Judee Sill's admirers hear a legend gone before her prime

Daniel Johnston's home recordings have inspired countless rock legends

The singer-songwriter self-released cassettes in the early '80s that were not fit for the radio—their sound quality was poor, and the songs were often little more than an organ and Johnston's high-pitched voice, singing about things like Casper the Friendly Ghost. The tapes eventually found their way to alternative tastemakers, who lauded the songs' brilliance and inspired a cult following that has admired Johnston's music for decades.

Ella Fitzgerald's life in photos

Iconic jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald is known as the "First Lady of Song" for her timeless performances and major contributions to jazz. Decades later, her songs have more than 100 million plays on Spotify. She collaborated with celebrated photographer Yale Joel, who left behind iconic picture galleries and films of the singer.

The Shaggs weren't good musicians, but they still made a classic

In 1969, the three sisters recorded "Philosophy of the World"; only 100 copies were publicly distributed. The record became a cult classic thanks to its strange backstory (their father forced them into playing music) and the band's amateurism. Critic Lester Bangs wrote, "They can't play a lick! But mainly they got the right attitude, which is all rock'n'roll's ever been about from day one."

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Listen to an interview with Martha Graham from 1974

This interview, from the "Bernard Gabriel Views the Music Scene" program, features a candid conversation in which Graham discusses how her career did not take off until her 30s and how she learned to ignore criticism.

The story of Billie Holiday's final performance

In her final days, Holiday was still performing—often at clubs outside of New York—though she was struggling with cirrhosis, an effect of her alcoholism. This excerpt from Paul Anderson's "Bitter Crop: the Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Final Year" details her final show in Lowell, Massachusetts, offering a tragic portrait of the singer running out of steam.

Liza Minnelli often disagrees with melancholic portrayals of her mother

When the Oscar-winning film "Judy" came out in 2019, Minnelli made a point to distance herself from the film and state that she had no plans to watch it. The actress has stated she dislikes how the media tends to pity her mother. Instead, she makes a point of talking about the happy memories and support that Garland gave her.

Sylvia Robinson is considered ‘the Godmother of Hip-Hop’

While hip-hop was soundtracking countless parties in the early ‘70s, Robinson saw the music’s potential. She began writing, producing, and releasing some of the music’s earliest singles through her Sugar Hill Records label and helped build a place in the music industry for the young music. Robinson’s groundbreaking work led to a 2022 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Parton recorded two albums with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris

The musicians were fans of one another and performed together on Parton’s variety show “Dolly” in 1976. Eleven years later, they released an album together, fittingly called “Trio.” A follow-up, “Trio II,” arrived in 1999.

In 'Life of a Showgirl,' Taylor Swift nods to Pre-Raphaelite muse Elizabeth Siddal

Born in 1829, Siddal was an artist and poet who would become immortalized when she modeled for John Everett Millais' 1852 painting 'Ophelia,' depicting the suicidal lover from Shakespeare's 'Hamlet.' For years, Swift has alluded to Siddal as an exemplar of the sidelined female artist.

How Dickinson's reputation changed in the 20th century

In 1955, Thomas Johnson edited the first complete edition of Dickinson's poetry, using the original handwritten manuscripts as his guide. Unlike previous editors, Johnson allowed Dickinson's unique choices to remain. The collection established her as a singular, innovative voice, a reputation that only continued growing through the decades.

Poet Robert Lowell encouraged O'Connor to turn away from commercial appeal

When O’Connor secured a publisher for “Wise Blood,” her publisher envisioned it as a broad, commercial comedy, something Lowell—the accomplished poet whom she met after graduate school at Yaddo, an artist colony in upstate New York—suggested she avoid, encouraging her to lean into her more esoteric and darker interests. This interview with O’Connor biographer Brad Gooch elaborates on that advice.

Joan Didion's 1967 'Slouching Towards Bethlehem' laid the hippie counterculture bare

Didion wrote a detailed account of living alongside hippies in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury area in the 1960s. Beyond their style and politics, Didion uncovered chaos, with one particularly shocking interview of a 5-year-old on LSD. Her stories challenged the movement's message of freedom and utopia in California.

