Songs in Conversation: Prince & Peter Gabriel Making It Big

Putting two songs on aspirational success released a decade apart into conversation 26 years later.

“Beaten By the Wind: The Forgotten Mystery Movie at the Heart of Bob Seger’s ‘American Storm’”

In a guest essay, Ty Matejowsky examines the once ubiquitous and now mostly forgotten movie tie-in music video format through the example of one for a movie that never existed.

Retuning Nostalgia: Anti-Black Racism and the Cultural Politics of Country Music

Nicholas Miller returns with an essay on whiteness, country music nostalgia, and charting a new course to re-imagine the past and the future.

All-Female Fanfare: Examining Marvel Fanfare #38

When it is a surprise to the editor that both stories in a comic are written and drawn by women, it takes an engaged reader to consider the actual significance.

Reachin’ Not Drowning: Songs in Conversation About Abortion

The personal is political and sometimes – as in the case of abortion – the political is personal.

“I Didn’t Mean to Turn You Kong” – Seeking out #MeToo in Pop Music

Listening to Cherrelle’s “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On” in the #MeToo moment.

Imagining What Silence Looks Like: Prince & Queering the Popular Love Song

The dark sound and minimalist instrumentation on “If I Was Your Girlfriend” demonstrates Prince’s willingness to bend and distort expectations with a lyrical and sonic playfulness that challenges the listener to think beyond the obvious gender stereotypes inherent in most popular love songs.

“Nobody Speak” – Pulling Back the Curtain on Trumpist Politics

You wanna hear a good joke? Nobody speak, nobody get choked.

Hip Hop Levels Up: Sammus & Pieces in Space

Sammus embraces the kind of freedom afforded to grassroots, independent artists who don’t have corporate overseers menacing with strange gazes and mandates to sellout.

Songs in Conversation: Don’t Knock the Intimacy of Urban Sound

Tony Orlando & Dawn’s “Knock Three Times” vs. Suzanne Vega’s “Luka” in the soundscape of urban living.

“Forever is Already There” – On Thumb of the Maid

The best band no one has ever heard (or at the very least a quirky band whose one record brings me joy).

Songs in Conversation: Those are Some Fragile Men, Baby Doll.

Defamiliarizing gender to highlight its constructedness.

Back to the Old School: 5 Classic Hip Hop Albums You Need to Learn

“You know what you need to learn? Old school artists don’t always burn!”

“The Revolution was Postponed Because of Rain”

A song from ’95 about the state of Black Revolution in America in light of the appeal of consumerism and individual contentment.

“Hip Hop Started Out in the Art” – Tom Brevoort, Post-Racial Hip Hop & Comics

You can’t separate hip hop from race without looking like you’ve separated your head from sense.

1999: Radical Possibilities of Apocalypse

1999’s appeal emerges from a sense of danger, from the scandalous possibilities of a morality unbound by the coming apocalypse, disguised as synth-heavy dance pop

Songs In Conversation: I Can Go For Dialogics

Dialogics represent the rejection of a finality of meaning. It moves back and forth like a crossfade.

Cracking the Prototype: Serial Monogamy and the Pop Love Song

Songs that explore the more complex reality inherent in the tension between the intensity of romantic feelings and the experience of serialized monogamy.

So, You Say You Want a Revolution? It’s Gonna Be Alright, Just Buy Something.

The Nike commercial is simply a recapitulation of the song’s co-opting of revolutionary affect to sell popular music itself as a commodity and line the Beatles’ pockets.