Author: Charlie Curnow

“Tracks II: The Lost Albums” is the new box set by Bruce Springsteen released on June 27, 2025.

Released 27 years after the original “Tracks” compilation, this new set is composed of seven full and distinct standalone albums recorded by the veteran northern New Jersey rock musician between 1983 and 2018. And largely unknown to even the most devout Springsteen cryptographers, according to the collection’s description on Apple Music.

Individually, the albums demonstrate a number of logical extensions of Springsteen’s classic songwriting. As well as some tantalizing, disciplined and fully realized genre exercises that have no real precedent in his discography.

As a whole, the collection begs nothing less than a wholesale reevaluation of an already deeply considered career, Apple Music says.

“LA Garage Sessions ’83,” the first disc, is a collection of gussied-up home recordings that bridges the gap between 1982’s “Nebraska” and 1984’s “Born in the U.S.A.” Disc 2, “Streets of Philadelphia Sessions,” is an entire album in the subdued synth-pop vein of the 1990s Springsteen singles “Streets of Philadelphia” and “Secret Garden.”

The third disc, “Faithless,” is an atmospheric soundtrack to a shelved western. Disc 4, “Somewhere North of Nashville,” is an album of pure honky-tonk. “Inyo,” disc 5, is an album influenced by Mexican music. Disc 6, “Twilight Hours,” is an album of loosened-bow-tie jazz-standard style torch songs. And disc 7, “Perfect World,” is an album of full-bore, more recent-vintage rock songs.

According to Mark Deming at AllMusic, if these shelved LPs have anything in common, it’s that they largely fall outside what the average Springsteen fan would expect from him. And often find Springsteen working in styles that are new to the artist.

That’s why it’s so impressive that “Tracks II: The Lost Albums” never sounds like a box full of also-ran material, says Deming.

And it could make the case that Springsteen is an even more eclectic and ambitious artist than he sometimes lets on.

Sunday night’s victory of the Oklahoma City Thunder over the Indiana Pacers in Game 7 of the NBA Finals, 103-91, marked the end of the 2024-2025 season.

It was also a coronation of sorts, as for much of this season, everything had pointed toward the Thunder winning the NBA championship, according to Zach Harper at The Athletic. OKC dominated in historic fashion, finishing first in the Western Conference with 68 wins during the regular season, and a lead of 16 games.

The only thing that might have had observers questioning was the unprecedented youth of the team while playing at this level.

And yet, Sunday’s Game 7 victory also might have felt deflating for many viewers. And even a bit hollow for many basketball fans outside of the OKC fan base, Harper says.

That’s because of what happened seven minutes into the game. Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton, who had been nursing a calf strain for days, took a bad step and immediately hit the ground. He started yelling “No!” And many might have been able to tell immediately what happened.

Haliburton’s father confirmed to ESPN sideline reporter Lisa Salters during the game that it was an Achilles injury.

The game was tied at 16 when Haliburton fell and turned the ball over due to the injury. And the Pacers were down by two when he left the game, carried from the court to the locker room.

Perhaps the critical thing, however, was that Haliburton was dominating the Thunder, Harper says. He had three 3-pointers in the first seven minutes of the game, shot from all over.

While typically scoring is very tight in a Game 7 because nerves are especially rattled, Haliburton looked loose and ready to go, Harper says. Prepared, even, to embrace 48 minutes of clutch moments. But he never got the chance.

The Thunder still could have absolutely won the game even if Haliburton had stayed healthy. OKC point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, now the NBA Finals MVP, had 29 points (8-of-27 shooting) and 12 assists. He could have outdueled Haliburton throughout a full game.

We just didn’t get to see that great finish, says Harper. The one that to many might have seemed inevitable in Game 7’s first seven minutes.

In June 2025, Neil Young released the new album “Talkin to the Trees.” It’s Young’s debut album recorded with the Chrome Hearts, the new band formed by the veteran rocker in 2024 after 60 years of record-making.

As the album’s release notes on Apple Music observe, “Talkin to the Trees” joins previous Young recordings “Barn” and “World Record” as part of a growing body of late-period albums. Works that affirm Young’s almost supernatural ability to continue to make art.

