The Too-Muchness of Bono
Bono was 14 when his grandfather died. His family was at the cemetery burying him when his mother, Iris, fainted. His father, Bob, and older brother, Norman, took her to...
The David S. Pumpkins Effect
Last night, Saturday Night Live returned to one of its singular successes—the jolly, always-grinning Halloween character David S. Pumpkins (played by Tom Hanks) from a breakout sketch in 2016—and gave...
When a Father Is Just Out of Reach
When the writer-director Charlotte Wells began conceiving of Aftersun, her exquisite debut feature, she didn’t plan to unravel a parent-child dynamic. She simply wanted to observe how any conventional relationship...
Rihanna Is Back in the Pop Game—On Her Own Terms
The loud hype that preceded Rihanna’s rather quiet new song offers a lesson in the power of expectations—especially expectations defied. At age 16, in 2005, the Barbados native Robyn Rihanna...
Bob Dylan Reveals Himself Through 66 Songs
As an author of all kinds of work—songs, poetry, a memoir, radio-show commentary, the occasional film script or Nobel lecture—Bob Dylan has been engaged for more than 60 years in...
Don’t Blame a Man for Midnights
It’s her; she’s the problem, Taylor Swift confesses on her new hit “Anti-Hero.” Yet listeners who have issues with her tenth original studio album, Midnights, are blaming someone else: Jack...