At last: proof that the familiar impulse you feel upon hearing Rage Against the Machine—to strip naked, wrap yourself in an American flag, shatter the nearest window, roll around until the shards cover your tender flesh, wrap your body around a stranger, set yourselves a flame, then hurtle off a trampoline like a star-spangled porcupine bomb toward the nearest instrument of oppression—is an innate response, like sucking down air or recoiling when your hand touches a flame.

Today is the 100th birthday of guitar god Les Paul, whose innovations helped to make Gibson one of the world’s most famous guitar makers. Speaking of that—how is Gibson doing, these days?

Did you go to a fratty mid-Atlantic college in the late ’90s, have a Bob Marley blacklight poster, and squee to MTV Party to Go Platinum Remix while drinking Red Stripe at parties? Congratulations, Dawson! You know as much about rap as Marco Rubio, Fox News rap correspondent.

On October 30, 2002, David Letterman gave his whole show over to one guest: Warren Zevon, who had just been diagnosed with a fatal and untreatable form of lung cancer.

Legendary blues singer and guitarist B.B. King died late Thursday in his Las Vegas home. He was 89.

Two hundred fifty riffs are shredding across America. Buh-chuncka buh-chuncka bah, bah, bah! On beery back streets and dilapidated staircases you might meet them, comparing tattoos and trading tales about the old days. Bome, deh bi da bome! Where do the lost riffs roam? Kirk Hammett wants to know.

Why would you spend your money on a vinyl copy of U2’s Songs of Innocence? Regardless of your feelings on what I’m sure is a perfectly fine late-career U2 album, didn’t basically everyone get that record for free last year? The lunkheaded spendthrifts who stood in line to shell out for a “deluxe exclusive” version of Songs on Record Store Day and found another band’s music inside only got what was coming to them.

Spring sprang about a month ago, but it finally feels like it. My iPhone tells me that it’s going to be 75 and sunny tomorrow in New York. That’s crazy! People are going to be walking around butt-ass naked in response, and won’t that be fun to see? There’s nothing like a solid spring day to undo four bullshit months of shitty winter misery.

Two weeks ago, a happy-go-lucky troupe of ragtag recording artists (collective net worth: over $2,000,000,000) stood shoulder to shoulder on a stage and asked for your money. In return they would give you "TIDAL," a streaming music website and app that costs too much. I gave it a try. You should not.

Only a few minutes ago, the entire music industry stood on a stage in a collective display of how rich and out of touch they are. They think you are willing to pay up to double the price of other streaming music services to pay for their streaming music service, because they are crazy.

In the lyric pamphlet to Black Messiah, D'Angelo's third album after 14 years away from the spotlight, the soul-savant explains his reasoning behind its title and sudden release: "Some will jump to the conclusion that I am calling myself a Black Messiah," he begins. "For me the title is about all of us...It's about people rising up in Ferguson and in Egypt and in Occupy Wall Street and in every place where a community has had enough and decides to make change happen. It's not about celebrating one charismatic leader but celebrating thousands of them."

Fans drinking vodka sodas instead of Monster tallboys. Matching suits and mirror-encrusted guitars. A funky man who addresses adult humans as "children," like he thinks he's Prince or something. Vocoders, syncopation, silly glasses. This is the deeply strange universe presented in Nickelback's new video, and fans are not happy about it.

Should you lift weights to heavy metal? Should you cardio dance to hip hop tracks? Should you run the streets listening to podcasts? NO.

Near the end of 2013, country music critic Grady Smith came to the depressing realization that the most popular songs in the genre that year were all basically the same song.

If you are the sort of person who believes that it would be nice if musical artists would not always become paid shills for various brands—and you're probably not, judging by the world we live in today—you will not want to hear this.

It's not quite Christmas without these 25 songs. Here, a mostly objective ranking of the best holiday tracks ever recorded. Merry Christmas!

What were the best movies of 2014? What 2014 TV shows should you catch up on? What were 2014's biggest songs? And why trust just one outlet for answers when you can try all of them?

At about 20 seconds into the new trailer for Backstreet Boys: Show Em What You're Made Of a disembodied voice (Brian?) asks: "What do you do when you're a full-grown man in a boy band?" This is exactly the kind of question a Backstreet Boys documentary should be asking.

Below is a roundup of exactly what the headline of this post states from various members of the Gawker editorial staff.

If the data visualization below is to believed, pop music of the 2010s is just as vulgar and nihilistic as your stodgy parents say it is: the decade's most distinctive musical words are evidently "we," "yeah," "fuck," "hell," and "die."