Curated playlist
Musicians from Manhattan
- Lady GagaLady Gaga's name may have come from a phone typo. Producer Rob Fusari said autocorrect turned "Radio Ga Ga" into "Lady".
- Miles DavisMiles Davis called jazz dead near the end of his life. He had spent five decades helping define it.
- Aaron CoplandComposer Aaron Copland planned one year of study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger but stayed three.
- Bruce WillisBruce Willis received the 2,321st star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on the 16th of October 2006. It sits at 6915 Hollywood Boulevard. At the reception, he told the crowd he used to come down and look at the stars. Then came the…
- Steven TylerSteven Tyler, the singer born Steven Victor Tallarico, saw his touring career end in August 2024. That month, his band Aerosmith announced that it was retiring from the road. The reason was Tyler's voice. He had fractured his larynx and…
- Mark RonsonMark Ronson was twelve years old when he pestered Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone, until the magazine gave him an internship. By his own description he was a music nerd, and the persistence paid off. Decades later he had won ten…
- Sergei RachmaninoffRachmaninoff left Russia in 1917 with one small suitcase of sketches and scores.
- Alicia KeysAlicia Keys was fifteen years old when Columbia Records tried to win her signature with a $26,000 white baby grand piano. She took the deal. It began a long struggle over who would decide what her music sounded like. Years later she summed…
- Tom MorelloTom Morello, the American guitarist behind Rage Against the Machine, once made an entire festival crowd listen to nothing but noise. At Lollapalooza in 1993, his band walked onstage naked. Their mouths were covered with duct tape, and…
- Jeff BuckleyJeff Buckley finished exactly one studio album before he died, and it was called Grace. It came out in 1994. Decades later, Rolling Stone placed it on three separate lists of the 500 greatest albums. In 2014, the Library of Congress added…
- Charles RosenPianist Charles Rosen wrote his first book because a record sleeve note embarrassed him. It won a National Book Award.