Young’s outrage is there on tracks like “big change” and “Lets Roll Again.” As is his tenderness on songs like “Bottle of Love” and “Thankful.” Young’s ability to make global concerns feel as personal and digressive as diary entries is present, too, on songs like “Talkin to the Trees” and “Family Life.”

The Chrome Hearts, Young’s backing group on this album, include guitarist Micah Nelson, bassist Corey McCormick and drummer Anthony Logerfo of the band Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real. With Lukas Nelson, who is Willie Nelson’s son, those musicians previously backed Young on several albums and tours.

On this album, the Chrome Hearts also include veteran Muscle Shoals keyboardist Spooner Oldham. Who first played with Young on 1978’s “Comes a Time.”

As Mark Deming notes for AllMusic, a sole constant in Young’s body of work is that he’s going to do what he feels like doing in the moment. This usually means plenty of change from album to album.

But it also often finds Young touching upon sounds that have long been his mainstays. Including country-leaning rock, noisy guitar workouts in the manner of his longtime backing band Crazy Horse and emotionally intense folk-influenced numbers.

Apple Music recalls a 1996 tour incident, documented on the live album “Year of the Horse,” in which a heckler told Young that all his songs sound the same. Young replied that “It’s all one song.”

The comeback appears to be philosophically truer the more songs Young writes.

No. 2 seed Carlos Alcaraz beat No. 1 seed Jannik Sinner in the 2025 French Open men’s singles tennis final on Sunday, June 8 after an intense, fast-paced match that lasted more than five hours.

The 4-6, 6-7(4), 6-4, 7-6(3), 7-6(2) match was ultimately decided by Sinner’s dominance on short points, and Alcaraz’s newfound ability to impose his variety, according to Matthew Futterman and Charlie Eccleshare at the Athletic. As well as one of the greatest surges in Alcaraz’s career.

It was Alcaraz’s fifth Grand Slam title and his second at the French Open. It was also the first comeback in the career of Alcaraz, age 22, from two sets to love down.

The match also takes the head-to-head matchup between Alcaraz and Sinner to 9-4 in Alcaraz’s favor. And extends his winning streak over Sinner, age 23, to five matches.

Anyone might have predicted that Sinner would have the edge on short points, Futterman said. His serve is bigger, and incudes more errors on return than most top players.

Sinner more than doubled Alcaraz’s tally on points of four shots or fewer through the first set and into the start of the second, 32-14. Meanwhile, Alcaraz was in the lead for shots that lasted more than four shots, 23-11. Sinner’s short-point edge then quickly climbed to 38-14 over the first three games of the second set, when he took early command.

These numbers provide a nice snapshot of each player’s strategy, Futterman said. Alcaraz wanted to get into points, especially on Sinner’s serve. He wanted to move the Italian across the baseline. Meanwhile, Sinner wanted to play first-strike tennis and avoid points where Alcaraz controls his opponent like a puppeteer.

The dichotomy on point length gave Alcaraz an opportunity. But the effectiveness of Sinner’s serve, combined with the laws of elite tennis—in which short points make up a majority of points played—quickly wiped the Spaniard’s advantage away, Futterman said.

By the start of the third set, Alcaraz was still up in longer points 24-29. But Sinner’s advantage in the shorter ones was at 61-48. Sinner was playing over 60 percent of the match in a game state where he held an overwhelming advantage. Even as Alcaraz wiped out Sinner’s two-set lead, Sinner’s advantage in short points held firm.

It’s no coincidence that in the peak of his domination, Sinner was winning 66 percent of points on his first serve, compared with a little under 60 percent for Alcaraz, Futterman said.

Sinner switched from a platform (feet apart) stance in his serve to a pinpoint (feet together) launch two years ago. He soon became the world No. 1, although beating Alcaraz remained a struggle.

By the end of the match, the supremacies of either player were even, Futterman said. Sinner was 108-95 on 0-4 shot points, and Alcaraz was 97-84 on anything longer. Resulting in a deficit of 13 each way erased to nothing as a deciding fifth set turned into a tiebreaker game.

In the end, it was Alcaraz who made his edge count. During his tiebreak surge, eight of the 12 points played were five shots or longer. Alcaraz won seven of them.

Overall, this first major final between the two standout players in men’s tennis enshrined this young rivalry’s place in global sport, Futterman and Eccleshare said. And produced a classic that will hopefully go down as the first installment in something epochal.

