Clik here to view.
Britney Spears: American Transcendentalist
Take a stroll around the internet and read the major reviews of Britney Spears’s new album, Britney Jean: Rolling Stone, Spin, Billboard, etc. Opinions are mixed, but few music writers (with one...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Can Pop Save Us All?
In a previous piece for this site, I wrote about music as a vehicle for accessing what I call “emotional culture.” I explained my personal connection to a few different songs, across multiple genres,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Internet is Trying to Make You Cry
Writing, for me, has always been an emotionally charged experience, the ebbs and flows of language serving as a kind of barometer of my internal affective reality. It is a release, a catharsis that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Success Sans Tragedy: the Story of Katy Perry
Read the favorable reviews of the following films and you will get a sense of how thoroughly the rock-doc, music biopic genre has been reinvigorated: Montage of Heck, Amy, What Happened Miss Simone?,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dame Ethel Smyth: Feminine/Feminist Composer
On March 12, 1903, the Metropolitan Opera staged its first-ever opera by a female composer: Der Wald, by Dame Ethel Smyth. There would only be two performances of Smyth’s opera at the Met. The first...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Mechanical Age: Automata between social critique and the uncanny
In 1824, Italian poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi (1789-1837) wrote a fictitious announcement to be included in his famous Moral Essays. The imaginary Academy of Syllographs would have awarded a...
View Article
