SXSW 2024 kicked off its first full day of music on March 12 with a smattering of must-see shows around town, including Rolling Stone’s Future of Music showcase — and kept the great tunes coming all through the five days that followed. Check out our best action-packed live shots and behind-the-scenes snaps from down in Austin.
Cotton two-piece by Marni, SSENSE.com / Shirt from personal collection
Many years ago, while studying theatrical performance at Cégep de Saint-Hyacinthe, Pierre Lapointe was given a peculiar exercise by his teacher. The students were asked to walk from one end of the classroom to the other while observing their peers. Based solely on their gait, posture, and gaze, they had to assign each other certain qualities, a character, or even a profession.
Lapointe remembers being told that there was something princely about him. That was not exactly the term that this young, queer student, freshly emancipated from the Outaouais region and marked by a childhood tinged with near-chronic sadness, would have instinctively chosen for himself. Though he had been unaware of his own regal qualities, he has spent more than 20 years trying to shed this image, one he admits he may have subtly cultivated in his early days.
That, however, is proving to be a difficult task. With Dix chansons démodées pour ceux qui ont le cœur abîmé, his fifteenth full-length album, he once again asserts his boldness and classicism, solidifying his place as the Grand-duke of sensitive souls.
In 2004, Pierre Lapointe arrived ‘accidentally’, as he claims, onto the Quebec cultural scene with a grandiose and theatrical French Chanson, which starkly contrasted with the musical offerings of the time. Wedged between Crazy Frog, Gwen Stefani, and Simple Plan, a dandy who seemed to have been plucked from another century sang about his desire to lick every window of the columbarium, dreaming of sleeping there in peace, on a composition that sounded as if it had been borrowed from Jacques Brel himself.
Beneath Pierre Lapointe’s baroque elegance lies a mind in constant motion. From the moment his self-titled debut album found success, he never relented, continuously releasing albums, performing concerts, winning awards, and making television appearances.
But this frenzy came at a cost. Before the pandemic, the artist was pushing himself at a relentless pace.
"When everything stopped, I was heading straight into a wall. I was exhausted, I think I was on the verge of burnout. So, in a way, it was a blessing," he admits.
"My father used to ask me, whenever I talked about my schedule and how I felt, ‘But are you sleeping?’ And I’d answer, ‘Not much.’ That’s a sign that stress has taken over. He would tell me he was worried. When the pandemic hit, he was the first to say, ‘I’m glad you’re canceling everything and taking a break.’"
The timing of this break was perfect. When his longtime manager retired, Lapointe built a new team, leading to a shift in his approach, where he finally learned to do less. His new manager, Laurent Saulnier, the powerhouse behind the success of the Montreal Jazz Festival and Francofolies, gave him flak for being too prolific.
Coat (polyester and wool), shirt (silk), Dries Van Noten, SSENSE.com / Flower (silk), M&S Schmalberg
"He told me, ‘Your albums may be great, but you're saturating your own market. You release an album, and people don’t even realize it’s new. The messages are all getting mixed up.’"
For someone whose music is just one outlet for his creativity, this was a chance to return to other passions. After working on theater productions and film scores, Lapointe collaborated with Swiss visual artist Nicolas Party on L’Heure Mauve, an exhibition for which he created a soundtrack.
He also returned to drawing, having initially studied visual arts in Cégep, and designed various pieces of furniture, including a series of tables, carpets, and a Memphis-style lamp, "because the creator in me never stops." This forced break, he believes, allowed him to reconsider his approach to music and performance. He slowed down, rethought his creative process, and accepted that sometimes, less is more. Exploring other forms of art such as design, illustration, and scenography was not a diversion from music, but a complement that helps build his artistic universe. This multidisciplinary approach keeps his inspiration fresh without exhausting him. Having always envisioned his albums as total works of art, where visuals and music intertwine, Lapointe is now pushing that concept even further.
True to his love of theatricality, Lapointe has often structured his concerts as live tableaux. But the artist who once hid behind his piano now embraces a bolder, more embodied stage presence. For his upcoming show, he will stand front of stage almost the entire time, flanked by two pianists, Amélie Fortin and Marie-Christine Poirier, fully assuming his role as the central figure. This shift in stage presence stems from a broader reflection on his relationship with the audience, which has evolved over the years.
Early on, he explained that the piano acted as a shield between him and the audience, which adds another layer to ‘Toutes tes idoles’ when he sings: "You don’t like seeing people cry / It awakens the pain beneath / Of the child who grew up too fast and learned to arm himself to the teeth."