The elimination of the New York Knicks by the Indiana Pacers on Saturday, May 31 in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals, 125-108, marks the end of the best season for the Knicks since 2000.

But now the loss in the Pacers series has renewed a debate over how to feel about a season of real progress, missed chances and rising expectations, according to Lee Escobedo, a contributor at the Guardian.  

The Knicks played from behind in nearly every playoff game except Game 5 of the Pacers series, Escobedo notes. Critics use this as justification to call for Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau’s dismissal.

But 17 turnovers in Games 4 and 6 of the Pacers series—not a product of coaching—were decisive, Escobedo says. The team’s low 19.5 assists per game in the series weren’t on Thibodeau either.

Thibodeau ran a wide array of actions, including horn sets, pin-downs, dribble hand-offs and high pick-and-rolls. But Indiana smothered the Knicks’ secondary options. Forcing Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson and center Karl-Anthony Towns into iso-heavy, low-efficiency looks.

Brunson recorded just five assists to Towns across the entire Eastern Conference Finals series, Escobedo says. That lack of connection played right into Indiana head coach Rick Carlisle’s hands. Carlisle’s game plan—including blitzing on switches and walling off Knicks shooting guard Josh Hart and small forward Mikal Bridges in the lane—was clinical.

Yes, Carlisle, who coached the Dallas Mavericks to an NBA championship in 2011, outcoached Thibodeau. But there’s no shame in that.

Thibodeau isn’t a fraud or a genius, Escobedo says. He gave Knicks fans what they asked for. Including deeper rotations, experimental lineups and extended minutes for the Towns-Mitchell Robinson twin tower pairing.

But it still wasn’t enough. The Pacers, who also made the Eastern Conference Finals in 2024 before getting swept by the Boston Celtics, were simply better.

This wasn’t a collapse for the Knicks, Escobedo says. It was a ceiling. The Knicks are no longer a punchline. They’re a real team with real stakes and real expectations. Every game in the Pacers series was winnable.

New York wasn’t embarrassed. But they were outplayed.

“Is,” the latest album by Louisville, KY alt-rock band My Morning Jacket released in March 2025, is the group’s 10^th overall.

As the album’s release notes on Apple Music observe, the album’s sound is largely “more of the same” for the band, which formed in 1998. Rootsy eclecticism, combined with soft-but-chunky ’70s rock and lightly psychedelic insights into the human condition.

But for the first time in the band’s 25-year-plus career, for this album they recruited an outside producer instead of doing that work themselves. Namely Brendan O’Brien, who has previously worked as a producer and mixer for acts including Bruce Springsteen (“The Rising,” “Devils & Dust,” “Magic,” “High Hopes”) and Pearl Jam (nearly their entire discography).

The result was a collective shift in which the band was able to free themselves from the minutiae of record-making and relax into being a band, according to Apple Music. Bandleader Jim James compares this to an athlete connecting with the right coach (even though James himself insists he was “never good at sports”).

Partly as a result of working with O’Brien, however, a lot more demo songs were also written for these sessions than the ten that made it onto the final album—reportedly as many as a hundred. Highlights “Everyday Magic” and “Time Wasted,” for example, were written deep in the recording process, even though they appear early in the track list.

“It was hilarious because when I started working with Brendan, all these songs kept coming out,” James said. “I email him one song. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God. Check this out.’ No response.” Then another, and another. “‘I wonder if he just missed the email.’”

It was only when it seemed like James had reached the end of his efforts that the right songs finally materialized.

“I realized for the first time that I don’t have to take it personally,” James said. “Even when I was trying so hard to micromanage and force everything, at the end of the day, the record makes itself.”

The elimination of the Boston Celtics on Friday, May 17 to the New York Knicks in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals, 119-81, marks seven straight NBA seasons without a repeat champion. And could mark the end of the current Celtics era.

After winning an NBA championship in 2024, the Celtics essentially brought back the same roster this year. Which in addition to being a rare opportunity for a championship team, at the time seemed like a no brainer, according to Jared Weiss, a staff writer at The Athletic.

The way the regular season went, it still seemed like the right decision. But then the team hit a wall hard in May, Weiss says. Various injuries and one illness took all the depth that had made the Celtics seem untouchable over the previous 19 months. And without the new-player spark that past champions have applied as a fresh coat of paint.

