Caroline Jones has already had a career that any music-lover would be envious of- a mentee of music titans Zac Brown Band and the late, great Jimmy Buffett...she has toured with mega-names in the industry like The Rolling Stones, The Eagles, and Carrie Underwood, and now performs alongside Zac Brown Band as a member.
Her music spans genres, seamlessly blending one another together into a melting pot of downright good music. Her voice is sweet, hard-hitting, and fine-tuned, add that together with her songwriting ability that has only gotten better from working with the best in the business, and her prowess in playing multiple instruments. All together, Caroline Jones is the whole package- creating a pop-country fusion with notes of bluegrass at just the right time.
When I sat down to talk to Caroline who sat outside her home in Nashville, she was humble- constantly talking about seeking ways to better her music, showing gratitude to those who have helped her get here (especially manager, producer, business partner Ric Wake, and smiling when thinking of her newest album: Homesite. You can listen to the album here:
Nashville is a big part of Jones' story, the place where she felt the most connected to her newfound country music roots. It helped her grow, and gave her the support to pursue her career. On paper, it seems like Caroline Jones has accomplished just about everything...but there's so much more potential to unlock for Jones, and she will tell you that.
Homesite is a thrilling addition to Jones' already impressive repertoire, exhibiting her true vocal abilities to their finest. Check out our interview with Caroline below!
PD: Let's start at the very beginning...you were trained classically in opera, how did you want to switch to country?
CJ: I grew up listening to a variety of genres when I was a kid. My father loved classic rock and R&B, my mother loved the divas of the 90's- Whitney, Mariah, Barbara Streisand, Celine Dion...and like you said, I was trained classically in opera and jazz so it wasn't until I was around 17 and went to the Nashville for the first time and I had started writing songs and making demos of them. My manager at the time in my teen years said, "You know, your music has a bit of a country flare to it, you'd really love Nashville."
At his urging, I went down here and went to a show at Bluebird Cafe and I was hooked...like I'd found the missing piece to my artistry. I felt like I found my people and my community. There's such a writer and musician-centered community, which is very unique in a commercial genre of music in this day-and-age where there's so many other factors and distractions. That's still the core of Nashville. Delved all the way back starting with Hank Williams as the outset of what we think of as the outset of country music and went from there and found love.
PD: You were touring schools across New England before Jimmy Buffett recognized you. Can you talk about how that all started?
CJ: I've just had a DIY spirit since I was young, you know? This was the early 2010's when Ed Sheeran and Mumford & Sons and acoustic music was making a comeback over the very produced pop commerciality of the early 2000s. I just wanted to be part of that wave of singer-songwriters, that's what really inspired me...so I knew I wanted to build a fanbase organically and get good at playing shows live.
I started playing in the Northeast, where I grew up, and then a few years later I met my manager and business partner, Ric Wake, and we made our first record, Barefeet. I got a couple of amazing opportunities to open up, starting with Zac Brown and Jimmy Buffett. I really owe the career that I have to those two taking me under their wing and taking me on tour.
PD: Let's talk about your new album, Homesite, which you had complete creative control over. How did that change making an album for you?
CJ: I've been really lucky, I've been an independent artist for my whole career and owned all my masters...I've really been in the creative driver's seat and I owe that all to my manager and producer Ric Wake. He believed in me from the beginning and respected what I did, he honored my vision and brought it to life, and brought a team in who felt the same way. That is not most artist's experience, so I am very grateful to him...and moreso as time goes on because you see how rare it is.
This album is the next step in my creative evolution and, if anything, I opened up more on this album because we brought in a new creative producer, Brandon Hood. I co-wrote about 3-4 songs on the record, which is pretty rare for me...in my previous record I solo wrote most of the album with the exception of one song.
For me, that's creative maturity. Now that I have a few years of experience and more of a platform, I still have a long way to go but now I get to work with the musicians, singers, and songwriters I respect.
PD: Can you give me your favorite tracks from the album?
CJ: Yeah! At the moment, they're probably the title track, "Homesite",I love the song "Serendipity" because I love blending country and pop, and I love "Lawless." I'm a production nerd so those are probably my favorites...and I also love "By Way Of Sorrow", it's the only song I didn't write on the record and it's a cover and has Vince Gill on it, one of my all-time heroes. I think that song should be a bluegrass classic.