"Now, I want to be up front. I have no problem with it anymore, but back then, it was different. You have to understand that my teenage years were complicated," he confides. "I was deeply sad and depressed. I didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin, like so many teenagers. Being gay surely played a role in that. I found the world very ugly. I needed aesthetics, I needed beauty."
Blouson (denim and hand embroidered patches), WJ Crosson / Shit (polyester), Homme plissé Issey Miyake, Holt Renfrew/Pants from personal collection/ Shoes(canvas), Marni
"Then the piano arrived. It lifted me up. It healed me. I would play notes, sometimes the same note for hours. And I would say, ‘I’m healing myself.’ The resonance calmed me. Looking back, it was a form of music therapy. I was healing through sound."
That healing process is especially evident on this album, particularly in the poignant “Comme les pigeons d’argile”, a tribute to his mother, written after her Alzheimer’s diagnosis. In “Madame Bonsoir”, he converses with the Grim Reaper, arriving, as always, at the worst possible time.
This album, however, was not originally intended for him. Lapointe explains that the songs in Dix chansons démodées pour ceux qui ont le cœur abîmé started as an exercise—an attempt to create something in the spirit of the classic French chanson he grew up with, but infused with his taste for the radical and refined. Initially, the plan was to offer these songs to other singers.
"There has never been an album where I went only halfway in a direction. When I finished writing these songs, which I had not written for myself, and then pieced them together, I realized I had to make an album out of them," he explains. "I told myself I had to go full speed ahead. The arrangements, my pronunciation—sometimes I pronounce the ‘E’ sounds like they did in the ’50s and ’60s Chanson réaliste [genre]. In the way I control my breath, in the fervor of my delivery, I went all in."
"Like Monique Leyrac, like Diane Dufresne, like Pauline Julien—artists who studied theatre, who ventured into Rive Gauche chanson [genre]. Singers who projected their voices like actresses, who could sing Kurt Weill as easily as they could sing Gilles Vigneault, but always with authority."
The Rive Gauche genre he evokes refers to the cultural movement that emerged in Paris’ left bank, in the 50s and 60s. In the heart of the Latin Quarter, intellectuals, artists and other bohemians would gather in smoky cabarets, where one could happen upon Sartre, Miles Davis, Juliette Gréco or Gainsbourg. Poetic, clamoring, theatrical; those are the songs that would come to redefine French music for the next half-century, and with which Lapointe grew up.
The result? Dix chansons démodées pour ceux qui ont le cœur abîmé has already become one of the most critically acclaimed albums of early 2025. At the time of publishing, it holds the top spot on the ADISQ sales charts.
January has been filled with constant back-and-forth travel between Québec, where Lapointe is preparing for his spring tour while also serving as the new coach on the TV series Star Académie, and France, where he has been spending several months a year.
He enjoys considerable success across the Atlantic, but more importantly, he holds the coveted status of an "Artiste"—with all the French reverence that title entails. Almost, as he jokingly puts it, as if he was more French than the French themselves.
Recently, after appearing on the hugely popular French television show Taratata, he was approached by the manager of a major French star, someone who had worked with all the greats of francophone music. "He told me that for years he had been trying to convince artists to make albums like they did in the era of Jacques Canetti, the 1960s music producer who discovered Félix Leclerc, among others. But every time, people backed out halfway, afraid to commit. He told me, ‘When I listened to your album, I felt like I was hearing a great record from that era, without compromise, yet completely contemporary.’"
Paradoxically, he also sees himself as the most Québecois of all Québec artists who have successfully exported themselves to France, when compared to figures like Garou, Isabelle Boulay, or Cœur de Pirate. "When I talk to people, they think I have a thick accent. To them, I’m unmistakably Québecois, with a very Québecois approach," says Lapointe. "(Those artists) are stars. Me, I’m a well-known singer in the Chanson world, and in a somewhat intellectual, outsider circle. The music industry, the contemporary art scene, the theatre world…"
It is true that his list of friends and collaborators is impressive. The music video for “Toutes tes idoles”, the first track on the new album, was filmed in the studio of ceramist Johan Creten. Lapointe was also invited to sing at the birthday celebration of French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel. On his Instagram feed, he is seen posing alongside the legendary Amanda Lear, Salvador Dalí’s muse.
"I have a strange status over there, one I don’t quite understand. I was named a Commander of Arts and Letters. Not a Knight—straight to Commander. I haven’t even received a medal in Québec or Canada yet!" he says, laughing. "I’m the only Canadian in history to have been immortalized by Pierre et Gilles, which is pretty funny. At the exhibition, there was Marilyn Manson and Madonna next to us. Nina Hagen was there too. And then there was Pierre Lapointe. Not Bryan Adams or Céline Dion."