When the Celtics lost the Kristaps Porzingis factor (due to a lingering upper-respiratory illness), they suddenly looked like the old Celtics again. Unable to run offense in the fourth quarter and sometimes showing up to games a level below their opponent.

In Game 6 of the recent series against the Knicks it was hard to distinguish what their guiding principles were.

Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla’s style of basketball has more depth to it than just spamming 3-pointers, Weiss says. But a lot of his schematic approach has been the circumstance of roster construction.

The team was groundbreaking last season in its ability to put together an eight-man rotation in which everyone could shoot and create. No team had ever done it so comprehensively in quite the same way.

Under Mazzulla, they also augmented and tuned to perfection a trend of “cross-match hunting.” A defensive strategy in which a team intentionally creates mismatches by shifting players to guard opponents who are less suited to their usual position. Thereby exploiting opponents’ weaknesses and disrupting their offensive flow.

The NBA evolves in quick cycles—sometimes as short as three years, Weiss says. Teams always follow the lead of the champion. But now, that’s not the Celtics anymore.

Still, the team left its mark on the league, Weiss says, embracing the theory behind high-volume 3s in a way no team had before. They gave analytical theory character and purpose, as much as they might be derided for it.

The New York Knicks eliminated the Detroit Pistons on Thursday, April 29 in an extremely hard-fought first-round NBA playoffs series.

A thrilling Game 6 ended with a winning three-pointer from Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson. Who scored 40 points and had seven assists in Thursday’s closeout game in Detroit overall.

Throughout the series, Brunson had faced critical chants from Detroit fans who believed that the Knicks point guard had been hunting fouls as opposed to playing “ethical” hoops. And so, the closing three-pointer had an added buzz for him and the Knicks as it sent Pistons fans home disappointed.

The three-pointer itself came with less then 10 seconds left on the clock as Brunson crossed up Pistons small forward/shooting guard Ausar Thompson. Brunson, an NBA All-Star, was named the league’s Clutch Player of the Year earlier in April.

But “hard-fought” is really an understatement when it comes to this series. Because as Sports Illustrated contributor Blake Silverman notes, the last four games of the series were won, in a something of a historical anomaly, by only nine points—combined.

In Game 6, the Knicks won by three points after the Pistons extended the series Tuesday with a three-point win of their own. Previously, New York had won Games 3 and 4 in Detroit. First by two points, and then by one.

According to ESPN, the Knicks-Pistons series was only the second of all time in postseason NBA history to feature four straight games decided by three or fewer points. And the first in 40 years.

The only other series to meet that criteria was the 1981 Eastern Conference finals between the Philadelphia 76ers and the Boston Celtics. Boston won that series in seven games after overcoming a 3-1 deficit.

Rory McIlroy won the 2025 Masters golf tournament on Sunday, April 13. This makes him one of the only golfers in history to ever win the U.S. Open, the British, the PGA and the Masters—the four major professional tournaments—in a career Grand Slam. The only other players that have achieved this are Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, Gary Player and Gene Sarazen.

It was McIlroy’s first major tournament victory since 2014. His first major tournament win was the U.S. Open in 2011.

And this year’s Masters victory happened in dramatic fashion. As senior writer Michael Rosenberg notes for Sports Illustrated, McIlroy made four double bogeys over the course of the four days of the tournament and still won.

With eight holes to play on Sunday, McIlroy had built a five-stroke lead. But from there nearly found water on No. 11, and hit a highly unfortunate wedge into the pond on 13. He hit an outrageous draw into the 15th green to give himself an eagle chance. But he also missed putts of 11, 8, 6 and 9 feet. He hit an iron from 197 yards to kick-in range on 17. But then missed a 5-foot par putt to win on the 18th. Finally, however, he gave himself a 4-foot birdie putt to beat Justin Rose in a playoff and sank it.

McIlroy entered Sunday atop the Masters leaderboard. After the third round on Saturday, he had described himself as a “momentum player.”

But according to Rosenberg, it’s probably more accurate to call him an emotional one. McIlroy’s last shot seems to affect his next one, Rosenberg says, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. And the effect is hard to predict.

McIlroy’s first double bogey Thursday led to his second, Rosenberg says. But McIlroy also said his double bogey to open the final round “sort of settled my nerves.”

