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Ketch Secor knows what it’s like to pass through your town. The frontman for the platinum-selling band Old Crow Medicine Show has been doing it now for a quarter-century. Yes, Secor has long been on the road, bringing his rollicking blend of old-time and rock ‘n’ roll music to fans all around the country and beyond. 

Old Crow, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2023, released its latest LP, Jubilee, on August 25. With so much time and experience, Secor knows what it feels like to travel down those same roads, and see those same tall mountains or rushing streams. Yet he’s older now. The country is older, too. So Secor muses on all of this, and inevitably it seeps into the songs and his musical mission. 

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When country star Scotty McCreery was 15 years old, before he broke through as the winner of season 10 of American Idol thanks to his smooth country singing voice, his parents forged his name on an application to a hyper-local singing competition, Clayton Idol, in his home state of North Carolina. Perhaps to no one’s surprise, the teenage McCreery won that competition, even if he didn’t originally want to participate, due to nerves and stage freight. Thankfully, though, for him, his parents were supportive of his talents. So much so that they pushed him past what he thought his limits were. Not long after winning Clayton Idol, a 16-year-old McCreery won American Idol, the second youngest ever to do so. Now, the platinum- and gold-selling recording artist and songwriter, who released his latest single this month, “Cab in a Solo,” is at the top of his game. But it took a little push.

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When someone sits down to write a new song, much can go through their mind. Many, hoping to write a hit track that the world enjoys, think about that very fact. They wonder something like, How can I write the most popular song ever? But this aim is folly, of course. The real—and only—way to write something that resonates with people is to write something that resonates with a single person. Namely, yourself. For the Kentucky-born songwriter and performer Tyler Booth, who is experiencing a moment of late, that was his chosen route. Now, Booth is set to release his newest EP, Keep It Real, on Friday (September 15). It’s a record that is both of him and boundary-pushing. Just as it should be.

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Treetop-touching vocalist Josh Kiszka says the new album that he and his Greta Van Fleet bandmates have put together, Starcatcher, had less to do with tracking and more to do with transcendence. In other words, he says, the album seemed simply to discover itself as he and his compatriots listened. To keep up with it, the musicians harbored an open mind and a taste for the essential aspects of each song, from the bones of the compositions to the theories behind the lyrics. It was a metaphysical trip as much as a musical one. 

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Michael Bolton couldn’t turn down the opportunity. He’d worked his whole life for something like this—to meet the great opera singer Luciano Pavarotti. And to sing with him? Impossible to imagine. Especially considering those days before fame was a gold ring to even contemplate trying to grasp. When the reality of having to support a wife and three kids weighed quite heavily. But through hard work—indeed, cutting two career paths at once—everything shook out for Bolton. So much so that he not only shared some sonic space with Pavarotti, but the iconic opera performer even offered the pop star a compliment. 

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Herb Alpert, the 88-year-old award-winning musician, and former record executive, recently experienced something for the first time. One of his songs, “Ladyfingers,” from his iconic album Whipped Cream & Other Delights, became a hit again in a new way, thanks to the social media platform TikTok. For someone who rose to fame in the 1960s, even outselling the Beatles for a stint, the idea that a fast-paced digital arena like TikTok would be a factor in his life is, admittedly, odd. However, the Alpert song went viral and garnered 100 million streams. Staggering. The album the song is on sold some 14 million copies upon its release in 1965—a number that helped make the trumpet-playing Alpert famous in his heyday. But 100 million streams? That’s almost impossible to imagine, especially for someone who remembers recording music even before one-track tape players were around. 

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Hannibal Buress has a role in Spider-Man: Homecoming. The Chicago-born actor and comedian has achieved the nearly unthinkable: a successful and respected career in Hollywood. He can tour around the globe, and hook onto any franchise. He’s made his career and he’s good at what he does. So, why then, one might wonder, would Buress ever venture into some other new project? Why risk rocking the boat? Well, because he wants to rock the crowd. That’s right, for the past year-plus Buress has been putting his nose to the grindstone, sharpening his chops in another art form: music.

Under the moniker Eshu Tune, he’s been producing beats, writing rhymes, and weaving them both into his live shows. These days, he says, he’s done “way more” music performances than comedy. Like a bodybuilder, Buress has been strengthening new muscles. Perhaps then, it’s no coincidence that his newest song is titled “I Lift Weights,” and it’s out today (June 5). 

