SPIN 35
Finneas on COVID-Era Creativity, Not Being Starstruck and His Dream Collaboration
“When I’m in the room with another artist, I’m only there because I’m an admirer of their work, so I’m just trying to help them make something good,” Finneas O’Connell tells SPIN. “When I’m in a room alone, it’s about expressing myself and making sure that I am honest and exacting when I finish stuff. I don’t like to make sloppy work.” And he now finds himself in high demand — on both fronts. After the success of his sister Billie Eilish’s 2019 debut, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, which hit No. 1 and won him a Producer of the Year Grammy, Finneas has been slammed with work from pop monoliths like Halsey, Selena Gomez, Camila Cabello and Justin Bieber. And he’s somehow making time for his own solo projects — including his first EP, 2019’s Blood Harmony, and timely 2020 sin...
The Most Influential Artists: #18 Tori Amos
As part of our 35th anniversary, we’re naming the most influential artists of the past 35 years. Today, we’re at #18. From Washington, D.C., here is Tori Amos. Credit: Niels van Iperen/Getty Images In the ‘90s, Tori Amos brought something different to pop music: eccentricity. With her breakthrough albums Little Earthquakes and Under the Pink, the singer-songwriter earned cult status for her whimsical overshares and fantastical storytelling. And while Amos’ popularity hasn’t waned within her fanbase, she’s still on the edge of the mainstream — and seems to like it that way. Now 57, the classically trained artist remains a quirky pop figure with her fragile vocals, confessional lyrics and unwavering innovation. Amos isn’t afraid to confront taboos and serious subjects in her songs, tackling...
Tiananmen Square Revisited
In 1989, Chinese students and workers rose up against political repression and occupied Tiananmen Square in downtown Beijing. After a few weeks of hopefulness, Premier Deng Xaoping resorted to extreme measures to quell any potential nationwide workers’ revolution. He ordered Chinese soldiers to turn their guns on their own people, causing a bloody massacre. SPIN sent reporter Mikali Myron to Beijing and she stayed in the square until the end, and filed a highly personal account for our August, ‘89 issue. This is an update on what happened to the chief protagonists of the uprising. What made 1 MILLION people, mostly students, crowd into a huge plaza in downtown Beijing, with no food, sanitation, running water, or other comforts, many choosing hunger strikes as their protest, while the worl...
Lenny Kravitz on New Memoir, Changing Musical Directions, Eddie Van Halen
There is so much to learn about Lenny Kravitz in his revelatory new memoir, Let Love Rule. One fascinating tidbit is how, with youthful wisdom, he purchased property in the very location where his beloved mom, late stage and screen actress Roxie Roker, grew up in the Bahamas. “It’s where my grandfather and mother are from,” he tells SPIN. “I’ve been coming here my whole life, so it’s always felt like home. And I have deep roots here.” And it’s on that very land where he presently resides, having left his city home in Paris for the Islands right before COVID-19 hit. He’s staying busy making new music likely inspired by his tropical surroundings. “It’s wonderful to be here, and I’m very fortunate that this is where I was when everything closed down,” he explains. “I recorded my 5 album at C...
The Most Influential Artists: #19 Michael Jackson
As part of our 35th anniversary, we’re naming the most influential artists of the past 35 years. Today, we’re at #19. From Gary, Indiana, here is Michael Jackson. Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images It’s easy to lose sight of Michael Jackson’s artistic accomplishments, given the sheer scale of his commercial success. Just as Star Wars did for film and Harry Potter did for publishing, Thriller changed its industry in a million ways, expanding the possibilities of how many people could buy an album and how much money could be made from music. But the singer’s raw talent and showmanship, the craft he honed since childhood, provided the spark that ignited everything else. In the Jackson 5 and on his early solo albums, Michael Jackson was a prodigy with an infectious ebullience in his v...
The Most Influential Artists: #20 Jane’s Addiction
As part of our 35th anniversary, we’re naming the most influential artists of the past 35 years. Today, we’re at #20. From Los Angeles, California, here is Jane’s Addiction. Credit: Paul Natkin/Getty Images Jane’s Addiction emerged from L.A.’s music scene as a remedy to the hairsprayed hard rock running rampant along the Sunset Strip. With their charged live performances, the four-piece quickly turned heads by integrating metal, funk and psychedelia into their spacious modern rock sound. Led by their provocative and flamboyant frontman Perry Farrell, Jane’s were unlike anything else out there. Releasing two era-defining albums – 1988’s Nothing’s Shocking and 1990’s Ritual de lo Habitual – Jane’s rose up from the underground and achieved mainstream success. They engineered the “alter...
