Simon Reynolds

Before the internet, music weeklies like NME and Melody Maker shaped English listeners’ tastes and the national discourse. The slower pace of print publishing created a more digestible news cycle, a deeper reading experience, deep loyalties, and a thrilling anticipation between issues.

Twenty years after this famous pitch-correction technology beautifully modulated Cher’s voice in her hit song “Believe,” Auto-Tune has proven itself not a fad but a fixture. Where did it come from, and what does it do exactly?

David Bowie came out as gay in an interview with Melody Maker magazine in 1972, and it was the closet door heard ’round the world. But what did he mean by it?

“I’ve got this feeling that I really know New York very well and will be at home there.” A look back at the producer’s time in New York from 1978-1984:

“Within a few years of the Disc interview, he was spending extended periods of time in Manhattan. Then he moved wholesale and made New York his base for over half a decade. The ensuing period is without doubt the most fertile and impressive stretch of his life’s work, which included not just music but video art as well. Eno fed off New York’s border-crossing artistic energy, while catalyzing and contributing to it. There were also more playful ‘lifestyle’ reasons why Eno settled in Manhattan. ‘I moved to New York City because there are so many beautiful girls here,” he told Lester Bangs in 1979. “More than anywhere else in the world.'”