PD: Final question- what is the best piece of advice you've learned since touring with ZBB, Jimmy Buffett, The Rolling Stones, Faith Hill, Carrie Underwood, The Eagles, Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney...I could go on?
CJ:
Oh my gosh, so hard to distill down to one because you learn so much by osmosis...by the repetition by being around folks who are the most excellent in the world at their craft.
If I could share one thing I've learned and seen over and over, it's important to remember when you're performing in stadiums or you see people's shining social feeds, or you go and perform to tens of thousands of people and see them living your dream...they still have their own mountains to climb.
The more I've been around really successful people, the more I see they still have this passion and drive and still have a need to create, and push themselves and evolve. That's not something that ever goes away just because you're rich and famous. It's not that you're at the top of the mountain and now you're just plateauing. You're still the same hungry artist with the same hungry soul with the drive that got you there.
I want people to know that, because I feel like they don't. You see rich and famous and successful musicians and you think they're rockstars who have it all figured out...but the truth is we're all artists, we're all seeking, we're all trying to creatively challenge ourselves. In that way, we're all on an equal playing field.
Adam Doleac is the name on everyone's lips in Nashville.
After a year of playing to tens of thousands on tour, amassing millions of streams online, and dropping a video featuring
Colton Underwood and Cassie Randolph, you wouldn't believe things could get any better for the rising country superstar. Cut to one record deal with Sony Music later and rethink what you believe. Doleac is one of those artists who sets your expectations high, leaps over them, then rinses and repeats. With that in mind, get excited, because he has an early Christmas gift for the world in the form of his latest single "Neon Fools."
In a word, the song is sultry. Filtered drums, minimalist slide guitar, and piano chords holding down the melody, all while Doleac silvertones his way through a set of lyrics showcasing him at his best. He plays off his natural charm, flirty but imperturbable, and sings about an ill-advised romantic interlude under neon light. Gospel vocal accents add to the track's ethereal elusive texture, all of which is countered by Doleac's voice. He acts as a grounding point amongst the smoke and mirrors of the song. For all of "Neon Fools" misguided amorosity, he always brings us back to what is tangible: the perfection of the present moment.
It's easy to love Adam Doleac. Apart from his genuine presence and gentle demeanour, he knows how to be genre accessible without pandering. For country fans he's an in-road to a more pop sound; for pop fans, he's a perfect entry point for country. But it's more than that. Gateway appeal is one thing, staying power is another. Doleac somehow has both. He's simultaneously a one-night stand, and the guy you can bring home to your folks. It seems like a magic trick, but the more you listen to him the more you feel it. While you wait for more, you can listen to "Neon Fools" and get excited for what the New Year will hold.
Nashville singer TONYB. drops new album "Flashing Lights"
Nashville artist TONYB. has just dropped a new 18-track deluxe edition of his album Flashing Lights.
Some may think 18 tracks is overwhelming, but in this case, we just can't get enough. Through an array of sensual R&B melodies and glistening neo-soul vibes, TONYB. covers everything from everyday life experiences to love and heartbreak across all the tracks. Echoing synths twinkle in the background, while the singer's warm, velvet vocals cascade atop the electronic soundscapes.
A personal favorite on the album is one of the new additions — "Faded Dreams (My Time)." On this track, his effortless vocals glide over the throbbing beats and reflective synths. From start to finish, TONYB. takes us on a journey of self-exploration, letting us into some of his most vulnerable moments and showing us some of the poignant events that define the transition to adulthood.
So sink your teeth into this big, juicy album and lose yourself in the sounds of TONYB.
Congratulations on the release of the deluxe edition of your album Flashing Lights. Where did the idea for releasing a deluxe edition come from, and what can listeners expect from the new release?
There was a lot of new music that I was working on last fall that I love. So much so that I immediately wanted to put some of it out, because I'm at a point where I don't want to hold onto music for months and months at a time anymore. I just want to create and put it into the world while those feelings are still present. So because Flashing Lights had been doing so well all year, I came up with the idea to put out a deluxe version for my fans with a few bonus tracks [before] I finish up my new project for the summer.