Before the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed was a workaday songwriter

His job at Pickwick Records, a label that churned out budget records for department stores, was to crank out generic pop fare. One of those songs was 1964’s “The Ostrich,” a dance song in the style of Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” and Little Eva’s “The Loco-Motion.”

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

Carole King regrets writing a song excusing domestic violence

While working at the Brill Building, Carole King became one of the architects of the classic girl group sound, penning hits like the Shirelles’ “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” and the Chiffons’ “One Fine Day.” One song she regrets writing, though, is the Crystals’ “He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss),” a song she now believes normalizes domestic violence.

Augusta Savage's masterpiece was destroyed after a limited exhibition

"Life Every Voice and Sing," sometimes called "The Harp," debuted at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Based on the James Weldon Johnson poem (and eventual unofficial Black national anthem) of the same name, the massive, 16-foot-tall sculpture depicted a kneeling Black man holding a bar of music in front of 12 chorus singers. After the fair ended in 1940, Savage was unable to pay to preserve it, so it was destroyed.

The long history of Kurt Cobain suicide conspiracy theories

Cobain died by suicide in 1994, but it wasn't long before fans began espousing conspiracy theories alleging that the government or his wife and lead singer of Hole, Courtney Love, had him killed. Seattle police revisited the case in 2014, but determined that it was indeed a suicide.

Prince wrote numerous hits for other artists

Prince is renowned as a performer, but he's also one of the great American songwriters, having penned career-defining songs for acts like Sinead O'Connor ("Nothing Compares 2 U"), the Bangles ("Manic Monday"), and many others.

The criticism of 'selling out' has waned in the 21st century

Although patronage was a regular part of artists’ income throughout the 19th century, the insult “sell out” gained prominence in the 1950s. The jazz and folk communities, in particular, levied the term at artists they believed had sacrificed their integrity for financial gain.

Bob Dylan asked Patti Smith to perform in his place at the Nobel Prize ceremony

Dylan didn't attend the ceremony, citing "other commitments," and asked Patti Smith, the legendary poet and punk pioneer, to perform in his place. Smith sang "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," accompanied by an orchestra, though she had to request to restart one verse after stumbling over Dylan's dense lyrics.

Child prodigy writer Barbara Newhall Follett mysteriously disappeared in 1939

She published her first book at age 12 to much critical acclaim. She then did the same two years later. But by 25 she was married and struggling to publish another manuscript. One day, she left her apartment and never returned. The case was never solved.

'I've come to the conclusion that life is for the taking and just too short to dwell on the negative.'

- Cranberries lead singer Dolores O'Riordan (1971-2018)

'Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.'

- Legendary author Jane Austen (1775 -1817)

Lisa Loeb was the first unsigned artist to top the Billboard chart

The singer-songwriter's single "Stay (I Missed You)" was included in the film "Reality Bites" and included on its soundtrack. Due in part to the success of the film, the song quickly raced up the Billboard Hot 100.

The Washington Post's Janet Cooke returned her Pulitzer

When Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke published her profile of a 8-year-old heroin addict named Jimmy in 1980, it created an instant uproar. Social workers, police officers, and even the mayor of Washington, DC all jumped into action to try to get the child help, but no one could find him. Within hours of Cooke receiving a Pulitzer for the piece, everything began to unravel as it was revealed that she had fabricated not just Jimmy's story, but her own as well. She eventually returned the award.

Judith Resnik was the second American woman to fly in space

A PhD in electrical engineering, Judith "Judy" Resnik flew aboard Space Shuttle Discovery in 1984, becoming the second American woman in space, and later served as a mission specialist on Challenger's STS-51L mission.

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

The tragic Pulitzer Prize-winning image 'The Vulture and the Little Girl' (1993) generated controversy, raised concerns about ethics in photography, and eventually led to the photographer's death.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

Many legends about George Washington, including his supposed wooden teeth and the story of cutting down the cherry tree, lack evidence.

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

See a ranking of the best (and worst) Federal Reserve Chairs since 1914 out of the 16 men and women who have held the office since.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

The Great Salt Lake's distinct dual coloration results from high-salinity organisms that only live in the northern portion and produce a purple protein.

Poison ivy is in the same family as mangoes, cashews, and pistachios—and they all produce oily urushiol in their raw, unprocessed state—but they are typically prepared in ways to avoid causing human discomfort.