A look at Malcolm Young’s quiet leadership in AC/DC, his heartbreaking decline, and why his absence hit the band harder than any lineup change.

Every superstar origin story has a before and after moment—and usually, it’s marked by a single song. Before the hit, they were grinding, hustling, and hoping someone would listen. After it, there was no putting the genie back in the bottle. These songs didn’t just chart well; they reframed careers overnight, turning unknown names into unavoidable ones.

When Donny Hathaway jumped from his New York hotel window, soul music lost one of its most gifted voices to mental illness.

Sam Cooke had reached a rare place in American music. He wasn’t chasing relevance—he was defining it. His voice crossed boundaries, his songwriting deepened with each release, and his business instincts put him years ahead of his peers. Then, during one chaotic night in Los Angeles, everything unraveled. The official explanation came together quickly. Understanding it, however, has never been easy.

A human-written ranking of 20 albums that captured the emotional hangover after the 1980s, reflecting burnout, reflection, and the shift away from excess toward authenticity.

When Billie Holiday first wrapped her voice around Strange Fruit, she wasn’t just performing—she was stepping into territory so charged it seemed to rearrange the air itself. The song forced audiences to confront truths the country preferred to ignore, and it placed Holiday in a spotlight that felt equal parts triumphant and dangerous. What followed was a career shaped by bravery, pressure, and a piece of music that refused to stay quiet.