The 18-track release showcases your impressive vocal range and soulful tone. Mixing neo-soul melodies with R&B beats, the album is an intoxicating listening experience. Tell us more about the inspiration behind it and the results you were hoping to achieve?
I've always been inspired by all different types of music, and I try to showcase that [in my own] by incorporating rock, pop, and R&B elements, keeping production pretty diverse, and exploring the entire spectrum of my musical tastes.
Writing-wise, the inspiration was just [the idea of documenting] me coming into adulthood. A lot of these songs, I started writing at 21 and 22 years old, and [they] have sort of helped me make sense of becoming a person on my own aside from my family and what I've always known. I just wanted to document my experiences for anyone who may be going through the same things right now.
From some of the most influential, intimate relationships in my life, to me finally achieving my lifelong dream of moving to LA and what that would always feel like, to the loss of my grandmother and aunt, to losing my way, and to finding my way again, this project is a defining chapter for me in my life, and [it shows] how these experiences set me up to finally be able to come into my true self.
"Serious" and "Faded Dreams (My Time)" are two of the new additions on the album. Did you always plan to release these on the deluxe version, or are they new singles?
I have about 15-20 in the vault right now, and those two tracks fit the most sonically and lyrically on Flashing Lights. The rest I'm saving for what's next this year.
What have you been up to during the pandemic in terms of continuing to connect with your listeners, and what are your plans for when restrictions are loosened?
I'm very active on social media with my fans, like we DM all the time and I've tried to keep music coming, so that's helped keep our relationship solid until live shows are allowed again. The first thing I'm doing when restrictions are lifted is booking as many live shows as possible.
Your vocal dynamics have been described as similar to the likes of Aaliyah, D'Angelo, and Usher. If you could collaborate with any artist, dead or alive, who would it be and why?
Aaliyah would hands down be the first one. Kehlani and Drake are two of my dream collaborators. Musically, they both have helped me through some pretty rough times growing up. And Kehlani's transparency in her music and how much she decides to give us is really admirable.
What's next for TONYB.?
I feel like I've finally found my stride all around with my fans. What they like, and also what I like and want to do. Releasing Flashing Lights over the past couple years showed me that, so I've got a lot planned for this year.
Need some escapism? With his magnificent new video, Matt Lovell has you covered.
"Alligator Lilly" is the second single from Lovell's forthcoming LP, Nobody Cries Today. Inspired by Wes Anderson films and the ominous allure of Florida beaches, it's full of eye-candy visuals and striking, hypnotic imagery. The video begins with Lovell alone, walking on a beach next to a glittering sea. Slowly, he begins to shine like the ocean waves, donning a diamond-colored outfit and eventually (with the help of some digital enhancement) his body becomes the diamonds themselves. It's a celebration of beach living, of solitude and creativity and communion with nature's beauty.
Matt Lovell - Alligator Lilly (Official Music Video)www.youtube.com
Sonically, the arrangement is soulful and simple but laden with teasing moments of dreamy synths that briefly open up the track to a more psychedelic plane. Thematically, the song explores the dichotomy between innocence and danger that defines so much of youth. "Someone once told me that they couldn't tell if this song was really innocent or really risqué. And that's exactly what 'Alligator' has been from the moment we sat down to write it," Lovell said.
He wrote the song with two friends, Mandy Cook and Tim Jackson, when they were living near the Gulf of Mexico in Florida's panhandle. "One day we were driving along the coast and passed a lake covered in lily pads—so many of them that you could hardly see the water," he said. "When we noticed the lake was called Alligator Lake, we laughed about what a strange juxtaposition of danger and beauty this was. I started singing the opening lines 'Alligator Lilly, twinkle in your eye, tide is rolling in pulled by the moon up in the sky.' Mandy gasped and we were like two kids in that moment." They drove back to their friend Tim's house and told him they wanted to write a "silly song about lost virginity."
