musicians

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Is a Reminder That the Internet Is Not Real Life

Aarushi Bhandari

In the weeks when Swift was dating Healy, a vocal minority of Swifties came head-to-head with a vocal minority of Healy’s defenders. Then the celebrity pair ended their relationship, and collective attention moved on from that topic almost immediately. Several weeks of nonstop debate, attacks, and hand-wringing ended up being utterly meaningless – except to social media companies that converted this brief obsession into clicks, engagement, and ad revenue.

Music Journalist Ben Fong-Torres and the Glory Days of ‘Rolling Stone’

Ben Friedman

In the documentary Like a Rolling Stone: The Life and Times of Ben Fong-Torres, Fong-Torres recounts the feeling of flipping through the jukebox at his father’s restaurant stating, “Inside jukeboxes, there was no segregation…Rock and Roll was an equalizer.” Music gave voice to the disenfranchised as a form of protest. These principles of rock and roll shaped Fong-Torres’s writing sensibilities, making him a rockstar journalist within the music industry.

Who Are You Calling a Sellout?

Garrett Hartman

This is not to say artists shouldn’t be criticized and that the origin of a piece of art doesn’t matter, but rather that authorial intent doesn’t necessarily define a piece of art in and of itself. The meaning one takes away from art is extremely personal and has much more say in how it affects the real world than how it was made. This all ultimately trails back to the classic bout between high and low culture – a conflict that  often boils down to a battle over cultural capital.

‘Sparks Brothers’ Pays Homage to Quirky Genius of Musical Duo

Forrest Hartman

The Sparks Brothers is as entertaining as it is informative, and music lovers should leave the film both appreciating the Maels’ contributions to pop music and admiring Wright’s ability to tell their story. Furthermore, the folks who – like me – came into this project unaware of the band will, no doubt, spend a few hours digging through its rather impressive back catalog. Not every movie leaves me with new downloads in my music library, but this one certainly did.

The Art of the Late Daniel Johnston: Musician, Artist, and Renaissance Man

The Editors

Johnston’s songs have been covered by several hundred artists, including David Bowie and Tom Waits. The late Kurt Cobain mused that Daniel Johnston is the best songwriter in America. In 2006, his life was documented in the award-winning film, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, and his painted illustrations were exhibited in the Whitney biennial. Johnston had a lifetime battle with mental illness, and medication prescribed for this condition damaged his liver requiring multiple hospitalizations. He died from a heart attack in his sleep before the morning of September 11, 2019.

A Long Way to the Top: Rethinking How AC/DC Changed Rock’n’Roll

Sandra Canosa

It’s a well-known conundrum in the rules and regulations of the rock’n’roll canon: If it is popular, it must not be good. While AC/DC has millions of fans the world over and can continue to sell out arena tours (even with a completely different and controversial lead singer), they have very few critical accolades to show for it. They’ve won only one Grammy – for a song released in 2010, no less – and even the likes of Billy Joel managed to beat them into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame.

Using Illusions - The Rise and Fall of Guns N’ Roses on MTV

Sandra Canosa

Axl’s high-pitched caterwauls and Slash’s furious guitar licks may contain all the classic trappings of hair metal, but it was the way GnR crafted their image through MTV music videos that launched the group out of the niche-market bins and into the mainstream. But in the end, MTV also proved to be the band’s downfall. With no limits to their financial resources or artistic egos, Guns N’ Roses were free to push the medium to its extremes: sometimes the risks paid off, demonstrating both what the band and the music video form itself was capable of. Other times, the very limitations of MTV became all too clear.

How the War Over Streaming Services Changed the Music Industry

Angelo Franco

When Taylor Swift’s 1989 album became the only record of the year to reach platinum level, that was the second biggest news in music of 2014.  The most important news of the year in the industry came when Swift pulled her entire catalogue from the popular streaming service Spotify one week after the release of her album.  The move, more so than spark a heated though admittedly civil battle between Swift and Spotify, has opened the gates to a debate about the future of the music industry. 

Can Music Survive Without the Teenybopper Fangirl?

Sandra Canosa

To an outsider, the gathering of Beliebers in such large proportions can be dizzying, if not downright menacing: strange words to ascribe mostly prepubescent girls in the awkward middle stages of growth spurts, hormonal changes, and corrective braces and eyewear. But the apparent strength of their allegiance to Justin – whose music and lyrics are mostly innocuous, if not downright dumb, to most grown adults or “serious” music fans – is what is most disorienting. The communal desires, the vast groupthink, and the worship of a (false?) idol smells of blind consumerism at best and fascism at worst. 

Eternal Summer of Love: The Evolution of the Music Festival

Sandra Canosa

This summer, chances are you’ll never be too far away from a music festival. For every dog day weekend of the high summer months, there’s an outdoor festival to match in every stretch of the country, of every genre, and of every shape and size. From the behemoth veteran multi-day festivals like Coachella, Bonnaroo, and Lollapalooza to backyard one-offs, inner-city park stages, and burgeoning neo-Woodstock imitators popping up around every corner, the dawn of the 21st century has breathed a vigorous new life into the music festival concept.

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