Indice dei contenuti per February 2025 in Rolling Stone

‘SNL’! LADY GAGA! KEKE! RANDOM NOTES Indie-rock trio Horsegirl open up their world on their second album (p.9). Veep creator Armando Iannucci offers his takes on the state of democracy (p.11). Lady Gaga breaks down her LG7 teaser “Disease” (p.12). Honky-tonk music takes over Queens (p.13), while Bartees Strange details his horror-movie-inspired LP (p.14). We honor SNL’s best TV-ad parodies (p.15). Singer-songwriter Sofía Valdés breaks generational curses (p.16). A new UFO-tracking app takes off (p.18). Keke Palmer spills the tea (p.19). “It’s about who’s in power and what’s going to happen when they’re not.”ARMANDO IANNUCCI NATIONAL AFFAIRS Campaign insiders break down how Democrats lost the election (p.20). Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg hits the road one last time (p.24). Remembering President Jimmy Carter, from his Law Day speech (p.26) to…

In the four and a half years since the release of her last solo album, Chromatica, Lady Gaga has starred in two major motion pictures, House of Gucci and Joker: Folie à Deux; headlined stadiums all across the world on the Chromatica Ball Tour; made a second duets LP with the late Tony Bennett; and continued her Jazz & Piano residency at the Park MGM in Las Vegas. When it finally came time to start crafting songs for her long-awaited Chromatica follow-up, known only under the working title LG7 at press time, she wanted to launch it with a song that tapped into her darker side. That idea led Gaga to her latest hit single, the EDM-tinged “Disease,” featuring lyrics like “poison on the inside/I could be your antidote…

“I want to give my all to music, but I don’t want to lose myself.” “There’s no fucking way I want to die onstage in my last song,” Sofía Valdés says. It’s not that she has an irrational fear of performing or anything like that; Valdés’ career as a musician is more fated than most. She’s the great-granddaughter of two Latin music icons, Cuban musician Miguelito Valdés and Panamanian singer Silvia De Grasse, who died months apart in 1978. Though De Grasse’s death at 56 following an illness shocked fans, it was Miguelito Valdés’ demise after a mid-performance heart attack in Colombia that became legend. Celia Cruz even referenced the awful event in her memoir: “Like Miguelito Valdéz [sic], I want to bid farewell to life, while on stage,”…

On June 20, 1979, President Jimmy Carter invited reporters up to the White House roof for a ceremony to inaugurate the installation of 32 solar water-heating panels. America was in the midst of an energy freak-out, with long lines at gas stations and a not-crazy fear that the U.S. economy was going to be starved by its dependence on foreign oil. And Carter was paying the price: His approval rating was 28 percent, the lowest of his presidency. On that summer day, Carter acknowledged that “some few Americans have almost reached a state of panic.” But instead of pandering to Americans and promising more oil and gas, he challenged them, insisting that “America was not built on timidity or panic.” Carter announced that he was committed to spending more…

As soon as he answered his phone, Clayton Carmen knew he was getting bad news. It was March 2024, and by then, nearly a decade had passed since he had seen his father, Eric Carmen — the power-pop trailblazer and Raspberries frontman best remembered for the hits “Go All the Way,” “All by Myself,” and “Hungry Eyes.” Clayton’s stepmother, Amy, was on the other end of the line. The 27-year-old hadn’t seen her since his high school days, when Clayton knocked on the door of the house that Amy shared with his dad in an attempt to finally reconcile their differences. Carmen and Amy responded to the overture by closing the curtains, calling the police, and reporting a trespasser. “I remember going, ‘Oh, boy, if you’re calling me, I…

A Sort of Homecoming for ‘Mo’ Comedian Mo Amer’s semi-autobiographical series centered on a Palestinian family in America returns to a changed world, and reaches a powerful conclusion. When we last saw Mo, it was the summer of 2022, and the comedy series, created by Mohammed Amer and Ramy Youssef, had just completed an excellent first season by stranding Amer’s Mo Najjar — a Palestinian asylum seeker living in Houston — on the wrong side of the U.S.-Mexico border. There was periodic talk of Mo’s Muslim faith and of his family’s hope that they could one day return to their homeland, but the show was primarily a light, wry comedy about the logistics of life as an undocumented immigrant. More than two years later, Mo has returned to a…

In Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, United States Air Force Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper goes rogue and launches an unprovoked nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. He is asked by RAF Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake — a voice of reason in the madness — to recall the B-52 bombers that will end civilization. Ripper refuses. The general talks of how forces beyond our comprehension are slowly poisoning America with a toxic chemical known as … fluoride. “Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk … ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake! Children’s ice cream!” Over 60 years later, I’m watching Armando Iannucci’s reimagined Dr. Strangelove at the Nöel Coward Theatre in London. Directed and…

Located next to a wastewater treatment plant, the River Raisin Bridge in Monroe, Michigan, isn’t photo-op material. The mud is deep and the puddles are enormous on a raw December morning. Still, camera crews, local politicians, and union members gather as if then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is giving out gold bars. And in a way, he is. Buttigieg, clad in his standard crisp white shirt and blue tie, is here to announce $196 million in funding to rebuild the bridge before it deteriorates further and forces expensive and unsafe detours through the area. Buttigieg is on a farewell tour of sorts after the Democrats’ November defeat. He’s trying to connect the dots in his now home state of Michigan between the Biden administration’s expansive infrastructure program and job creation…

I’m looking for the black Range Rover with the glittery pink license-plate frame. ● It’s the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and the passenger pickup at LAX is packed and lawless. When the SUV pulls up, Addison Rae is behind the wheel in a striped pinafore with nothing underneath it but black tape in two giant X’s covering her nipples. ● It was Rae’s idea to pick me up from the airport, and her car is as chaotic and ultra-femme as her persona. There are Chanel lipsticks and full-size bottles of Ex Nihilo perfumes in the compartment beneath the touch screen. Her back seat has at least one tutu, a wig, an embellished bra she found on Etsy, and a copy of Vanity Fair’s October 1992 issue, featuring a naked Madonna…

There are two men bleeding in a chain-link cage in front of the next president of the United States. A week and a half ago, Donald Trump was elected for his second term, and now he is back home at the center of the world, underneath the lights at Madison Square Garden, watching the greatest gladiators of our time fight in a canvas-and-steel octagon. For the past four rounds, Charles Oliveira, a tall Brazilian with blinding white teeth and icy bleached hair to match, has been beating the absolute shit out of Michael Chandler, a short American wrestler who fights with a kind of manic joy that often works against him. Case in point: Early in the fifth and final round, Chandler finally connects with a right hook right…

If Saturday Night Live didn’t invent the TV-ad parody, it certainly perfected it. From Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner arguing over whether Shimmer is a floor wax or a dessert topping (spoiler: it’s both!) to Spirit Halloween promising to take over every abandoned building in America for six weeks a year, these spoofs have been a crucial part of the sketch show’s comic formula. Our 10 favorites: 1 HAPPY FUN BALL Season 16 1990-91 A chipper promo for a seemingly innocuous children’s product turns ominous as announcer Phil Hartman rattles off an increasingly dark and surreal list of disclaimers, like “Ingredients of Happy Fun Ball include an unknown glowing green substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space” and the instantly iconic line “Do not taunt Happy Fun…

FKA Twigs Goes Even Deeper Into the Groove The experimental U.K. dance-pop artist wanted to “transcend human form” with her new album. She nails it. What exactly is the feeling of losing yourself on the dance floor? So often, it’s tied up in jubilation, in sweat, in communion with people. And if you present the question to FKA Twigs, the British polymath who has made a career as a left-of-center experimentalist, there’s also the sensation of thorough physical abandonment — a complete, joyful extinction of self, surrendered in the dark. Throughout her unpredictable new album, Eusexua, Twigs disappears into the deepest corners of the club world. She mashes up techno beats, house production, and unforgiving industrial tones, creating a space that she’s described as “so euphoric” that one could…

HOW HARDCORE PUNK THRASHED ITS WAY INTO THE MAINSTREAM Bands like Turnstile and Knocked Loose are giving the scene wide exposure — gatekeepers be damned. Last November, when the Kentucky band Knocked Loose played Jimmy Kimmel Live!, it looked more like something out of a punk festival such as Riot Fest or Sound and Fury than late-night TV. Frontman Bryan Garris let out a mighty pig squeal as guest vocalist Poppy thrashed and screamed across the stage, dressed like an even more macabre girl from The Ring. Kitted out in black clothing, Knocked Loose unleashed paint-peeling metalcore as a mosh pit surged like an ocean during a storm. It was a rager of a performance that reportedly left some viewers’ children in tears — and old-school hardcore bros scratching…