The product was a joyful and exuberant single, a celebration of seduction and freedom, both spiritual and physical. In the days of social distancing, it feels like a time capsule of a former era, when we could just touch each other without risk—a time that will certainly come again, but that seems far away. "To me, it's actually a song about innocent fun. In that era of our lives, Mandy and I lived like two Peter Pans," Lovell remembered. "I'll certainly always look back on this period of several months and remember it as one of the brightest in my life. We had quit our jobs, left our apartments, said goodbye (for then) to boyfriends, and there we were. We woke up every day, walked on the beach, and wrote and recorded with our dear friend Tim every morning. Most days we would finish this whole routine by lunchtime, and spend our afternoons in local thrift stores or at one of our favorite tourist trap restaurants (there is no shame in a little kitsch). When I listen to 'Alligator Lilly,' I can hear all of that. Every bit of innocence, all the love, the unbridled sunshine, and zest for life that the three of us possessed in those days."
Nobody Cries Today Album Art - Matt Lovell
Many of us have moments of our lives that pass by quickly when they're happening but take on something like a religious significance in hindsight's glow. Those moments where we experienced total freedom, where we had nothing holding us back and where time seemed like an illusion and youth felt eternal—those are the kinds of moments that "Alligator Lilly" lovingly remembers, celebrates, and invites back in.
The journey to this heavenly place wasn't quite as smooth as the video implies, and Lovell's experience writing his album Nobody Cries Today was a long and winding road. "In a way, Nobody Cries Today has actually been my teacher. As I have written these songs, each of them has been like a tiny rowboat to get me from one day to the next," he said. "These songs have witnessed me in the years that I was in the throes of trying to find acceptance for myself and for the world I'm living in. As a gay man of southern origin, this proved to be a tall order."
The songs have taken on deeper significance over the past few years. They were almost all written before Lovell's life changed forever when he was shot and nearly lost his life. "All but one of these songs were recorded in 2016—just months before I nearly lost my life in a shooting. On January 20, 2017, I was shot in the chest by a sixteen-year-old who was attempting to steal my car. Miraculously, I lived," he said.
"This moment in my life created my new center of gravity and re-ordered my whole view and understanding of everything I've experienced in this lifetime," he said of the near-death experience. "Many people who experience an acute trauma go through somewhat of a euphoric period immediately after the incident occurs, and this was definitely my experience. Call it a spiritual awakening, or the result of adrenaline and endorphins gone wild, or even just the natural result of a near-death story with a happy ending. Whatever it was, this event threw me into a span of six months where it felt as if I was on a honeymoon with myself. The level of peace I felt was something I had never touched before. I wrote profusely, I gardened, I brought new life and vigor to my musical ventures, and I made peace with complicated friendships. More than anything, I found a level of great self-acceptance, and this created space for me to begin to learn how to live this life."
Things grew more complex as time wore on. "This era ended abruptly when PTSD showed up unexpectedly one day—about six months after I was shot. It was—no doubt—the most difficult time I've ever faced," he said. "It made me question just about everything. For months, my entire consciousness felt as if it had been turned upside down, and I couldn't find a way to articulate the horrors I was experiencing. This kind of trauma is a knot you can only untangle with slow and patient work, and with the help of saints. Thankfully, I know a lot of saints," he said. Fortunately, "I'm now on the other side of that long nighttime," he said, "and I'm so excited to sing these nine songs again—for anyone who will listen. Nobody Cries Today contains every bit of earnestness, desire, and love that I have to give. These are songs that have brought me so much joy and healing over the years."
Nobody Cries Today is out on June 5th. The first single, "90 Proof," is a more solemn contribution than "Alligator Lilly." Whereas the latter is a light, effervescent montage of memories, "90 Proof" is a more soul-influenced breakup tune. Still, both are defined by Lovell's sensitive musicality, his effortlessly gentle voice and his ability to transmute feeling into song—all star-making qualities that offer necessary healing for these times.
Matt Lovell - 90 Proof (Official Music Video)www.youtube.com
The story of psychedelics is intertwined with the story of music, and tracing their relationship can feel like going in circles.
For thousands of years, artists have been using naturally-grown herbs to open their minds and enhance their creative processes. Since LSD was synthesized by Albert Hoffman in 1938, psychedelics have experienced a reemergence, blooming into a revolution in the 1960s, launching dozens of genres and sounds that focused on acid, shrooms, and all of the portals they opened. Around the 1960s, scientists also began studying the relationship between psychedelics and music, and even back then, researchers found that, when combined, music and psychedelics could have therapeutic effects on patients.
