Note: NPR's First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify and Apple Music playlists at the bottom of the page. The album title itself is ...

Do you associate minor chords with sad music and major chords with happy music? If you do, you probably grew up surrounded by music that follows the basic rules of Western music theory. But not ...

Terence Blanchard's “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” was staged by the Metropolitan Opera in New York in September 2021, becoming the first-ever opera by a Black composer to be produced by the company. In ...

Of the dozens of pop hits Ray Charles had during his remarkable career, his biggest was a soulful take on Don Gibson’s country classic “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” which logged five weeks at Number One.

At last available digitally, these quietly revolutionary albums still break one of music’s deepest-held genre orthodoxies. Save this story Save this story More than a half-century later, the premise ...