Zac Johnson

2 weeks ago | allmusic.com | Zac Johnson

For decades, the country music being played on the radio has maintained the well-travelled backroads of pickup trucks, cans of beer, old dogs and cheating hearts. Bubbling under these platinum-selling artists are a subtler, more literary set of musicians usually tagged under the less marketable but more austere subgenre of Contemporary Folk or the Grammy-friendly category of Americana. For every Big & Rich there is a Rhiannon Giddens, and crossing over every Florida Georgia Line is a Nickel Creek.

Oct 21, 2024 | allmusic.com | Zac Johnson

In constructing the mammoth "Cocaine & Rhinestones: A History of George Jones and Tammy Wynette," author and Nashville gadabout Tyler Mahan Coe has effectively Voltroned together three separate books. At it's core, the book details the bizarre, romantic, heartbreaking and gawkable trainwreck that was the separate ascendencies and eventual catastrophic relationship between country music superlatives George Jones and Tammy Wynette.

Aug 12, 2024 | allmusic.com | Zac Johnson

The 50th anniversary of Pussy Cats is upon us. This was the posthumous name given to the doomed and bewildering project between singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson and no-description-required John Lennon in which they drank, pulled pranks, generally goofed off, and tried to record an album on which Nilsson sang so hard he fried his voice to the point where blood was hitting the microphones.

Mar 18, 2024 | allmusic.com | Zac Johnson

In Daniel De Visé's in-depth new book The Blues Brothers - An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic, the author goes to phenomenal lengths to detail not just the making of the Blues Brothers film (which is a bonkers story in and of itself), but goes back to the beginning, detailing the upbringings of the two actors, their explorations into a burgeoning comedy scene, their rise at SNL, and all the blues that's fit to print.

Jun 26, 2023 | allmusic.com | Zac Johnson

FX/Hulu's series The Bear became a pop culture sensation when the first season aired in June 2022. Many of the accolades came from back-of-house restaurant workers who admired the gritty attention to detail in the way the kitchen was portrayed as a hectic, chaotic, frustrating and triumphant work environment, but we celebrated the deep catalog of music that the de facto music supervisors Christopher Storer and Josh Senior laid out as the soundtrack.