Andrew Barker-Senior Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Andrew Barker Senior Features WriterThink what you will about “Music to Be Murdered By – Side B,” but you can’t say Eminem’s not having fun.This has hardly been a given on many of Marshall Mathers’ recent releases.

Andrew Barker Senior Features WriterTaylor Swift’s music has always been the most interesting thing about Taylor Swift, and she’s rarely more interesting than when she’s talking about her music.

Andrew Barker Senior Features WriterFor a musical genre whose rapid rise and notorious fall has made it an easy point of comparison for everything from the dot-com bubble to the decline of Beanie Babies, disco music never really went away.

Andrew Barker Senior Features WriterRamsey Naito started her career at Nickelodeon back in the 1990s, and went on from there to do work as a film producer and exec at a where’s-where of major animation powerhouses including Blue Sky, Paramount Animation and Cartoon Network. Two years ago, she proved one can always go home again, and returned to the Nick Animation fold in a development role, only to ascend to president of Nickelodeon Animation just over a month ago.

Andrew Barker Senior Features WriterIf ever there was a moment when the comedy industry needed a helping hand, it’s been this year, when the Covid-mandated closures of comedy clubs, improv troupes and live events cut off the most vital lifeline from countless working comedians. Fortunately, there was one organization that was uniquely positioned to help.The nonprofit Comedy Gives Back started off simply.

Andrew Barker Senior Features WriterThe Grammy for producer of the year (non-classical) is usually not presented on television, nor is it likely to show up in any headlines on nominations morning — although one questioning gender disparity might be called for — but of all the dozens of Grammy awards outside the “big four” general field, the category may be the most representative of the year in music.

Andrew Barker Senior Features WriterJust judging by the slate, last year’s New York Film Festival offered a testament to the nearly six-decade-old fest’s place in the fall awards circuit firmament, and in New York filmgoing culture.

Andrew Barker Senior Features WriterFor those who were charmed by writer-director Brett Haley’s incisive microbudget debut “The New Year,” or his Sam Elliott-starring Hollywood fable “The Hero,” or his crowdpleasing father-daughter dramedy “Hearts Beat Loud,” it might initially come as a surprise to see his name attached to two glossy, unabashedly sentimental Netflix teen dramas within the same year: February’s “All the Bright Places,” and this week’s “All Together Now.” Unexpected as it may be

Andrew Barker Senior Features WriterJust in case it wasn’t obvious before, the recent demonstrations over the death of George Floyd have done much to lay bare just how spotty and incomplete much of America’s understanding of its own racial history has often been.

Andrew Barker Senior Features WriterArguably the most forward-thinking jazz artist of his generation, Los Angeles saxophonist and composer Kamasi Washington has never hesitated to step outside his comfort zone. He’s logged studio time with Kendrick Lamar and St.

Andrew Barker Senior Features WriterThe Wu-Tang Clan’s first album, “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers),” was released in late 1993, and it sold respectably, though its cultural impact far outpaced its initial commercial fortunes.

Andrew Barker Senior Features WriterThe Seattle grunge scene of the 1980s and early ’90s suffered no shortage of press coverage in its heyday, and has seen no shortage of books attempting to grapple with its legacy.

Andrew Barker Senior Features WriterFor a brief period in the early 1990s, Shannon Hoon seemed to be just about everywhere. As frontman for Blind Melon, he managed to blaze through nearly all of the standard rock and roll fantasy milestones in rapid succession – a Rolling Stone cover, a hit single, a Platinum album, stadium gigs opening for the Rolling Stones, MTV News ubiquity – only to die of a drug overdose at the age of 28, just a few years after his career began.

Offering tough, prescient words of truth to a nation in crisis, Run the Jewels deliver their greatest album yet.

Between a press conference with Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and the newly previewed RTJ track "“A Few Words for the Firing Squad (Radiation),” Killer Mike has turned out to be one of this moment's most stirring spokespeople.

By Andrew Barker

The singer-songwriter's seventh album continues his reign as one Americana's master craftsmen.

Marc Collin's amiable time capsule portrait of a 1970s electronic musician never quite finds the beat.

By Andrew Barker

By Andrew Barker

By Andrew Barker

By Andrew Barker