Whitney Houston was destined to become as revered as her godmother, Aretha Franklin, before drugs and a toxic marriage caused her to hit rock bottom. A look at the pop icon’s rise and fall, and her final days, when it looked like Houston was going to make a comeback: “[Clive Davis] enlisted Diane Warren to […]
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Posted inEditor's Pick
Earl Sweatshirt Is Back from the Wilderness
The rapper from Odd Future, whose disappearance became a pop music mystery, speaks out on where he went: Coral Reef Academy, a therapeutic retreat for at-risk boys in Vaitele, outside of the Samoan capital of Apia: “As Odd Future became more popular, though, his absence was harder to ignore. While Ms. Harris remained largely silent, […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Return of the Hit Man
Cradling a cosmopolitan in his plump right hand, Don Kirshner is reminiscing about his former life as a pop-music mogul and getting a little wistful. All the hits, all the bands, all the favors he did for up-and-comers. But here he sits, at the best table in this swanky restaurant, pretty much forgotten. Slighted is […]
Posted inNonfiction
The Last Hand-Me-Down: Retracing My Brother’s Life Through His Clothes
Tom Molanphy | Loud Memories of a Quiet Life (OutPost 19) | May 2012 | 18 minutes (4,652 words) Tom Molanphy earned his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. He freelances for 10Best/Travel Media Group at USA Today and teaches creative writing, composition and journalism at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. This […]
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction
The Bohemians: The San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature
Ben Tarnoff | The Bohemians, Penguin Press | March 2014 | 46 minutes (11,380 words) Download .mobi (Kindle) Download .epub (iBooks) For our Longreads Member Pick, we’re thrilled to share the opening chapter of The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature, the book by Ben Tarnoff, published by The Penguin Press.
Posted inUncategorized
Return of the Hit Man
Return of the Hit Man Cradling a cosmopolitan in his plump right hand, Don Kirshner is reminiscing about his former life as a pop-music mogul and getting a little wistful. All the hits, all the bands, all the favors he did for up-and-comers. But here he sits, at the best table in this swanky restaurant, […]
Posted inUncategorized
Longreads Best of 2012: Paige Williams
Paige Williams is a National Magazine Award-winning writer whose stories have been anthologized in five Best American volumes. She teaches at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and edits Nieman Storyboard. For elegance + acute observation in the service of theme Belle Boggs’ “The Art of Waiting,” on fertility (Orion) “The family as a […]
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Playlist: 5 Podcast Episodes on the History of Hip-Hop
Gabrielle Gantz (@contextual_life) is the blogger behind The Contextual Life, a frequent longreader, and a fan of podcasts. 1. How Hip-Hop Works (Stuff You Should Know, 52:13) In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, hosts Chuck and Josh discuss the history of hip-hop, from The Sugar Hill Gang to the present. They add their own […]
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The Producers: A Reading List on Musical Masterminds
From Matt Graves: Here are six of his story picks on the topic of music producers, the often-overlooked architects of the music we hear and love. * * * 1. “The Song Machine: the Hitmakers Behind Rihanna,” by John Seabrook (The New Yorker, March 2012) In her ascent to the pop throne, Rihanna had some unlikely help: a […]
Posted inBooks, Member Pick, Nonfiction
‘Quebrado’: The Life and Death of a Young Activist
“If you survive me, tell them this: I never gave up.”
