an American band formed in Claremont, California, by singer-songwriter John Darnielle. The band is currently based in Durham, North Carolina. For many years, the sole member of the Mountain Goats was Darnielle, despite the plural moniker. Although he remains the core member of the band, he has worked with a variety of collaborators over time, including bassist and vocalist Peter Hughes, drummer Jon Wurster, multi-instrumentalist Matt Douglas, singer-songwriter Franklin Bruno, bassist and vocalist Rachel Ware, singer-songwriter/producer John Vanderslice, guitarist Kaki King, and multi-instrumentalist Annie Clark.

Throughout the 1990s, the Mountain Goats were known for producing low-fidelity home recordings (most notably, on a cassette deck boombox) and releasing recordings in cassette or vinyl 7-inch formats. Since 2002, the Mountain Goats have adopted a more polished approach, often recording studio albums with a full band.

The Roches (Maggie, Terre, and Suzzy Roche) were a vocal group of three songwriting Irish-American sisters from Park Ridge, New Jersey, United States. They were known for their "unusual" and "rich" harmonies, quirky lyrics, and casually comedic stage performances.

The Roches were active as performers and recording artists from the mid-1970s through 2017, at various times performing as a trio and in pairs.

In the late 1960s, eldest sister Maggie (October 26, 1951 – January 21, 2017) and middle sister Terre (pronounced "Terry", born April 10, 1953) attended Park Ridge High School, but dropped out of school to tour as a duo. Maggie wrote most of the songs, with Terre contributing to a few. The sisters got a break when Paul Simon brought them in as backup singers on his 1973 album There Goes Rhymin' Simon. They got his assistance (along with an appearance by The Oak Ridge Boys) on their only album as a duo, Seductive Reasoning (1975).

Simon & Garfunkel were an American folk rock duo consisting of singer-songwriter Paul Simon and singer Art Garfunkel. They were one of the best-selling music groups of the 1960s, and their biggest hits—including "The Sound of Silence" (1965), "Mrs. Robinson" (1968), "The Boxer" (1969), and "Bridge over Troubled Water" (1970)—reached number one on singles charts worldwide.

Simon and Garfunkel met in elementary school in Queens, New York, in 1953, where they learned to harmonize and began writing songs. As teenagers, under the name Tom & Jerry, they had minor success with "Hey Schoolgirl" (1957), a song imitating their idols, the Everly Brothers. In 1963, aware of a growing public interest in folk music, they regrouped and were signed to Columbia Records as Simon & Garfunkel. Their debut, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., sold poorly; Simon returned to a solo career, this time in England. In June 1965, a new version of "The Sound of Silence" overdubbed with electric guitar and drums became a US AM radio hit, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The duo reunited to release a second studio album, Sounds of Silence, and tour colleges nationwide. On their third release, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966), they assumed more creative control. Their music was featured in the 1967 film The Graduate, giving them further exposure. Their next album Bookends (1968) topped the Billboard 200 chart and included the number-one single "Mrs. Robinson" from the film.

Sufjan Stevens is an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. He has released nine solo studio albums and multiple collaborative albums with other artists. Stevens has received Grammy and Academy Award nominations.

Nicholas Rodney Drake (19 June 1948 – 25 November 1974) was an English singer-songwriter known for his acoustic guitar-based songs. He did not find a wide audience during his lifetime, but his work gradually achieved wider notice and recognition. Drake signed to Island Records when he was 20 years old and a student at the University of Cambridge. He released his debut album, Five Leaves Left, in 1969. He recorded two more albums—Bryter Layter (1971) and Pink Moon (1972). Neither sold more than 5,000 copies on initial release. His reluctance to perform live, or be interviewed, contributed to his lack of commercial success. There is no known video footage of the adult Drake; he was only ever captured in still photographs and in home footage from his childhood.

Steely Dan is an American rock band founded in 1971 in New York by Walter Becker (guitars, bass, backing vocals) and Donald Fagen (keyboards, lead vocals). Initially the band had a stable lineup, but in 1974, Becker and Fagen retired from live performances to become a studio-only band, opting to record with a revolving cast of session musicians. Rolling Stone has called them "the perfect musical antiheroes for the seventies".

Becker and Fagen played together in a variety of bands from their time together studying at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. They later moved to Los Angeles, gathered a band of musicians, and began recording albums. Their first album, Can't Buy a Thrill (1972), established a template for their career, blending elements of rock, jazz, Latin music, R&B, blues and sophisticated studio production with cryptic and ironic lyrics. The band enjoyed critical and commercial success through seven studio albums, peaking with their top-selling album Aja, released in 1977. After the group disbanded in 1981, Becker and Fagen worked sporadically on solo projects through the 1980s, though a cult following remained devoted to the group's work. Since reuniting in 1993, Steely Dan has toured steadily and released two albums of new material, the first of which, Two Against Nature, earned a Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Their final album of new studio material was 2003's Everything Must Go, though the band has continued to release compilations, box sets, and live albums on a regular basis. After Becker's death in 2017, Fagen reluctantly continued the group with himself as the sole official member.

Fleetwood Mac are a British-American rock band, formed in London in 1967. Fleetwood Mac were founded by guitarist Peter Green, drummer Mick Fleetwood and guitarist Jeremy Spencer, before bassist John McVie joined the line-up for their self-titled debut album. Danny Kirwan joined as a third guitarist in 1968. Keyboardist and vocalist Christine Perfect, who contributed as a session musician from the second album, married McVie and joined in 1970.

Primarily a British blues band at first, Fleetwood Mac scored a UK number one with "Albatross", and had other hits such as the singles "Oh Well", "Man of the World", and “The Green Manalishi”. All three guitarists left in succession during the early 1970s, to be replaced by guitarists Bob Welch and Bob Weston and vocalist Dave Walker. By 1974, Welch, Weston and Walker had all either departed or been dismissed, leaving the band without a male lead vocalist or guitarist. In late 1974, while Fleetwood was scouting studios in Los Angeles, he heard American folk-rock duo Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. He asked Buckingham to be their new lead guitarist, and Buckingham agreed on the condition that Nicks could also join the band.

Steven Paul Smith, known professionally as Elliott Smith, was an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Smith was born in Omaha, Nebraska, raised primarily in Texas, and lived much of his life in Portland, Oregon, where he gained popularity. Smith's primary instrument was the guitar, though he also played piano, clarinet, bass guitar, drums, and harmonica. He had a distinctive vocal style, characterized by his "whispery, spiderweb-thin delivery", and often used multi-tracking to create vocal layers, textures, and harmonies.

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone (CFTPA) was the musical solo-project of musician Owen Ashworth (born April 22, 1977) of Redwood City, California.

CFTPA was active 1997 - 2010, during which five studio albums were released, alongside numerous other releases. CFTPA toured with other indie artists such as The Donkeys, Papercuts, P:ano, The Dead Science, David Bazan, The Rapture and Xiu Xiu. Following the end of CFTPA, Ashworth began a new project, Advance Base.

Owen Ashworth started CFTPA after he dropped out of film school in 1997. The project was established under a set of Dogme 95-like rules: short songs, played in C, on the white notes of Casio keyboards. The band's musical style was characterized by the use of electronically produced beats, cheap keyboards, and slow, frank lyrics. From Etiquette onwards, CFTPA widened in musical scope and added more analog instruments and an overall more organic sound.