In 1976, the revolutionary singer-songwriter LAURA NYRO returned from self-imposed exile. But her comeback confounded expectations, shifting away from the impassioned intimacies of her early albums to embrace more radical perspectives. Fifty years on, Nyro’s collaborators revisit her striking second act. “She was a hip American from the Bronx,” one friend and producer tells Rob Hughes. “But her soul was old.”

For a band who’ve spent the last months playing to thousands in North American venues, it could have felt uneasily sobering to pull up outside Berlin’s Columbia Theater. Just a couple of years short o

How Eno-supervised jams and a playful tale of obsessive relationships yielded the Manchester veterans’ biggest hit to date. Just don’t wear those dresses on American TV!

Black And Blue UMC/POLYDOR

In the spring of 1974, DAVID BOWIE arrived in the United States by boat. By the time he left in the spring of 1976, his marriage was ending, his cocaine addiction was spiralling, and he'd become obsessed with Nazis. He'd also made another masterpiece: Station To Station. "We went days without sleeping," his valiant co-conspirators tell GRAYSON HAVER CURRIN. "Inhibitions were out the window."

SEVENTY YEARS AGO NEXT MONTH, HEARTBREAK HOTEL WAS THE SONG THAT MADE ELVIS PRESLEY A STAR AND LIT A SPARK IN A GENERATION OF FUTURE HEROES. BUT ITS STRANGELY GLOOMY CONTENT FLAGGED A TRAGIC BACK STORY, WHILE ELVIS'S RECORDING DISMAYED THE LABEL THAT HAD RISKED BIG MONEY TO SIGN HIM. JIM IRVIN GETS A ROOM.