SPIN 35
The Most Influential Artists: #33 Billie Eilish
As part of our 35th-anniversary, we’re naming the most influential artists of the past 35 years. Today, we’re at #33. From Los Angeles, California, here’s Billie Eilish. CREDIT: Heather Hazzan/SPIN It may seem tough to gauge Billie Eilish’s cultural impact at this emerging juncture of her career — she’s only been a household name for about two years. Still, she makes it easy. Her debut EP, Don’t Smile at Me, was the first sample of what Eilish, then 16, could create in her bedroom. Airy and atmospheric, the project showcased pop craft beyond her age. Then came her multi-platinum debut LP, When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go?. After the triumphant “Bad Guy” shattered records and Eilish cruised through the Grammys, she had every teenager on the globe seeking green hair dye at Sally’s Beau...
UPSAHL Is Kicking Ass and Taking Names
At only 20 years old, Taylor Upsahl (known professionally as UPSAHL) has made female empowerment and being unapologetic her personal brand. Bold and brash, she holds nothing back. Her songs exude both dark and sexual vibes, with lyrics about having sex on her mind, only attending a party for the drugs, and all the people she doesn’t like. This type of free expression is more associated with male artists (and more accepted by the industry) — but UPSAHL is breaking down those stereotypes “I feel especially now in music, women are starting to own their shit a lot more and be a bit more unapologetic and do whatever the fuck they want,” she says when we speak after her newest single “MoneyOnMyMind” just came out. “I mean, the #1 song in the world is called ‘Wet Ass Pussy” — we’re just owning it...
Chuck D Shows Us How to Rage With Age
There was a time when being Public Enemy #1 was the biggest part of Chuck D’s identity. In 1985, the frustrated college student turned rapper emerged from a hotbed of racial tension in Long Island to kick open doors for a burgeoning street culture that did not yet know its own power. Being young, gifted and Black put a torch in Chuck’s hand and a target on his back. Together with his cartoonish hype man Flavor Flav, he started a group that detonated a bomb of black nationalism into the heart of hip-hop culture at the ripe old age of 25. After nearly four decades and 15 albums later, the passion of that young, fire-breathing wordsmith still dwells inside the Golden Era emcee even at age 60 — albeit older, wiser and more subdued. Sitting in front of a computer screen flanked by a wall ...
The Most Influential Artists: #34 Sublime
As part of our 35th-anniversary, we’re naming the most influential artists of the past 35 years. Today, we’re at #34. From Long Beach, California, here’s Sublime. CREDIT: Steve Eichner/WireImage They were a comet, a shooting star, fill in whatever cliche you want here. But there’s no mistaking that Sublime — love ‘em or hate ‘em — were an entire genre and subculture unto themselves. Over Caribbean-inspired reggae grooves, Bradley Nowell channeled personal pain (including his struggles with addiction) and sometimes tasteless humor into his laidback songwriting. Over 25 years later, it’s hard to find someone who hasn’t been infected by the Sublime party lifestyle. In fact, two and a half decades after Nowell’s death from a heroin overdose, Sublime remain a cultural touchstone. Just ask the w...
Times Flies When You’re Having Fun: SPIN Is 35…
“I hope I die before I get old,” sang Pete Townsend, never meaning that for a second — no right thinking person ever would! But rock magazines — and songs, albums, groups, videos, hairstyles and fashions — do get old, some very old, and, like the inevitably doomed nasties in The Raiders of the Lost Ark series, who age hundreds of years and their fleshless skeletons disintegrate to dust before our eyes, they do disappear into the ether. And rock magazines — both those words so gloriously anachronistic now! — really do age more in dog years than human ones. So, to be 35 years old now, is very old by canine and media measurement, and even by human is quite possibly older than you are. Ha! We’ve never felt better! Forgot to mention that we’re like Peter Pan. I’m not going to say we’re retarded...
Tori Amos: Loud and Clear
Far out on the rugged English countryside of Cornwall, surrounded by the bright blue Atlantic and the nearby Celtic Sea, known for its powerful wind and stunning beauty, lives a woman almost otherworldly. American born, before the age of three she’d already found her life in music, her gift for the piano so immense and so palpable it earned her acceptance into an exclusive conservatory, at the time the youngest child ever admitted, at the age of five. Her father, a man of God who preached His word, had a vision for his daughter: She was to be the best, the brightest and perform at the greatest music halls — all by the age of 13. The girl had to get to work. And she did. But there was a fire inside her that refused to conform. In her father’s words, she would deny “God’s p...
The Most Influential Artists: #35 No Doubt
As part of our 35th-anniversary, we’re naming the most influential artists of the past 35 years. Today, we’re at #35. From Anaheim, California, here’s No Doubt. CREDIT: Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images Disneyland, the Angels, NAMM, Orange County — for most people, that’s all that came to mind when thinking of Anaheim, and even that was a stretch. Enter No Doubt. Though they’d been peripherally circling the L.A. major label scene for a few years, Gwen Stefani kicked past the Orange Curtain and picked up where Mike Ness and Social Distortion left off, bringing OC to the masses. Stefani introduced a new type of frontwoman that would be often replicated, but never duplicated, in the years to come. Beginning with their third studio album, Tragic Kingdom, No Doubt set the standard for ska-blending p...