More modern studies have discovered that LSD, specifically, links a portion of the brain called the parahippocampal—which specializes in personal memory—to the visual cortex, which means that memories take on more autobiographical and visual dimensions. Other studies have found that LSD can make the timbres and sounds of music feel more meaningful and emotionally powerful. Today, psychedelic music still thrives, and you can hear flickers of those early trip-inspired experiences all across today's modern musical landscape.
"There is a message intrinsically carried in music, and under the effects of psychedelics, people seem to become more responsive to this," said the psychedelic researcher Mendel Kaelen. "Emotion can be processed more deeply. It's a beautiful narrative. It's like a snake biting itself in the tail."
All that said, psychedelics can be as dangerous as the archetypal live-fast-die-young rock and roller's average lifestyle. They can destabilize already fragile minds and can encourage further drug abuse and reckless behavior. Often, psychedelic revolutions have coincided with colonialist fetishizations, apocalyptic visions, and appropriations of Eastern culture.
However, sometimes psychedelics and musical talent can come together in a synergy so perfect that it can literally create transcendent and healing experiences. Hallucinogens affected each of these following musicians in a unique way, but their experiences with hallucinogens produced some of the greatest music of all time.
Harry Styles — She
In his revelatory Rolling Stone profile, Harry Styles spoke out about how magic mushrooms inspired his most recent album, Fine Line. Inspired by Fleetwood Mac, the 25-year-old apparently spent a lot of time at Shangri-La Studios in Los Angeles tripping and listening to the old psychedelic greats.
"Ah, yes. Did a lot of mushrooms here," he said in the interview during a tour of the studio. "We'd do mushrooms, lie down on the grass, and listen to Paul McCartney's Ram in the sunshine."
Things even got a little violent, as they often can when dealing with hallucinogens. "This is where I was standing when we were doing mushrooms and I bit off the tip of my tongue. So I was trying to sing with all this blood gushing out of my mouth. So many fond memories, this place," he reminisced affectionately.
Kacey Musgraves' dreamy song "Slow Burn" was apparently inspired by an acid trip. Listening to the lyrics, you can hear the influence of psychedelics twining with country and singer-songwriter tropes. "I was sitting on the porch, you know, having a good, easy, zen time," she said of the songwriting experience, which she said happened out on her porch one evening. "I wrote it down on my phone, and then wrote the songs the next day with a sober mind."
LSD, she said, "opens your mind in a lot of ways. It doesn't have to be scary. People in the professional worlds are using it, and it's starting to become an option for therapy. Isn't that crazy?" Her affection for the drug also appears in her song "Oh What A World," which contains the lyric, "Plants that grow and open your mind."
A$AP Rocky — L$D
While A$AP Rocky's affection for LSD isn't a surprise given his propensity for writing about the drug, apparently the rapper has an intellectual approach to his psychedelic experimentation.
"We was all in London at my spot, Skeppy came through," he told Hot New Hip Hop about his experience writing LSD. "I have this psychedelic professor, he studies in LSD. I had him come through and kinda record and monitor us to actually test the product while being tested on. We did the rhymes all tripping balls."
Apparently his first acid trip happened in 2012. "Okay, without getting anyone in trouble, I was with my homeboy and some trippy celebrity chicks and…" he said in an interview with Time Out. When asked how long it lasted, he said, "Too long, man. Twenty-three hours. I was trippin' till the next day. When I woke up, I was like, Damn! I did that shit! That shit was dope. It was so amazing. It was a-ma-zing. Nothing was like that first time."
Acid changed his entire approach to music and success. "I never really gave a f*ck, man, but this time, I really don't give a f*ck," he said. "I don't care about making no f*cking hits." Instead, he focuses on creating. "It's so hard to be progressive when you're trippin' b*lls," he said. "You make some far-out shit!"
The Beatles' later music is essentially synonymous with LSD, and the band members often spoke out about their unique experiences with the drug. According to Rolling Stone, the first time that Lennon and Harrison took it was actually a complete accident. A friend put LSD in their coffee without their knowledge, and initially Lennon was furious. But after the horror and panic faded, things changed. "I had such an overwhelming feeling of well-being, that there was a God, and I could see him in every blade of grass. It was like gaining hundreds of years of experience in 12 hours," said Harrison.
