Welcome to DFW: Need-to-Know Music Venues

North Texas doesn’t often get credit for its vibrant music scene. DFW offers a wide range of entertainment, from staggeringly large events to small, intimate shows. The modern scene builds on a deeply rooted but often tumultuous history, with nightlife districts buffeted by boom and bust cycles. These days, the…

Scenes from Demi Lovato’s Twitter War against Taylor Swift

Leave it to a Dallas celebrity to start some bad blood over a good deed. Over the weekend, Dallas native, former Disney Channel actor and rising pop star Demi Lovato took a stand against fellow singer and recent Grammy winner Taylor Swift — for the fact that Swift had donated…

RIP Nevada Hill of Bludded Head

You may have never heard of Nevada Hill, but his fingerprints — quite literally — were all over the the North Texas music scene. He was never the sort of guy to be headlining a big venue like Trees or to get his songs played on the radio. Sadly, Hill…

Dallas Observer Music Is Looking for Writers and Reporters

We’re a month and a half into the new year, and what you have done with yourself? If your first answer is, “Not much,” then don’t fret; you only have a little over 10 months left to not follow through on your New Year’s resolution. If your second answer is,…

Coldplay to Return to Dallas After Playing Super Bowl Halftime

Quick, name the last Coldplay song you listened to. Well okay, it’s been a little while, hasn’t it? It’s been a quiet stretch the past couple years for (one of the many) band(s) formerly known as “The Next Radiohead,” what with the conscious uncoupling and all. Chris Martin and co…

Bruce Springsteen to Play American Airlines Center on April 5

The last time Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were in Dallas, it was for a one-off performance at Reunion Tower during the NCAA March Madness festivities back in 2014. As usual, The Boss put on a killer show, although the novelty of having it at Reunion was dampened…

The 10 Best Dallas-Fort Worth Saturday Night Live Performances

We’ve gotten pretty spoiled of late here in Dallas. Three times in the past four months, one of our homegrown musicians has made it onto the biggest late-night TV stage in North America (and, arguably, the world): Saturday Night Live. First it was Demi Lovato, then Leon Bridges and finally,…

Biz Markie to Headline 35 Denton in 2016

Looking for a music festival with plenty of hip hop? Apparently Denton is the place to be. While most Dallas fests, save for JMBLYA and Rageville, only intermittently tap into rappers for their lineups (if at all, in some cases), Denton has been doing it more and more. Oaktopia built…