On the green of the final playoff hole, Rose made a routine par. McIlroy then needed to make a putt just like the one he had just missed a half hour beforehand on the 18^th. To win a tournament he had been expected to win for the past 14 years.

When the last putt fell, McIlroy dropped to his knees.

“My battle today was with my mind, and staying in the present,” McIlroy said. “It was a struggle, but I got over the line.”

The America’s Cup sailing competition is the oldest international contest still operating in any sport. The first Cup was a fleet race between the New York Yacht Club’s then-radically built America and 14 yachts of Britain’s Royal Yacht Squadron hosted at the Isle of Wight in 1851. The America won.

The regatta was then hosted in New York City between 1870 and 1920, before moving to Newport, Rhode Island from 1930 to 1983. And it has since moved around to various other global locations, including San Diego, Auckland, Valencia and most recently Barcelona in 2024.

These races represent a long-standing tradition of competition driving technological innovation within a specific field. Including in yacht design, materials and sailing techniques.

But sailing isn’t the only realm that’s seen breakthrough ideas come out of contests through the years. With Facebook’s famous annual hackathons, which have been cited as one of the company’s most important innovation drivers, serving as one of the more visible recent examples. Even leading to new features on the platform like chat and calendars.

And perhaps with good reason.

Indeed, innovation contests offer an effective way to get employees interested in sharing their creative ideas, according to Jasmijn Bol, Lisa LaViers, and Jason Sandvik. Who published an article called “The Trouble With Your Innovation Contests,” in the MIT Sloan Management Review in January 2024.

But from the start, leaders must carefully decide the organization’s ultimate goals so that they can then tailor the design of the contest to achieve those objectives, Bol, LaViers and Sandvik say.

At the time of the article’s publication, Bol was the Francis Martin Chair in Business and the PricewaterhouseCoopers Professor at Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business. LaViers was an assistant professor at the A.B. Freeman School of Business. And Sandvik was an assistant professor at the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management.

In innovation contests, the best submissions are rewarded with a prize. And the possibility of winning motivates employees to share their brainstorms with organizational leaders, according to Bol, LaViers and Sandvik. That’s important so that valuable ideas don’t stall out with middle management.

Innovation contests also come with a clear set of rules and instructions that inform employees about what types of ideas the organization is seeking, according to the researchers. These motivating and directing elements have made contests popular methods for collecting ideas for hundreds of years.

Napoleon, for example, held contests that yielded important advances in military readiness. Including canned goods and margarine, which made food easier to transport.

Although contests are not a new idea, there are still many unknowns regarding the best ways to structure contests, according to Bol, LaViers and Sandvik. But the trio do offer a few guidelines based on their research.

First, if you want to make sure you are eliciting ideas from all of your employees—or that all voices are heard—you will want to design a contest with multiple, smaller prizes.

Offering several smaller prizes can increase participation among specific groups employees, the researchers say. Including those who are demographically underrepresented in creative endeavors. This is in part due to differences in a person’s confidence that their creativity will be recognized by others.

If you are interested in getting a lot of ideas that will lead to continual process improvements, on the other hand, you will want to use managers as judges, according to Bol, LaViers and Sandvik.

That’s because when managers are judging, participants submit more useful ideas. In part because participants estimate that managers will likely care relatively more about the practicality of the ideas, since an organization’s managers will bear the implementation costs.

Finally, if you are interested in eliciting one extremely good idea, then it is important to offer a single, large prize and have the judges be the peers of the contest participants, Bol, LaViers and Sandvik say. As this is the contest structure with the best chance to elicit extra effort in idea development and a push for out-of-the-box thinking, according to the researchers.

There are a couple different reasons for this. The winner-takes-all structure of a contest with a single larger prize tends to motivate people to spend more time on their submissions than multiple smaller ones, Bol, LaViers and Sandvik say.

And individuals submit more ideas to innovation contests when the judges are their peers—people with their same job role, whose tastes regarding creativity are easier to estimate. Especially compared to when the judges are their managers, whose tastes can be harder to predict.

Organizations don’t need to limit themselves to one contest to tap into employee creativity, Bol, LaViers and Sandvik say. Instead, leaders can run different contests, with different designs, depending on organizational priorities at the time.

The key is to first think carefully about what’s important to your organization, and then design your contests accordingly.

So go ahead and start hoisting that ideation mainsail, why don’t you?