On Yoko Ono’s 1974 album “A Story,” and stepping out from behind the ever-present shadow of John Lennon.

Neil Peart “was brilliant enough to skip two grades, starting high school at 12. He began drum lessons, practicing for a full year without an actual kit.”

Happy birthday, Dolly Parton! Here are seven longreads about the American singer-songwriter.

“Gilliam does believe that the end of society may soon be upon us. The question for him is: What shape will the new one take?”

“The world should not, cannot, go back to business as usual without a clearer understanding and consciousness of how we live.”

Pravesh Bhardwaj read and and shared 304 short stories on the #longreads Twitter hashtag in 2020. Here are his favorites.

Nothing made sense in 2020 — unless you were on the internet.

Alexandra Tanner spent this weird year following Mormon mommy bloggers on Instagram.

“Tyrian purple was a difficult color to manufacture. Thousands of snails were required to create a single ounce of dye.”

Here’s a selection of profiles that resonated with us this year.

“The first one I saw was on the path outside my house: a single white plastic glove, the fingers curled inward like a sleeping animal.”

Our top editors’ picks in arts and culture writing this year.

“Impending parenthood makes you reconsider the context of your own upbringing, and puts the work your parents did into a new light.”

“Undeniably, eBird … brings birders together and allows for rapid information sharing. It’s also created new—and sometimes contentious—etiquette and social dynamics.”

Blake Butler writes movingly about his late wife, poet Molly Brodak.

Music has been a salve this year, helping us cope with the myriad challenges that 2020 brought. Here are some favorite pieces of music writing we picked in 2020.

“Exploring the cosmos is a way for us to know ourselves. Each time we look up, in some way we are making contact with each other, with our past, present, and future.”

An embroidery collective in Mexico sews the stories of slain women.

“She wielded her guitar like a weapon and distorted the sound: a guitar technique that was completely original at the time and would be copied by legions of rock guitarists in the decades after.”

“I didn’t know at first what I was doing. I was just trying to represent the inside of the feeling.”

“Darkness obscures and sunlight reveals, but dusk—that liminal moment in between—murmurs suggestions.”

From way back in ’80s Philadelphia, Elizabeth Isadora Gold remembers her first writing teacher, the mail art artist/lyricist Stu Horn.

On Syd Barrett’s time with Pink Floyd and making an album with household objects and found sounds.

Remembering the woman who outsang Ray Charles.

A professor embarks on a six-month binge of celebrity-led online courses.

What if the Olympic Games never come back?

Generations of musicians got their start busking the streets of the Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas, Texas. After a decade of ‘hobo-ing’ around cities like New Orleans, Paris, and New York, Charley Crockett discovered it was his turn.

“I’m working on a book about Arctic explorers, and that means swimming in a sea of sorrow.”

Although the sound of the music has changed, country’s themes have endured.

Captain Scott took jars to the Antarctic with him, and Edmund Hillary took one up Everest. Marmalade is part of the British national myth. Livvy Potts wants to know why.