The reviews editor at Pitchfork writes about the effects of streaming music on listeners and artists, the differences between passive and intentional music consumption, and the overall loss of our individual connection to music. The more time I spend on Spotify, the more it pushes me away from the outer edges of the platform and […]
Pitchfork
Posted inReading List
The Power and Business of Hip-Hop: A Reading List on an American Art Form
Stories of hip-hop’s genius, influence, struggle, and endurance.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Quote Posts, Quotes
The Messy Making of a Nearly Perfect Hip-Hop Album
Music as original as Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s sounds evergreen, but originality came with a high personal cost for its maker.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Quote Posts, Quotes
Auto-Tune: The Music Fad That Keeps on Giving
Cultural critic Simon Reynolds looks at 20 years of Auto-Tune.
Posted inNonfiction, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from John Lanchester, Bethany Barnes, Stephen Kearse, Warren Ellis, and Soraya Roberts.
Posted inArts & Culture, Quotes
The Gifts of (a) Prince
Prince gave a lot of music away—much of it to women he thought would do it justice.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Quotes
20 Years of Talking in Maths and Buzzing Like a Fridge
Radiohead’s OK Computer is 20 years old this year, and Anwen Crawford pens a lovely review-slash-analysis-slash-ode to this enduring album.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Essays & Criticism, Podcasts, Reading List, Uncategorized
Leave Them Alone! A Reading List On Celebrity and Privacy
Why do we feel like we own celebrities—not just their art or their products, but their images and their personal lives?
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Thousand Feet Per Second: OK Computer’s Sublime Velocity
On the 20th anniversary of Radiohead’s OK Computer, Anwen Crawford writes an analysis of — and love letter to — the album that “manages to suspend time at the speed of sound.”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Musical Genius Is a Gendered Idea
But really, what is a musician’s voice if not distinctive? Isn’t that… good? Entire pieces have been written about the voices of Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, so American and vital and wise in their manly scratchiness, like unshaved bristle and whiskey and dirt. Man voice make music good. Woman voice music bad: Too high. […]