RS Recommends
OUR TOP POPCULTURE PICKS OF THE MONTH
SINGLE
1. Lady Gaga, “Stupid Love”
Remember when Lady Gaga would drop the kind of disco bombs that made you want to party until you passed out in the bathroom of the trashiest club on the Lower East Side? Well, on “Stupid Love,” she remembers too. Welcome back, Glam Gaga!
PROTEST
2. Earth Day Climate Strike
For the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, activist coalition Strike With Us is calling for workers and students to stage walkouts across the U.S., demanding action before it’s too late.
TOUR
3. The Monkees
Half the band is no longer living (RIP Davy and Peter), but the surviving Monkees still put on an amazing show. Michael Nesmith and Micky Dolenz are hitting the road to support their new live album, The Mike and Micky Show.
After all these years, we’re still believers.
TV SHOW
4. ‘Fargo’ Season Four
The anthology noir-drama is back, now starring Chris Rock as a gangster in 1950s Kansas City, trying to move in on the Mafia’s criminal enterprise. Bonus: Jason Schwartzman as a sleazy mobster.
PODCAST
5. ‘The Dating Game Killer’
In 1978, Rodney Alcala, a photographer with a knack for suggestive puns, appeared on The Dating Game and won. But the bachelorette he’d been set up with sensed something was a bit off about her date and refused to go out with him. Good move! It turned out he was a serial killer in mid-spree. Here’s the impossibly bizarre story.
DIGITAL NEWSLETTER
6. Nick Cave, “Red Hand Files”
What started as a way for the punk hero to answer fan questions has turned into a cathartic read that gives insight into his life and work. You can also catch Cave and the Bad Seeds on tour this year.
SINGLE
7. Lila Drew, “Locket”
Nineteen-year-old Lila Drew is an R&B-pop artist on the rise, thanks to songs like this dreamily nostalgic track. She wears innocent heartache like bubblegum battle armor.
FILM
8. ‘Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin’
Werner Herzog’s new film documents the work of writer Bruce Chatwin, who died of AIDS in 1989, by tracing his late friend’s walking journey through Patagonia, carrying Chatwin’s beloved rucksack with him.
MEMOIR
9. Mark Lanegan, ‘Sing Backwards and Weep’
The former Screaming Trees frontman never felt comfortable being a lowkey grunge icon, so he doesn’t hold back in this novelistic memoir of the Seattle scene.
DOCUMENTARY
10. ‘How to Fix a Drug Scandal’
Directed by Erin Lee Carr and based on a Rolling Stone story, this doc explores how two crooked state-lab chemists in Massachusetts caused a miscarriage of justice — and how authorities covered it up.