Table of contents for March 2023 in Rolling Stone

A Look Behind the Mask To play the champion boxer Adonis Creed, as he does again this month in Creed III, his directorial debut, Michael B. Jordan gets himself into Greek-godlike shape. So, as we conceptualized this month’s cover shoot, we called in multidisciplinary artist Holly Silius to paint his body. “He’s so statuesque,” says Silius, a makeup artist and sculptor who often uses the human form as an experimental canvas in her work. “It’s easy to wonder if his body is real or not.” Soon, the conversation with Jordan evolved, as he and Silius decided not just to paint him, but to make casts of his torso and face for the photo shoot as well, using images of ancient gods as a reference point. “Michael wanted the eyes…

THREE YEARS AGO, on the last day of 2019, Sabrina Teitelbaum got sober. Soon she was turning to music as an outlet for all the feelings rushing through her. “I had a desperation for writing,” says Teitelbaum, 25, whose self-titled debut as Blondshell is out in April. “I needed to get everything out.” The album is packed with blazingly hot alt-rock songs full of anger and passion. “My whole life, I felt like I couldn’t talk about any feeling that was over a certain amount of intensity,” Teitelbaum says. But that’s all over now: “I got to the point where I was able to be myself in my music.”…

CHUCK D is humble about his contributions to Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World — the expansive, four-part PBS and BBC series where he joins other hip-hop icons, from Melle Mel to Eminem, as well as executives, journalists, and academics, in unspooling rap’s history as a social movement. “My work is as an initiator and giving the platform,” says the Public Enemy MC, who executive-produced the project. “I know how to cut, edit, and design audio, but when it comes to film and TV …” Still, his voice and perspective are unmistakable as Fight the Power explores the symbiotic relationship between rap and sociopolitical struggles over the past 50 years. He was even more hands-on in crafting his new coffee-table book of fine art, Livin’ Loud.…

If your perception of Christina Ricci is burned into your brain from the Nineties — when she broke into the public consciousness as the sullen child at the heart of the original Addams Family movie, then went on to play a sullen teen in Casper, a sullen tomboy in Now and Then, and a sullen new kid in Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain — you’d be forgiven for struggling to see her any other way. She does, too. Over the course of an hour-plus lunch on an overcast December day in Los Angeles, Ricci will describe herself as “lazy,” “unpleasant,” “prickly,” “immature,” “unfriendly,” “a contrarian,” “a killjoy,” and “a party pooper.” She will voice strongly negative opinions about seemingly beneficial things like salads (“a waste of time”),…

THE IDEA OF MAKING David Crosby our new advice columnist started as a joke around the Rolling Stone office. Croz was the first to admit that he lived a rather imperfect life, making many catastrophic decisions along the way. “If there was a way to go wrong possible, I did,” he told Rolling Stone in 2013. “I could have easily died at so many points in my past. It happened to my friends — Jimi, Janis, Cass.…” But Croz somehow survived a crack addiction, alcoholism, diabetes, hepatitis C, and a liver transplant, not to mention a stint in a Texas prison. He emerged from these battles with deep scars, but also real wisdom and an appreciation for his second shot at life. The more we thought about it, the…

You play an ancient goddess in the Shazam sequel. Given your choice of mythological deities to embody, which would you become? Maybe Venus? One of the powerful ones. But even back then, the female deities didn’t have it quite as good as the male gods, you know. Not even a goddess could catch a break. ‘Shazam! Fury of the Gods’ is out March 17. ‘1923’ airs on Paramount+. You’ve played both Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Elizabeth II. What did those roles teach you about power? That delegation is important. Elizabeth I was the opposite of Trump. She listened to opinions different from her own to get a complete picture of things, and that’s why she’s gone down in history as one of the greatest leaders of all time.…

WHAT’S NEW, WHAT’S NEXT, WHAT’S NUTS WHEN THE PANDEMIC SHUT down the world in March 2020, millions of people had to find ways to cope with an abundance of time indoors. Some baked bread. Others took up pottery. And on one very-early Friday morning, singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams got high, dove deep into Taylor Swift’s discography, and fired off a tweet: “i know places by taylor swift makes me feel like i’m being hunted down in the purge.” “That was one of like a dozen tweets explaining my feelings about her music in that state,” Abrams says, laughing, as I bring it up. (Other tweets sent in the spree suggest Abrams thinks Swift’s best song is “Innocent,” and “Mine” makes her crave overalls.) Abrams, 23, will have dozens of chances…

PLAYING LIVE HAS always been rough — even for veterans of the road. “You get caught up in just trying to gauge how everybody else is doing onstage, the actual technicalities of what you’re doing,” Radiohead’s Philip Selway confesses in the new book Touring and Mental Health: The Music Industry Manual (out via Omnibus Press). It’s designed to help musicians and others on tour navigate mental health, which has been exacerbated by the pandemic. The book’s editor, Tamsin Embleton — a manager turned therapist and founder of the Music Industry Therapist Collective — set out to make a road map that prioritizes mental health, including addressing relationships, depression, and self-care. Research suggests the Covid lockdown has had an adverse impact: 87 percent of musicians in one survey experienced a…

WHEN PLAYBOI CARTI took the water-covered stage at Kanye West’s Donda 2 event last February, he sent shock waves through his fandom. It wasn’t his unhinged performance of “Off the Grid,” or even his appearance alongside an already scandal-plagued Ye, that did it: It was Carti’s bold new look, which included a face with full-on gothic-clown makeup, marrying the metal tradition of corpse paint with the Joker’s demonic, up-turned smile. While it was likely Carti’s intention to stand out with a jarring new look, he was actually joining a growing trend: A staggering amount of pop stars and trendsetters are “down with the clown” lately. On TikTok, #clowncore content has 435.1 million views, and it’s spawned a number of more mainstream trends, filters, and beauty tutorials. Clownlike patterns and…

ON MARCH 4, 2020, guitarist Chad Taylor stood on a beach outside of the Hard Rock Hotel in the Dominican Republic. He fired up a Cuban cigar and stared out at the vast ocean. After years of bitter infighting and nasty legal battles, his band Live — best remembered for their Nineties hits “Lightning Crashes” and “I Alone” — was finally reunited and back on the road. Live had just wrapped up a successful co-headlining tour with Bush, there was talk of cutting a new album, and they were in the Caribbean to play a lucrative private gig. ¶ “Life doesn’t really get any better than this,” Taylor recalls thinking to himself. “I worked so hard to get this. Let’s enjoy this. Tonight we’re going to jump onstage, play…