There is a certain pride in his voice when he speaks about these experiences, but it is tempered by his naturally reserved nature. It is clear that Pierre Lapointe, despite his sharp pen and well-honed aesthetic sense, does not embody the role of an aloof, princely dandy. In fact, he struggles to understand how this perception took hold in the first place.
"When my success began, it completely overtook me, and my image was so strong that I could be walking down the street in sweatpants, and people would still call me ‘Sire’ and speak to me in poetic prose," he recalls. "I had only ever been to two or three poetry nights, and every time I just wanted to vomit on everyone and storm out yelling ‘You’re all so boring!’ And yet, here I was, suddenly considered a poet, with journalists asking me about Baudelaire and books I had never even read."
The dilemma in all of this is that it makes it even harder to pin down exactly who—or what—Pierre Lapointe really is. To strip him of the title of "poet" would be to overlook the raw and solemn beauty of a song like Le secret, which hides behind its bossa nova rhythms, and to forget the millions of tears shed around the world while listening to his music. And though he rejects the label of "dandy," he has nonetheless always been impeccably dressed at every one of our encounters, regardless of fatigue or illness.
The Pierre Lapointe we imagined on our television screens 20 years ago may not have been the one we thought he was. Or perhaps, he simply wasn’t that person yet.
Because despite all the sadness of his adolescence, and even though nothing was truly calculated, he feels that "there is a real symbiosis between who I knew I was and what I have done."
Jacket and pants (virgin wool), shirt (acrylic coated cotton), Moschino / Shoes from Pierre Lapointe's personal collection
It was only last year, while promoting the 20th anniversary of his debut album, that he fully reconnected with the mindset he had back then. "It was as if I already knew everything that was coming," he recalls. "I knew I would work with individual artists, that I would be involved in theatre, that I would collaborate with directors, designers, architects. I knew I would travel, that I would make tons of albums, that I would go in all directions. But I hadn’t done any of it yet. When I talked to people, there was a gap between what I projected, what I said, and what I had actually done. Now, with hindsight, I understand."
In the end, perhaps Pierre Lapointe is not so much trying to escape his persona as he is trying to break free from a static image of himself—one defined by our perceptions rather than by the full scope of his talent or his desire to create something beautiful and meaningful.
By embracing, with pride, the role of the Rive Gauche crooner, he demonstrates that true audacity is not found in the medium itself, but in the sincerity of a fully and fearlessly realized artistic gesture.
Queens of the Stone Age have canceled the remainder of their 2024 tour dates — including a string of North American shows and festival gigs scheduled for the fall — as Josh Homme continues his recovery from an unspecified surgery he underwent in July.
“QOTSA regret to announce the cancellation and/or postponement of all remaining 2024 shows. Josh has been given no choice but to prioritize his health and to receive essential medical care through the remainder of the year,” the band wrote on social media.
The group was scheduled to perform eight North American shows this autumn, starting with a two-night stand at Boston’s MGM Music Hall on September 27 and 28. All five of the band’s standalone shows — including concerts in Boston, Cincinnati, Chicago and Madison, Wisconsin — will all be pushed to to-be-announced dates in 2025, while QOTSA had to cancel their festival appearances at Bridgeport’s Soundside, Memphis’ Mempho, and Mexico City’s Corona Capital.
In July, Queens of the Stone Age abruptly canceled their European tour after Homme had to return stateside “immediately for emergency surgery,” the band said in a statement. “Due to continued medical care, it is under doctors’ orders that Josh Homme remain in their care in the United States.”
At that time, QOTSA’s North American shows remained on the schedule before they were ultimately nixed on Friday. “Josh and the QOTSA family are so thankful for your support and the time we were able to spend together over the last year. Hope to see you all again in 2025,” the band added Friday.
The group were touring in support of their latest album, In Times New Roman …, which came out in 2023, the same year that Homme revealed that he’d previously undergone surgery to remove cancer.
After Sabrina Carpenter’s summer takeover with “Espresso” and “Please Please Please,” the anticipation for Short n’ Sweet was at an all-time high. On her sixth album, the pop singer keeps the surprises coming as she delivers a masterclass in clever songwriting and hops between R&B and folk-pop with ease. Carpenter writes about the frustration of modern-day romance, all the while cementing herself as a pop classic. Here’s everything we gathered from the new project.
