On the origins of the quintessential rock aria, and the powerhouse singer that served as its muse.
music history
Posted inBooks, History, Nonfiction, Story
The Brief Career and Self-Imposed Exile of Jutta Hipp, Jazz Pianist
Europe’s “First Lady of Jazz” moved to New York in 1955, played for five more years, then disappeared — while royalty checks piled up with her record label.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Why the “Black Grateful Dead” Thrives Outside of Top 40 Radio
For the Undefeated, music writer and essayist Bruce Britt offers a compelling history of soul band Maze.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
“BRAAAM!”: The Sound that Invaded the Hollywood Soundtrack
How Inception changed the way we listen to movies.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Diluted State of Punk
With a recent slew of documentary films and books, punk’s forty year old body has been repeatedly repackaged, sweetened and sold to the masses at the mall, mystifying and irritating many people in the process. In The Baffler, Eugenia Williamson analyzes punk’s history, evolution, literature and commodifycation and addresses the lingering question: what does being ‘punk’ even mean anymore more? Besides, anyone who’s seen […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Wild Times of Billy Idol
Before there was pop-punk, there was Billy Idol. More than any other artist of his era, the man born William Broad brought the style and attitude of punk rock into the American mainstream, via massive hits including “White Wedding” and “Rebel Yell.” For this, he was both celebrated and vilified. Fans adored Idol’s bad-boy image […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Do Music Biographies Really Enhance Our Musical Experience?
If [Rhiannon] Giddens were to tell us in a memoir that she’d been thinking about her own child when she sang, it would make the line a poignant narrative moment. But really, what would that reveal that we don’t know from her performance? It might risk drowning out other information we already have: Michael Brown’s […]
Posted inPodcasts, Quotes
Who Wrote ‘Happy Birthday’?
Most musicologists who’ve traced the origins of “Happy Birthday” agree that its musical score dates back to the work of two Kentucky sisters in the late 19th century: Mildred Jane Hill (b.1859), and Patty Smith Hill (b.1868). After graduating as valedictorian of Louisville Collegiate Institute, Patty went on to be a central figure in the progressive […]