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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The Stones' new album — their first in 18 years — features guests appearances by Lady Gaga, Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney, and offers at least one song that can stand among their very best.
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The five discs in Joni Mitchell Archives Vol. 3, The Asylum Years (1972-1975) represent both a summation of Mitchell's pop achievement and a harbinger of her later, more experimental work.
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The singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist spent years in various bands, including Birds of Chicago and Our Native Daughters. Now Russell's startling sophomore album serves as a sort of rebirth.
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Bush Tetras formed in NYC in 1979, at the height of the punk era. Decades later, the band brings a sustained energy to a new album, an urgency to get things said and to make some different sounds.
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Ndegeocello has combined soul, funk, pop, hip-hop and jazz to create a unique body of work over the course of her more than 30-year career. Now in her 50s, her latest album is The Omnichord Real Book.
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Ken Tucker reviews Robert McCormick's Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey, and Robert Mugge's Notes from the Road: A Filmmaker's Journey Through American Music.
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Monáe has been releasing albums that mix R&B, pop and rap since 2007 — this is the artist's first since 2018. In recent years, Monáe has appeared in the films Moonlight, Hidden Figures and Glass Onion.
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Where Isbell's Weathervanes sounds like a new attempt to describe the world around him, Crowell's Chicago Sessions has the aura of an old pro who's realized he has a few more life-lessons to share.
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The married British duo Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt — aka Everything but the Girl — have their first album in 24 years. Ken Tucker reviews Fuse, then we listen back to a 2018 interview with Thorn.
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Green is widely considered one of the greatest pop singers ever. In 1973, he constructed this superb nine-song album for Hi Records in Memphis, in close collaboration with co-producer Willie Mitchell.