What will England be like with fewer music magazines?
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Ten Outstanding Stories to Read in 2023
Ten hand-picked short stories to kick off your year in reading.
Best of 2022: Features
As part of Best of Longreads, our annual labor of love, we pored over all the stories we’ve picked in 2022 to create these year-end lists. The following features all embody the strong voice and excellent writing that made us fall in love with narrative journalism. Sweeping, hard-hitting, and emotional, each immerses us in a […]
On Watching Boys Play Music
“With a drink in my hand and earplugs responsibly in place, I’m very aware that I’ve spent more than half my life essentially standing in the same spot: off to one side of the stage (close but not too close), eyes forward, shifting weight from foot to foot.”
If You Love the Music of the Carter Family, Thank Leslie Riddle
“First, you exclude black people from the festivals. Then write them out by not recording them. And pretty soon, ‘you have this manufactured image of country music being white and being poor.'”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Maurice Chammah, Jeff Weiss, Rasha Elass, Danielle Tcholakian, and Lila Shapiro.
Honky-Tonk Tokyo
Country music became popular in Japan after World War II. Today, Tokyo has a vibrant underground country music scene.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Greg Tate, Alicia Inez Guzmán, Christian Wallace, Laura Hoffman, and Connie Wang.
What Do We Do Without Live Music?
Those of us who live for musical performances must find other ways to temporarily live without them.
Tangled Up in Bob Stories: A Dylan Reading List
Few musicians have generated as much music and as much study as this Nobel Prize winning singer-songwriter. Dylanology will last hundreds of years.