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You wouldn’t know it from his bombastic stage performances, but Daveed Diggs thinks of himself as shy. In Oakland, California, he grew up shy and he still is that way today, he says.

One of the stars of the recent Disney live-action version of The Little Mermaid (Diggs plays Sebastian, the crab), the musician-actor-and-personality would make up skits as a kid, like for his mother, who worked nights as a club DJ, or other family members around the house. Looking back on it, Diggs says, he’s not entirely sure where this instinct came from, but it’s nevertheless emblematic of his constant desire to perform, even from a young age.

Diggs found a home in the theater, working his way up and landing a role in the now-legendary musical, Hamilton, playing both Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette. And Diggs’ next project is hosting to new singing competition podcast from Audible, Breakthrough, which launched June 1.

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Noel Gallagher, the former guitar player and singer-songwriter for the iconic rock band Oasis and current frontman for his eponymous rock group Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, is at peace. For the once-bad boy of Brit Pop, known as much for his altercations as hit songs, a sense of self-security has settled in. Truth be told, he’s something of a joy to talk to—calm, thoughtful, clear-headed. And these same adjectives could be used to describe Gallagher and company’s new LP, Council Skies, which is set to drop on Friday (June 2). The new record showcases the artist’s knack for composition, tone, and magnetism. The titular single is like a blue sky and a wide-open highway forward. For the songwriter, age has brought wisdom and a sense of satisfaction.

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Sometimes—even if you’ve elevated to the pinnacle of your craft and your work has been heard by billions of people—it can still be difficult to get out of bed. There can be a sense that nothing is good enough. For the award-winning performer, singer, and songwriter Idina Menzel, this dichotomous existence has too often been a reality. Menzel, she says, struggles with internal pressure, rarely feeling satiated. It’s what’s pushed her to become a star on Broadway, in movies, on television, and with her music. But it can be a lot. Sometimes she wonders if it’s a “chicken or the egg” thing.

For someone who is a harsh self-critic, Menzel has become known for the epic lift-the-weight-off-your-shoulders songs like, “Let It Go,” from the Pixar movie, Frozen. Did that song become so successful because Menzel, herself, needed to hear it? Perhaps the relationship she has with art can be summed up in Menzel’s new song, “Funny Kind of Lonely,” from her forthcoming new LP, Drama Queen. It’s a funny kind of lonely / giving into love, she sings. The song and her latest single, “Move,” highlight the lively new dance record, which is out on August 18. 

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All Rob Thomas wanted to do was be a “jobber.” For the future hitmaker, when he and his teenage band, Fair Warning, got a gig at the Sheraton Hotel in Vero Beach, Florida, he thought they’d made it. And soon, Thomas realized, booking gigs was something he could do. Wanted to do. While the hotel job was cut short due to beer theft, Thomas knew he was onto something. It wasn’t about fame, just a living. If he wound up being in a “really great wedding band one day,” that would have been enough, he says.

Thomas, who grew up “more sensitive” than other kids, loved music. He was the one who remembered song titles and lyrics. Growing up in South Carolina and then Florida, he heard Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. At the skate parks, which he favored, he heard Michael Jackson and KISS. He also loved the bands from the second British Invasion like the Cure and Joy Division. Today, Thomas and his band Matchbox Twenty are known like those he grew up on. And their latest record, Where The Light Goes, out Friday (May 26), will assuredly be spun worldwide—including weddings. 

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Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos is the embodiment of the phrase the one who is “not busy being born is busy dying.” Seemingly every second of the day, compounded weekly, monthly, yearly, Mendoza Ramos is learning, growing, changing. It’s an organic process that mirrors their very entry into songwriting.

When they were 18 years old, Mendoza Ramos would play a friend’s guitar at their house. There, Mendoza Ramos learned a few chords and a few strumming patterns. Suddenly a life that included music as much as air or water now had a fresh avenue to travel toward expression. For Mendoza Ramos, who was born to Mexican parents who played music in the house endlessly, music is as much an extension of time and space as it is a product of work. And it’s with this backdrop that their new album, Lucha, with their band, Y La Bamba, finds listeners on Friday (April 28). The record is as lush and complex as its creator. A prism of seemingly disparate sound beams that coalesce into a churning galaxy.  

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