Alerts
Clockwise from top left: Pharoah Sanders (Photo: Dimitri Hakke), Jazmine Sullivan (Photo: Getty Images), Julien Baker (Photo: Getty Images), Mogwai (Photo: Getty Images), Olivia Rodrigo (Getty Images)
Graphic: Natalie Peeples
Whoever said artists should have to suffer for their art? Presumably, someone who never had to suffer much. Musicians, like writers, are still too often tagged with this bizarre assumption that creating their art should require an arduous grappling with their muse, borne of pain or sadness. Unfortunately, the past six months have brought with them a surfeit of suffering; it’s still hard to talk about almost anything without referring back at some point to the hardships many of us have dealt with this past year, courtesy of COVID-19. But thanks to a miracle of medical science and the vast majority of people sane enough to understand the need to get vaccinated, things are feeling a lot more hopeful than they have been in a long time.