The God Phone By Leora Smith Feature What happens when ordinary people play God to strangers? Leora Smith explores the history of one of the oldest art installations at Burning Man and the conversations that unfold there.
What I Did for (Strange) Love By Laura Bond Feature As a teen, Laura Bond went all out to meet Depeche Mode — and to hang onto her best friend.
Learning from Perimenopause and a Kpop Idol By Wendy Gan Feature Struggling with fluctuating hormones, Wendy Gan is inspired by the musician Mino to stop muting herself and return to writing.
Bikini Kill — and My Bunkmates — Taught Me How to Unleash My Anger By Longreads Feature While away at summer camp, Melissa Febos discovers the power of her generation’s rage and feminism.
The (Loud) Soundtrack to My Struggle with Faith By Anna Gazmarian Feature After being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Anna Gazmarian grapples with her evangelical upbringing, and finds solace in screamo music.
Rock Me Gently By Soraya Roberts Feature The classic rock star wanted to stick it to The Man, and did so bender by selfish bender. The new rock star knows you can’t do it alone.
Pages You Can Dance To: A Book List By Brittany Allen Feature Either Martin Mull or Frank Zappa or Elvis Costello once said writing about music is as pointless as dancing about architecture. Which doesn’t account for how I’ve danced to all these books.
Live Through This: Courtney Love at 55 By lisawhill Feature Lisa Whittington-Hill on why Courtney Love deserves to be the girl with the most cake.
Concealing a Catastrophe: ‘The Day the Music Burned’ By Krista Stevens Highlight “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.”
Sing a Song of Hope: ‘Everything will be all right’ By Krista Stevens Highlight “Like, wow. This is another family I have found.”
The Revolution…Without Prince By Kevin Sampsell Feature Hoping to reconnect to their love for the iconic musician, Kevin Sampsell and an old girlfriend go to hear his best known band play without him.
‘Play Another Slow Jam, This Time Make It Sweet’ By Danielle Jackson Feature The term “slow jam” became widely popular when a song performed by Midnight Star debuted in 1983.
What to Read After ‘Leaving Neverland’ By Danielle Jackson Reading List A list of longreads to make sense of ‘Leaving Neverland.’
Hanif Abdurraqib on Loving A Tribe Called Quest By Jonny Auping Feature “I wasn’t interested in writing the definitive book on A Tribe Called Quest. I was trying to write the definitive book on a single arc of fandom.”
Johnny Rotten, My Mom, and Me By Kimberly Mack Feature Kimberly Mack recalls the ways in which rock music bonded her with her African American mom, and how those fierce sounds helped them cope with the poverty, violence, and despair both outside and inside their Brooklyn home.
You’re Just Too Good to Be True By Kavita Das Feature My on-again, off-again love affair with Engelbert Humperdinck.
Why Must We Tarnish the Glittering Legacy of Italo Disco with Petty Squabbles By Michelle Weber Highlight There’s no “I” in “Disco.” Oh wait, yes there is. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Pulling Out All the Stops to Understand a Distant Father By Krista Stevens Highlight “The phrase ‘pull out all the stops’ comes from the organ; it’s fortunate for listeners’ eardrums that organists never do this.”
Musicians Come Clean on How They Live, Create, and Thrive While Sober By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Chris Heath at GQ interviews nine sober musicians on thriving creatively.
For the Love of Phish: ‘The Art of Letting Go’ By Krista Stevens Highlight “This is the other thing about Phish: you can be just as earnest and dorky as you want to be.”
Bruce Springsteen: Sadness, Love, Madness, and Soul By Krista Stevens Highlight “All you needed to do,” Springsteen says, “was to risk being your true self.” We ignore our demons at our peril.
What Has Everyone Got Against Dave Matthews? By Krista Stevens Commentary What’s not to like about Dave Matthews, asks Allison Williams.
The Meaning of “Aquemini” By Danielle Jackson Highlight OutKast’s masterful 1998 album “Aquemini” defined a bold and Black South and predicted today’s pop music landscape.
Falling in Love with Chicago at Night: An Interview with Jessica Hopper By Ashley Naftule Feature In “Night Moves,” Jessica Hopper is 80% on her bike and 20% at a show, memorializing a young adulthood spent in just one of “a million Chicagos” — but one that shaped a wide network of artists and writers.
The Dead End on My Record Shelf By Longreads Feature I believed that there was no music existing in the world with an unbroken connection to its original context. I was wrong.
J.R.’s Jook and the Authenticity Mirage By Longreads Feature When a young white musician gets invited to a house-party, the musicians he plays with show him a slice of blues culture many people assumed had died.
Lyrical Ladies, Writing Women, and the Legend of Lauryn Hill By Michael Gonzales Feature Joan Morgan’s “She Begat This” looks back at how Lauryn Hill crashed through hip-hop’s glass ceiling, while our critic looks at how the author and a cadre of black women writers did the same for hip-hop music journalism.
The Last of the Live Reviewers: An Interview with Nate Chinen By Matthew Kassel Feature Nate Chinen may have been the last full-time jazz reviewer at any American newspaper. He says jazz hasn’t been in a better place since the ’60s — but the commercial infrastructure is broken.
We Stand on Guard for Bieber By Soraya Roberts Feature How Canadian is Justin Bieber? His hometown’s “Steps to Stardom” exhibit provides some answers.
Weird in the Daylight By Longreads Feature The story of Sadlack’s Heroes, the Raleigh dive bar that helped galvanize the alternative country scene in the 1990s.
