LL Cool J kickstarted his career in 1985 with his platinum-selling debut album, Radio. Over the next few years, he helped take rap mainstream, selling out arenas and becoming an ever-present fixture on the charts….

Martha Wash is a curious example of someone who has had an enormous impact on music but isn’t as well-known as one would expect based on that. To an extent, this is because people sometimes…

The Moody Blues formed in Birmingham in 1964. After a few years of hanging around the scene, they made their breakthrough in 1967 with their second album, Days of Future Passed, an album that’s rightly…

Lana Del Rey is the undisputed queen of Hollywood sadcore, an artist who’s turned nostalgia into an art form and melancholy into pop gold. Since breaking through with her second album, the critically acclaimed Born…

Mark Knopfler was born on August 12, 1949, in Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland. The first song he wrote and recorded was when he was 16, but it never was released. Aside from Dire Straits, he was…

Once upon a time, there was one Carolina. King Charles I of England issued the original charter. However, nothing came of it. Things didn’t start moving until his son, King Charles II of England, reclaimed…

In 1968, Jon Anderson, Chris Squire, Peter Banks, Tony Kaye, and Bill Bruford banded together to form Yes. After two unsuccessful albums, they finally hit pay dirt with their third studio album, The Yes Album….

Ranking all 14 of Beck Hansen’s albums is no easy task, but somebody has got to do it. We’ll start at number 14 and work our way through the career of the man with many…

Some bands can stick around for years without making much of an impression on the general public. In contrast, others can make themselves felt for decades with a single release. Operation Ivy is an excellent…