New Reviews: Wilco's Most Lyrically Direct Album Yet

Wilco 'The Whole Love'

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In this week's slate of Rolling Stone album reviews, Jon Dolan raves about Wilco's new disc, The Whole Love, which he says is musically all over the place but totally direct in its lyrical sentiments. Also, Jody Rosen celebrates the "doorstopper 20th-anniversary box set" edition of Nirvana's landmark album Nevermind, Chuck Eddy pans Chickenfoot's mostly plodding second record and Alan Light gives high marks to the new comprehensive box set retrospective of Sting's solo career.

Wilco - The Whole Love (stream one song)

Nirvana - Nevermind (20th Anniversary Edition) (stream one song)

Blink-182 - Neighborhoods (stream one song)

Chickenfoot - Chickenfoot III (stream one song)

J. Cole - Cole World: The Sideline Story (stream one song)

Mastodon - The Hunter (stream one song)

Sting - 25 Years (stream one song)

Jason Derulo - Future History (stream one song)

Spank Rock - Everything Is Boring and Everyone Is a Fucking Liar (stream full album)

Anvil - Monument of Metal: The Very Best of Anvil (stream one song)

Mekons - Ancient and Modern 1911-2011 (stream one song)

Simon Kirke - Filling the Void (stream one song)

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  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
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  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

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