Billie Holiday's biggest-selling recording is also one of history's most unsettling songs, with lyrics about "Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze." It began as a protest poem by Abel Meeropol (writing under the pseudonym Lewis Allan), which Holiday and her team set to music. The ...
Rife with clever wordplay and a dexterous combination of styles, Chuck Berry's first major hit single was a rock 'n' roll revolution in the making. While the lyrics weren't necessarily subversive, Berry's skin color and influential sound were enough to generate a degree of controversy. Mainst...
A study on 12,665 pop musicians who passed away between 1950 and 2014 found that they tend to die at younger ages than the average American. They also have higher rates of death by suicide, homicide, and accidents. You may also like:Lyrics to 50 famously misunderstood songs, explained Aver...
Told in freestyle lyrics, comic book graphics, and transcendent prose, Ghetto Celebrity is the (mostly) true story of one writer's mission to find truth in the margins and an engrossing tale about phantom fathers and the sons they leave behind. "Pitch-perfect freestyling prose . . . a ...