Tag: music

Music has been a salve this year, helping us cope with the myriad challenges that 2020 brought. Here are some favorite pieces of music writing we picked in 2020.

“She wielded her guitar like a weapon and distorted the sound: a guitar technique that was completely original at the time and would be copied by legions of rock guitarists in the decades after.”

Generations of musicians got their start busking the streets of the Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas, Texas. After a decade of ‘hobo-ing’ around cities like New Orleans, Paris, and New York, Charley Crockett discovered it was his turn.

“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.'”

It seems like everyone in the world loves “Fetch the Bolt Cutters.” So why don’t I? On the isolation of disconnection.

“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.”

“She can be shy and insecure. And yet she didn’t hesitate to stare down the cameras on American television to call out one of the most powerful men in the world.”

For years, singer-songwriter Paul Curreri was a shouter of singular beauty. Then he went quiet — slowly, at first, then all of a sudden.

“Before he died a few years later, my father told me there were almost no tocaoras — female flamenco guitarists — in the world. If I kept practicing, he said, I could be one of the first.”

Jessica Lynne remembers a long distance love affair that began in Miami and the Billie Holiday song that kept her company through the relationship’s transitions.

“No it’s not about me. It’s about the music, it’s about this moment.”

“We had nothing to lose,” Cary Ann said. “Fuck it. Band. Family. Let’s give it a shot. . . . Handshake, spit on it. If it gets too nasty we’ll cut and run.”

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.

As a teen, Laura Bond went all out to meet Depeche Mode — and to hang onto her best friend.

Struggling with fluctuating hormones, Wendy Gan is inspired by the musician Mino to stop muting herself and return to writing.

While away at summer camp, Melissa Febos discovers the power of her generation’s rage and feminism.

After being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Anna Gazmarian grapples with her evangelical upbringing, and finds solace in screamo music.

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.

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.

Lisa Whittington-Hill on why Courtney Love deserves to be the girl with the most cake.

“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.”

“Like, wow. This is another family I have found.”

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.

The term “slow jam” became widely popular when a song performed by Midnight Star debuted in 1983.

A list of longreads to make sense of ‘Leaving Neverland.’

“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.”

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.

My on-again, off-again love affair with Engelbert Humperdinck.

There’s no “I” in “Disco.” Oh wait, yes there is. This is why we can’t have nice things.

“The phrase ‘pull out all the stops’ comes from the organ; it’s fortunate for listeners’ eardrums that organists never do this.”