Paul McCartney had similar revelations. LSD "opened my eyes to the fact that there is a God," he said in 1967. "It is obvious that God isn't in a pill, but it explained the mystery of life. It was truly a religious experience." Of LSD's effect, he also said, "It started to find its way into everything we did, really. It colored our perceptions. I think we started to realize there wasn't as many frontiers as we'd thought there were. And we realized we could break barriers."
Using the drug not only helped the band create some of the most legendary music of all time—it also brought them closer together. "After taking acid together, John and I had a very interesting relationship," said George Harrison. "That I was younger or I was smaller was no longer any kind of embarrassment with John. Paul still says, 'I suppose we looked down on George because he was younger.' That is an illusion people are under. It's nothing to do with how many years old you are, or how big your body is. It's down to what your greater consciousness is and if you can live in harmony with what's going on in creation. John and I spent a lot of time together from then on and I felt closer to him than all the others, right through until his death."
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (Remastered 2009)www.youtube.com
Ray Charles — My World
The soul music pioneer allegedly once described acid as his "eyes." Charles was blind, but LSD is said to have allowed him some version of sight. Though he struggled with addiction, Charles eventually got clean, though his music always bore some markers of his experiences with the subconscious mind.
Actually, blind people on LSD and hallucinogens can experience hallucinations of different kinds, though it's somewhat rare. According to a study in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, this happens because during a trip, "the plasticity of the nervous system allows the recognition and translation of auditory or tactile patterns into visual experiences."
Clapton struggled with drug abuse throughout his life, and LSD certainly had an influence on him. While he was a part of Cream, he frequently played shows while tripping, and according to outontrip.com, he became "convinced that he could turn the audience into angels or devils according to the notes he played."
Before he was creating the ultimate dad rap, Chance the Rapper was an acidhead.
"None of the songs are really declarative statements; a lot of them are just things that make you wonder...a lot like LSD," said Chance the Rapper of his hallucinogen-inspired album, the aptly named Acid Rap. "[There] was a lot of acid involved in Acid Rap," he told MTV in 2013. "I mean, it wasn't too much — I'd say it was about 30 to 40 percent acid ... more so 30 percent acid."
But the album wasn't merely about acid; like much of the best psychedelic music, it was more about the imagery and symbolism associated with the drug than the actual drug itself. "It wasn't the biggest component at all. It was something that I was really interested in for a long time during the making of the tape, but it's not necessarily a huge faction at all. It was more so just a booster, a bit of fuel. It's an allegory to acid, more so than just a tape about acid," he said.
Jazz great John Coltrane was a regular LSD user who used the drug to create music and to have spiritual experiences. Though he struggled with addiction throughout his life, LSD was one drug that had a major artistic influence on him. While it's not known for sure if the album Om—which includes chanted verses of the Bhagavad Gita—was recorded while Coltrane was on LSD, many rumors theorize that it was.
"Coltrane's LSD experiences confirmed spiritual insights he had already discovered rather than radically changing his perspective," wrote Eric Nisenson in Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest. "After one early acid trip he said, 'I perceived the interrelationship of all life forms,' an idea he had found repeated in many of the books on Eastern theology that he had been reading for years. For Coltrane, who for years had been trying to relate mystical systems such as numerology and astrology, theories of modern physics and mathematics, the teachings of the great spiritual leaders, and advanced musical theory, and trying somehow to pull these threads into something he could play on his horn. The LSD experience gave him visceral evidence that his quest was on the right track."
Jenny Lewis — Acid Tongue
Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis wrote the song "Acid Tongue" about her first and only experience on LSD, which happened when she was fourteen. She told Rolling Stone, "It culminated in a scene not unlike something from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas—the scene where Hunter S. Thompson has to lock the lawyer in the bathroom. I sort of assumed the Hunter S. Thompson character and my friend – she had taken far too much – decided to pull a butcher knife out of the kitchen drawer and chase me around the house… At the end of that experience, my mom was out of town on a trip of her own and she returned to find me about 5 lbs lighter and I had—I was so desperate to get back to normal I decided to drink an entire gallon of orange juice. I saw that it was in the fridge and decided that this would sort of flush the LSD out of my system, but I didn't realize that it did exactly the opposite."
