Peter Gabriel’s ‘i/o’ Is All About Mankind, Mortality and Multiple Mixes: Album Review

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Tammy Faye Starlite knows few boundaries in her love for Marianne Faithfull, and the New York-based singer and performance artist is expressing it in two ways this season. For starters, she’s one of 25 performers who participated in a compilation album that came out earlier this month, “The Faithful: A Tribute to Marianne Faithfull,” along with other fellow fans ranging from Shirley Manson to Iggy Pop — a record earmarked to have proceeds go toward paying for Faithfull’s medical bills as she deals with long COVID.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Noah Kahan is Zooming to us right from the heart of Vermont’s stick season, where things are looking cloudy with a chance of multi-platinum. Now, if you happen to know what that “seasonal” reference actually is, you are probably (a) an 80-year-old New Englander who grew up with that term as a euphemism for the dog days of late fall, or (b) one of the millions of people that have taken to the music of Kahan, who spent 2023 becoming a nearly stealth superstar.

David Byrne has curated a Christmas playlist which features The Pogues, Phoebe Bridgers, Prince and more.Created as part of NPR’s Fresh Air series, the 19-track playlist spans different genres with songs to get anyone fully in the holiday spirit. Byrne described the playlist as “something that will bring a little joy to the holidays.”While speaking to NPR, the former Talking Heads frontman explained why the band never wanted to make a holiday album.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic What a funny way of saying hello — by saying “Good Riddance.” But as Gracie Abrams happened to be saying goodbye to certain things in her life in the album of that name, she was also introducing herself to much of the general public. Although the now-24-year-old singer-songwriter had released EPs on Interscope going back to 2021 and singles as far back as 2019, “Good Riddance” marked her first full-length album, and the first release where she really found her own voice, with some help from producer/co-writer Aaron Dessner.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Director Danny Tedesco previously scored a hit among music fans with his 2008 film “The Wrecking Crew,” a documentary about the battalion of 1960s studio musicians whose names were little known even among the cognoscenti, until these unknown soldiers started to quietly get their due decades later. Although it took another 15 years after that film to come to fruition, Tedesco had an easy go-to for an unofficial sequel.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Darlene Love‘s annual television performance of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” was essentially orphaned after “Late Show With David Letterman” went off the air in 2015, putting an end to the 28-year streak that had the music legend singing her signature holiday song with Paul Shaffer‘s band on Letterman’s last original show before Christmas each December. But they all reunited — not over the air, but on YouTube — for a resumption of the tradition, nine years after the last time this particular caroling took place on CBS. Watch the video, below.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Introducing the Manhattan Transfer’s final show at Walt Disney Concert Hall, writer Bruce Vilanch emphasized the multi-genre status the vocal ensemble built up and maintained over a 50-year-plus career that, from all indications, really was coming to a close Friday night. “I’m thrilled to be here for the final concert of the greatest pop-rock-jazz-soul-R&B-scat-vocalese-Brazilian group in the history of America,” Vilanch said. In keeping with that multi-hyphenate spirit, the group’s apparent swan song in downtown Los Angeles’ toniest venue was a happy-sad-ebullient-misty-eyed affair.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Jeffrey Foskett, a musician familiar to Beach Boys fans for more than four decades as a presence in the touring bands led by both Brian Wilson and Mike Love, died Monday at age 67. He had been battling anaplastic thyroid cancer. Foskett, who was deemed the “vice principal of the Beach Boys” by its core members, was the rare musician who found favor in all of that group’s sometimes competing camps over the decades.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Laufey (pronounced Lay-vay) is captivating Gen Z by writing and singing music that almost sounds like it could be from Gen WWII. Go figure, and go marvel. But the 24-year-old has always instinctively known that a box is no place to be: She hails from Iceland, is of Asian heritage, and is in many ways a quintessentially all-American girl.

