Luke Combs: The Accidental Diplomat in a Cowboy Hat By Our Correspondent Who Once Spent 36 Hours in Nashville and Still Isn’t Sure Why Somewhere between the fall of Kabul and the latest cryptocurrency implosion, a 34-year-old North Carolinian with the silhouette of a friendly bison has become the most quietly influential American abroad who…
Tim Booth and the Accidental Soft Power of a Mancunian Shaman By Our Correspondent, Still Recovering from Glastonbury Mud, Somewhere Over the Atlantic It is a truth universally acknowledged that when the world tilts toward apocalypse, people reach for either canned goods or anthems. In 2024, while governments squabble over submarine cables and semiconductor embargoes,…
Billy Idol: The Last British Export That Survived Globalization, Brexit, and TikTok By the time most pop careers have been recycled into supermarket soundtracks and ironic T-shirt slogans, Billy Idol – perpetual sneer, leather that looks older than several EU member states, and a sneeze-and-you-miss-it baritone – is still prowling stages from Santiago to Singapore….
Jordan Davis and the Accidental Anthem That Went Everywhere By our Bureau Chief for Songs That Outrun Their Authors It started in Warner/Chappell’s London office, ping-ponged through Stockholm’s songwriting camps, and ended up rattling TikTok from Jakarta to Johannesburg: Jordan Davis’s “Next Thing You Know” has become the rare Nashville export that travels with a…
Hozier, Global Prophet of the Post-Apocalypse Blues By “Foreign Desk” Dave, filing from everywhere Wi-Fi still works So the world is on fire—literally, if you live in Greece, California, or the bit of Canada that forgot snow was a thing—and into this planetary barbecue strides a soft-spoken Irishman with a guitar and the voice of…
Baxter Dury: The World’s Most Reluctant Global Icon Sings From the Gutter Up by “International” Marvin, still jet-lagged in Terminal 3 Last Tuesday, while the planet’s stock markets performed their usual interpretive dance of cardiac arrest, a man who looks like he’s been personally wronged by daylight released a new record in a basement somewhere…
Garth Brooks and the Global Soft-Power Hat Trick By the Foreign Correspondent Who Once Saw a Kyrgyz Wedding DJ Spin “Friends in Low Places” at 3 a.m., Straight-Faced In the grand, teetering circus of American cultural imperialism, Garth Brooks is the unassuming juggler who managed to turn a ten-gallon Stetson into planetary headgear. From the…
Laufey: The 24-Year-Old Jazz Bard Who Convinced TikTok That Heartbreak Is a Luxury Good By Dave’s International Desk Somewhere between the collapse of the global supply chain and the collapse of your last talking stage, an Icelandic-Chinese cellist named Laufey (pronounced “LIE-vay,” because of course it is) has quietly become the sonic comfort blanket for…
System of a Down: Four Diaspora Kids Who Weaponized Genocide into a Global Mosh-Pit By L. Vartanian, International Correspondent, somewhere between Yerevan and the Yerevan-shaped hole in Los Angeles In the grand bazaar of geopolitical noise, few stalls peddle a product as combustible as System of a Down. To the casual ear they’re a nü-metal…