Carpenter gave us a glimpse of her humor on singles “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” — she’s working late because she’s a singer; ceiling fans are a pretty great invention! But no one could have guessed how downright hilarious she is on Short n’ Sweet, delivering sugary quips like “The Lord forgot my gay awakenin’” (“Slim Pickins”) and “How’s the weather in your mother’s basement?” (“Needless to Say”). She’s also adorably nerdy, fretting about grammar (“This boy doesn’t even know/The difference between ‘there,’ ‘their’ and ‘they are!’”) and getting Shakespearian (“Where art thou? Why not uponeth me?”). On “Juno,” she even takes a subject as serious as pregnancy and twists it into a charming pop culture reference for the ages: “If you love me right, then who knows?/I might let you make me Juno.” It’s official: Do not underestimate Ms. Carpenter’s pen. — A.M.
On her sixth album, Carpenter somehow finds herself in the middle of yet another love triangle. She’s no stranger to this, having penned “Skin” and “Obsessed” in response to the teen saga that Olivia Rodrigo sang about on Sour. But on Short ‘n Sweet, the songs are more explicit, the stars are bigger, and the stakes are even higher. The flighty dude who “found God at [his] ex’s house” on “Sharpest Tool” is presumably Shawn Mendes, and the ex to who Carpenter directs the tongue-in-cheek “Taste” at appears to be Camila Cabello. She may be writing about A-List singers, but Carpenter remains fearless.“I write songs about exactly how I feel, so I guess I can’t be so surprised that people are interested in who and what those songs are about,” she told Rolling Stone in May. “That’s something that comes with the territory.” — M.G.
Carpenter has always been a Tay-daughter (a musical daughter of Taylor Swift), but she seems to be taking notes from other country pop stars and legends like Kacey Musgraves and Dolly Parton. The silly “Slim Pickins” veers into country territory the most; her vocal trills channel both Musgraves and Parton with incredible precision. “The little vocal runs she does are so bizarre and unique — they’re doing this really odd, classic, almost yodel-y country thing,” producer Jack Antonoff told Rolling Stone earlier this year. Sonically, Short ‘n Sweet finds Carpenter leaning into plucky acoustic guitars throughout the record. In two years time, she just might pivot into full twang.— M.G.
It wasn’t too long ago that boygenius put out a song about Leonard Cohen, who was casually “at a Buddhist monastery writing horny poetry.” Carpenter takes a note from the boys on “Dumb & Poetic,” a two-minute acoustic ballad where she bids farewell to a man of wellness, the awful kind who steals quotes from self-help books. She delivers some great burns here — “Save all your breath for your floor meditation,” “I promise the mushrooms aren’t changing your life” — but nothing is more biting than a reference to the late songwriter who had a way with the ladies. “Try to come off like you’re soft and well-spoken/Jack off to lyrics by Leonard Cohen,” she sings — and that’s just the first verse. Cohen died eight years ago, and one can only imagine his reaction to being pop’s hottest muse. — A.M.
For more basic pop artists, “Eighties retro” often means throwing some New Wave synths on your song and calling it a day. But when it comes to retro-pop recombinations, Sabrina Carpenter has a unique light touch and a scholar’s attention to detail. Short ‘n Sweet kicks off with the excellent single “Taste,” a mega-catchy kiss-off to an ex’s new partner with a melody that lovingly and movingly calls back to Kim Carnes’ classic “Bette Davis Eyes,” which spent nine weeks at the top of the charts in 1981 and won a Grammy for Song of the Year and Record of the Year. Carpenter totally makes that vintage reference her own, just as she did on her previous summer smashes “Please Please Please” and “Espresso.” — J.D.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suspended his 2024 presidential campaign, and according to a court filing in Pennsylvania on Friday will throw his weight behind former President Donald Trump.
Multiple news outlets reported on Wednesday that independent presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. was planning to drop out of the race and endorse Trump. He clarified at an event in Arizona on Friday that he is not terminating his campaign, only suspending it, and that his name will remain on the ballot in non-battleground states. He said that if enough people still vote for him and Trump and Kamala Harris tie in the Electoral College, he could still wind up in the White House.
“In an honest system, I believe I would have won the election,” Kennedy claimed, citing a vast Democratic conspiracy with the media to stifle his ability to communicate his vision for America to the public. While RFK Jr. blames the “system” from keeping him out of the White House, it could also be due to atrulybizarre, scandal-laden campaign in which he push a host of conspiracy theories, brushed off allegations of sexual assault, and admitted to dumping a dead bear in Central Park.
Kennedy’s siblings bashed his decision to endorse Trump in a statement on Friday. “We believe in Harris and Walz,” they wrote. “Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story.”
