The Best Books of 2025
Our Best Books of 2025 draws from inventive authors and scrappy publishers. Has there ever been a better time to be a reader than these tumultuous times?
patti smith
When Feminist Anthems Were Volume-Controlled
From an era when protest music rang out across every other frontier, we have only seven feminist songs where the lyrics spoke explicitly to women’s liberation.
Patti Smith’s “Piss Factory” and “Hey Joe” Remain Prophetic 50 Years On
Patti Smith’s “Hey Joe” and “Piss Factory” expresses her unremitting fight for freedom: when she went from a factory girl to a poète maudit.
Patti Smith’s ‘A Book of Days’ Captures Much More Than Her Instagram Posts
Patti Smith’s A Book of Days creates an ironic loop of parasocial relationshipping, generating a kind of intimacy through photographs of objects.
Sea.Hear.Now Brings Pearl Jam and Good Times to Asbury Park (photos)
Pearl Jam recently brought Gigaton tracks and adoring fans to Asbury Park’s unique beach festival, Sea.Hear.Now.
Patti Smith Rebuilt the World on 1996’s ‘Gone Again’
Patti Smith’s Gone Again, released 25 years ago, is imbued with grief, but the album’s themes are renewal, resilience, and perseverance in the face of loss.
Counterbalance 19: Patti Smith -‘Horses’
One of the most critically-acclaimed debuts in rock history, Patti Smith’s Horses is a whirlwind of poetry and proto-punk rock. Counterbalance takes Horses for a ride -- go Rimbaud and go Johnny go!
Tibet House’s 2020 US Benefit Concert Rocked with Iggy Pop and Patti Smith
Patti Smith brought down the house at the annual Tibet House benefit as she first paid tribute to Kurt Cobain and Allen Ginsberg with "About a Boy" and "Don't Say Nothing'".
Patti Smith’s ‘Wave’ Turns 40: Why the Punk Poet’s Pop Album Is Also Her Greatest
Wave's status as Patti Smith's most unapologetically pop album reveals the most authentically "punk" gesture of her career: rejecting the idea that her genre capabilities begin and end with that four-letter word.
Patti Smith’s ‘Year of the Monkey’: Is She Evolving? Are We?
Year of the Monkey makes clear that the Godmother of Punk still delivers every time. But what have we done to Patti Smith with our worship?
Scorsese and Dylan: A Match Made in Fantasy
In Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, a cinematic genius and a Nobel Prize-winning musical icon pair for a magical and purposefully deceptive look at rock 'n' roll life in the mid-'70s.
Mary Lee Kortes Preps New Book, ‘Dreaming of Dylan: 115 Dreams About Bob Dylan’, Releases New Song (premiere + interview)
Longtime Bob Dylan favorite Mary Lee Kortes presents a book of dreams about the man. Patti Smith, Jimbo Mathus, others contribute.