Can’t Stop the Music
In March, Austin’s SXSW festival, a mainstay of the city’s musical life for 34 years, canceled their live events. Chris “Frenchie” Smith, co-owner of the Bubble recording studio and guitarist for Austin rock band Sixteen Deluxe described the moment he heard the news: “I’ve lived in Austin for thirty years, and South by Southwest getting canceled was something that seemed unfathomable. It was like the Grinch had stolen Christmas.” Seven months later, with many industry professionals predicting the summer of 2021 as the earliest possible return of live music, large-format recording studios like Austin’s The Bubble are keeping the music industry moving forward. The Bubble began in 1998, in a warehouse used as a recording and rehearsal space fo...
The Most Influential Artists: #21 OutKast
As part of our 35th anniversary, we’re naming the most influential artists of the past 35 years. Today, we’re at #21. From Atlanta, Georgia, here is OutKast. Credit: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images The South had something to say long before OutKast brought rap listeners to the corner of Headland and Delowe. Eventually, Andre 3000 and Big Boi made the world pay attention to East Point, Georgia. Political but approachable, smooth yet rugged, intellectual and sensual — they were the platonic ideal of a rap duo and perfect foils. Three Stacks was philosophical and eccentric with pop-inclinations; Big Boi was more grounded, dropping pragmatic game as he was bending corners and rapping circles around everyone. They also worked when trading roles, abiding a shared maxim: “If it ain’t real, ain’t rig...
Meet Pinkshift, 2020’s Perfect Antidote of Pop-Punk Angst
This was meant to be a very different year for Pinkshift. The Baltimore pop-punk band were set to embark on a short March tour, their first as a four-piece, but the pandemic upended their plans. Then a silver lining emerged when their song, “I’m Gonna Tell My Therapist On You,” went viral upon its late July release. The track, which sounds like the lovechild of Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge-era My Chemical Romance and early No Doubt, became the perfect angsty antidote to such a challenging year. At the time, the band didn’t have a manager or publicist. They had a hit purely through word of mouth, with musicians like Jeff Rosenstock and Anti-Flag’s Chris No. 2 sharing the tune on social media. It even amassed 4,700 upvotes on Reddit’s r/listentothis. P...
The Most Influential Artists: #22 Radiohead
As part of our 35th anniversary, we’re naming the most influential artists of the past 35 years. Today, we’re at #22. From Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK here is Radiohead. Credit: Troy Augusto/Newsmakers Few could have predicted that Radiohead — who arrived during the grunge era with their biggest hit, “Creep,” a snarling document of self-loathing — would become our definitive art-rock band. But even associating Thom Yorke’s songwriting with “rock” feels limiting. Sure, the British quintet have arranged some of the most vibrant guitar music ever. But by embracing electronics, orchestrations, self-sampling and digital chaos, they’ve also redefined the term — influencing a wave of artists intoxicated by experimentation and bored with the guitar-bass-drums for...
The 35 Biggest Cultural Moments of the Past 35 Years
We’ve all experienced a moment in time when we felt like this isn’t real. When we question: Did this actually happen? Is it really over? There have been deaths, the last-ever episode of our favorite TV shows and celebrities who have gone so far off the deep end, we become enamored and can’t help but enable their behavior. These past 35 years have given us so many of these wonderful, funny, sad, “winning” and too-good-to-be-true moments in the cultural domain that they’ve redefined our lives and become part of our lexicon. The virality and their significance have — and always will — stand the test of time. And if you don’t like our rankings, well, “No soup for you!” 35. Pee-Wee’s Big Misadventure Pee-Wee Herman arrested for public masturbation Credit: Frank Micelotta/ImageDire...
The Most Influential Artists: #23 Kanye West
As part of our 35th-anniversary, we’re naming the most influential artists of the past 35 years. Today, we’re at #23. From Chicago, Illinois here is Kanye West. Credit: Dana Edelson/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images You can’t discuss the last two decades of rap without mentioning Kanye West. Navigating the club or listening to the radio, watching award shows or scrolling your timeline, it’s been impossible to ignore him. For the first decade after he got his Roc-a-Fella chain, he was untouchable. His talent and mounting accolades eclipsed his ego. West made thundering chipmunk soul and turned a spiritual crisis into a club record that spoke to the Black community in his hometown of Chicago and beyond (“Jesus Walks”). Following a multi-platinum classic (College...
