“The vault fire was not, as UMG suggested, a minor mishap, a matter of a few tapes stuck in a musty warehouse. It was the biggest disaster in the history of the music business.”
Search results
Posted inEditor's Pick
How “Summer Girls” Explains a Bunch of Hits—and the Music of 1999
LFO’s breakout song is remembered today primarily as an ode to Abercrombie & Fitch and the girls who wore it. But there’s a deeper story behind the light-hearted song—one that includes tragedy and paints a picture of what music was like at the turn of the century.
Posted inNonfiction
A Sketch Artist, a Grieving Mother, and An Unsolved Mystery
They set out to solve a cold case. The more they dug, the more terrifying the truth became.
Posted inArts & Culture, Story
Remembering João Gilberto
Eccentricity was inseperable from this musical innovator’s artistic vision.
Posted inNonfiction
White Looks
Should white critics cover black culture? Only if they’re able to own their whiteness.
Posted inNonfiction
‘This Wasn’t His First Time’
A kidnapping deemed a hoax, the newbie detective who cracked the case, and the Harvard-trained lawyer whose mental unraveling set the whole story in motion.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Rhiannon Giddens and What Folk Music Means
John Jeremiah Sullivan’s profile of American folk singer, composer, and MacArthur Fellow Rihannon Giddens includes a history of the influential, but little known black antebellum fiddler Frank Johnson, as well as the 1898 racial massacre in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Nonfiction, Story
Odetta Holmes’ Album One Grain of Sand
The singular singer released her groundbreaking album in 1963, the same year as the March on Washington, and used her art and appearance as weapons in the Civil Rights struggle.
Posted inNonfiction
Me and You
Two friends, Hurricane Katrina, a suicide, and the pain and beauty that holds us all together.