Pete Tong has announced new details of his ‘Ibiza Classics’ UK arena tour for 2024.The BBC Radio 1 DJ released the ‘Ibiza Classics’ compilation album back in 2017, where iconic dance songs were covered by Jules Buckley and The Heritage Orchestra. The album features renditions of The Chemical Brothers, Massive Attack, and Armand Van Helden.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Hello, beautiful. That’s what some Barbra Streisand fans have been murmuring to their physical editions of “My Name Is Barbra,” her memoir, since it came out one month ago, and over that time has become a nightly bedtime companion (its 970-page length not quite built for bingeing), as well as a sort of objet d’art, and objet d’heft.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music If there is a bible for the music industry, it’s Donald Passman’s book, “All You Need to Know About the Music Business.” Since the first edition came out more than 30 years ago, it has guided countless musicians and executives, and has prevented many of them from making decisions they’d later regret. Considering the deep detail Passman gets into about contracts, royalties and other complicated business arrangements, his tone is remarkably conversational, and he makes sure readers don’t miss the important stuff: The section on business managers begins with him saying “Listen to me!!!” in italics with several exclamation marks.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Country music hasn’t had a huge presence in the mainstream top 10 since Florida Georgia Line provided a couple of big crossover blips in 2014 and 2017 with “Cruise” and “Meant to Be.” But that changed in triplicate in 2023 with three Nashville exports— the well-established Morgan Wallen and Luke Combs, plus a blazing-hot newcomer, Zimmerman. His first three singles all hit No.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Billie Eilish remembers being aware there were some puzzled — or just wary — reactions when a song she and Finneas co-wrote, “What Was I Made For?,” was one of the last tracks announced for the “Barbie” soundtrack. “I remember everybody being like, ‘What the hell? It’s gonna be a fun, cute, girly, pink movie for the summer and we’re all going to be laughing.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The latest episode of Variety‘s “Strictly Business” podcast features Aaron Dessner — the man Swifties are indebted to for collaborating on big chunks of “Folklore” and “Evermore,” but who more than earned his keep for a quarter-century prior to that as a member of the exalted-in-their-own-right band the National. Dessner’s Grammy-winning group has been one of the mainstays of rock ’n roll since the late ’90s.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic What part of fast in “Fast Car” did anyone not understand? Country superstar Luke Combs’ cover of the 1988 Tracy Chapman classic proved to be as turbocharged as anything acoustically based in this world can be, with unexpected multi-format success: It was No. 1 at adult pop and country for two weeks each; a healthy No. 6 at Top 40 radio; No.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic “Summer’s lease hath all too short a date,” wrote William Shakespeare in one of his sonnets. Well, Bill, you might be enchanted to meet Taylor Swift, who has been busy proving just how long a summer can last: four years and counting, in the case of “Cruel Summer.” The song was released in 2019 but didn’t become a smash until 2023, when by popular acclamation her quasi-oldie was all but officially declared the song of summer.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Elizabeth Chan continues to be the most prolific recording artist in the Christmas music space, and certainly the only singer of any notoriety doing a new release each year, having just released her 13th consecutive holiday album, “Songs From Noelle.” Variety is already on record as calling the singer-songwriter “Christmas’ one-woman Brill Building.” But if a new holiday collection from Chan seems inevitable every fall, there was nothing clockwork-like about this one’s making — since for Chan, unlike Taylor Swift, the number 13 actually seemed unlucky in 2023. The title “Songs From Noelle” refers to Chan’s 6-year-old daughter, who co-sang and even co-wrote a few songs on the album.

the Hall & Oates drama continues — with Daryl Hall suing John Oates and getting a restraining order against his longtime partner to block the sale of his share of their publishing royalties to Primary Wave — it’s clear that being in one of music’s biggest duos isn’t always the stuff of making your dreams come true.In fact, being in a duo — as opposed to a band — has been a particularly difficult musical marriage to negotiate throughout pop history. It’s a curse that Hall & Oates managed to avoid for five decades until it even caught up to them deep into their 70s.Here are some other top twosomes who ultimately became out of touch.The Tennessee twosome of Don Everly and his younger brother, Phil, were early rock pioneers in the late ’50s with hits such as “Bye Bye Love,” “Wake Up Little Susie” and “All I Have to Do Is Dream.” But all was not as smooth as their harmonies for the brothers.After they both enlisted in the Marines in 1961, they had relatively little success once they were discharged.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Love hurts, and so, if you’re a Gram Parsons fan, does the idea that the world has had to do without him for 50 years, as of September of this year. Imagining how his style might have changed over the subsequent half-century is never-ending, as is conjecturing how he might have simply have brought the world closer to his own fearless hybrid of country and rock, with more years to grow his audience after what amounted to a mere five-year heyday.