The Beach Boys' mastermind Brian Wilson was famously inspired by psychedelics, which both expanded and endangered his fragile and brilliant mind. After his first acid trip in 1965, an experience that he said "expanded his mind," Wilson wrote "California Gurls." After the trip, however, Wilson began suffering from auditory hallucinations and symptoms of schizophrenia, and though he discontinued use of the drug, he continued to hear voices; doctors eventually diagnosed him with the disease. Wilson later lamented his tragic experiences with LSD, stating that he wished he'd never done the drug.
Though it led Wilson on a downward spiral, LSD inspired some of his band's greatest work—namely the iconic Pet Sounds, which launched half a century of "acid-pop copycats."
The Flaming Lips — Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
The Flaming Lips' "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" is widely believed to be the product of lead singer Wayne Coyne's LSD experimentation. This theory is corroborated by the fact that the album's cover features the number 25 (and LSD is also known as LSD-25). They also frequently reference LSD in their music, which includes an album called Finally, the Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid.
the flaming lips yoshimi battles the pink robots part 1www.youtube.com
Jimi Hendrix — Voodoo Child
While there is still some general contention on whether Jimi Hendrix hallucinated frequently, nobody really doubts that he did. According to rumors, the legendary musician even used to soak his bandanas in acid before going onstage so the drug would seep through his pores.
According to one source, Hendrix did more than just play music while tripping. He was also an expert at (of all things) the game of Risk.
"Jimi would play Risk on acid, and I never — and me personally — ever beat him at all," said Graham Nash in an interview. "He was unbelievable at it. He was a military man, you know, he's a paratrooper, and I don't know whether you know that about Jimi, but no one ever beat him at Risk."
The Doors — The End
Jim Morrison was a documented LSD user, and it eventually led him out of his mind. "The psychedelic Jim I knew just a year earlier, the one who was constantly coming up with colorful answers to universal questions, was being slowly tortured by something we didn't understand. But you don't question the universe before breakfast for years and not pay a price," said John Desmore in Riders on the Storm: My Life With the Doors.
Morrison used many different drugs during his lifetime, but apparently LSD had a special place and he avoided using it while working. "LSD was a sacred sacrament that was to be taken on the beach at Venice, under the warmth of the sun, with our father the sun and our mother the ocean close by, and you realised how divine you were," said Ray Manzarek. "It wasn't a drug for entertainment. You could smoke a joint and play your music, as most musicians did at the time. But as far as taking LSD, that had to be done in a natural setting."
Morrison himself—a visionary who was also a drug-addled narcissist—was kind of the prototypical 1960s LSD-addled rock star. Alive with visions about poetry and sex but lost in his own self-destruction, he perhaps touched on something of the sublime with his art, but in the end he went down a very human path towards misery and decay.
Like many of these artists' stories, Morrison's life reveals that perhaps instead of using hallucinogens and psychedelics as shortcuts to a spiritual experience, one should exercise extreme caution when exploring the outer reaches of the psyche. When it comes to actually engaging with potent hallucinogens, that might be best left to the shamans, or forgotten with the excesses of the 1960s.
On the other hand, we might do well to learn from the lessons that people have gleaned from hallucinogens over the years—lessons that reveal just how interconnected everything is, that shows us that music and memory and nature may just all stem from the same place.
Brooke Alexx's debut EP is a charming ode to herself.
Popdust previously featured the debut of Alexx's "Bored" music video, an aloof dismissal of an unimpressive partner. "Bored" is the second track off of Me, the Nashville singer's first official release. It's a far cry from Alexx's other songs, which include "Lemonade," a track about drinking in a new love, and the titular song "Me," a drumline-infused hymn to independence and a brazen statement for a relative newcomer in the music industry.
As a whole, the EP is a sonic and stylistic mishmash, as are the best pop debuts. Rolling trap drums and hiccuping synths accompany Alexx's voice. On "Distance," the project's closer, sensitive and measured piano anchors the singer's intimate vocals, along with the quietest of strings. It's a lovely coda to the EP and an exciting indicator of what's to come from Alexx, who manages to turn well-used pop formulas into her own unique sound. Me is a labor of love: a well-paced, fun debut that shows off Brooke Alexx's raw ability.
Nobody Cries Today Album Art - Matt Lovell
POPULAR NEWS