Trump will speak in Arizona later on Friday, and has teased a special guest.
Trump said Tuesday that he would “certainly” consider Kennedy for a role in his administration. “He’s a brilliant guy. He’s a very smart guy. I’ve known him for a very long time,” Trump told CNN.
Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., told conservative radio host Glenn Beck that it would be a good idea to have Kennedy on board. “I loved the idea, love the idea of giving him some sort of role in some sort of major three-letter entity or whatever it may be and let him blow it up,” he said.
Kennedy had a colorful run, from admitting to leaving a dead bear cub in Central Park to saying doctors found a dead, parasitic worm in his brain. On a more serious note, he was accused of sexual assault, to which he responded: “I’m not a church boy… I had a very, very rambunctious youth.”
The Washington Post previously reported that Kennedy had spoken to Trump about taking a job in his administration working on health and medical issues. Kennedy is known for being a vaccine conspiracy theoirst.
“All I will say to you is I am willing to talk to anybody from either political party who wants to talk about children’s health and how to end the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy told the Post.
Kennedy apparently begged both of his opponents for a job. According to the Post, he tried to schedule a meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris to talk about working for her as well.
Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, denied this. She said they were “definitely not in talks with Harris.” She also said they “have never brought up a cabinet position with Harris.” Then, she said: “we have offered to talk to everybody.”
The Kennedy campaign had been weighing their options; Shanahan said recently that the campaign was considering whether they should drop out or “join forces” with former President Donald Trump.
She said on the Impact Theory podcast that they could “walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump and you know, we walk away from that and explain to our base why we’re making this decision,” adding: “Not an easy decision.”
In July, the campaign spent more than it raised, and nearly half of the money that it raised came from Shanahan. Kennedy’s campaign disclosed refunding $925,000 to Shanahan.
One little funny/bizarre/horrifying thing about the internet is the way it offers up everything and, in doing so, makes it possible to strip anything of its history. But to paraphrase Kamala Harris, you didn’t just fall out of the coconut tree. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you” — wise words worth heeding, especially for all the Trump voters and conservatives making TikToks with the Chicks’ “Not Ready to Make Nice.”
Over the past month or so, “Not Ready to Make Nice” has become an unexpected MAGA anthem of sorts, meant to express a certain rage at liberals supposedly telling conservatives what to do all the time (the past few Supreme Court terms notwithstanding, apparently). Young women especially have taken the song as a way to push back against the possibility of Harris becoming the first female president.
“Using this song because this is exactly how the liberal party is treating conservatives,” one poster wrote. Another caption read, “Female rage is seeing women say they’re voting for Kamala because ‘she’s a woman and for my daughter’s future.’ But what about the women who’s [sic] lives and future were taken by illegal immigrants because of Kamala’s failure to be the Border Czar?” (This is a frequent talking point in many of the “Not Ready to Make Nice” TikToks.)
It is true that “Not Ready to Make Nice” is one of popular music’s great distillations of female rage. Though, as many, many, many have pointed out, the Chicks famously wrote “Not Ready to Make Nice” after speaking out against George W. Bush and the Iraq War. It was a valiant gesture for which they were systematically blackballed (dare we say canceled) by the country music world while receiving an onslaught of vitriol from the far-right.
The Chicks —who just performed at the Democratic National Convention this week — may have responded to the trend, sharing a clip of the “Not Ready to Make Nice” video on TikTok with the not-so-subtle caption, “Bless her heart.” A rep for the band did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
Now, the thing about art is that no matter an artist’s intentions, once their work is out in the world, it’s no longer fully theirs. People can do what they want with it. One MAGA-loving country artist on TikTok, Austin Forman, has spent the past couple of days doing just that, slurping liberal tears as he explains why, actually, it’s totally fine for conservatives to relate to the song’s lyrics despite the reason they were written. (He even did his own acoustic cover of the tune, ostensibly as an effort to offer conservative posters a version they can use without putting money in the Chicks’ pocket, though that’s not exactly how publishing royalties work.)
And, you know what? Sure. Conservatives can use the song however they want — but that doesn’t stop it from being funny as hell. The dissonance is as glaringly goofy as Paul Ryan loving Rage Against the Machine, Ronald Reagan trying to co-opt “Born in the U.S.A,” or even the decisively non-political trend of TikTokers using a freaking Charlie Manson demo to capture a cozy autumn vibe. If the righteous words and voice of Natalie Maines speak to conservatives, it’s a testament to her artistry — and maybe cause for them to consider why their own grievances haven’t produced much art anywhere near as good.
