It wasn’t a dare made on a drunken night nor was it a private joke made with friends—one that would make us splutter at random moments to the displeasure of a passersby. It wasn’t even one of those mental promises made casually to myself (CVS run, get pens; sign up for dinner with faculty) that eventually slips into languid oblivion.
I don’t remember why I started listening to RadioNow 93.1, Indianapolis’ Top 40 radio station, but I know exactly when. I was nine, and it was the summer after third grade. Before this, I had basically stayed away from pop culture. I didn’t really get it, or like it, and there was a girl in my school who told me she was receiving shots to delay puberty because she had watched too much Britney Spears with her older siblings and it had somehow tricked her body into pressing “skip” over the last part of her pre-preteen years.
Late one Friday night, buzzed and carrying packs of sour candy from the Wa, I wandered to a room in Whitman. As my host and I sat on her bed, alternating handfuls of Sour Patch and some other Technicolor monstrosity, her roommate decided to show me a video for “Beauty and a Beat,” performed and directed by everyone’s favorite cultural punching bag: Justin Bieber.
Brian introduced me to rap music on bus #177 in what I think was fourth grade. I know it was 177 and not 181 or 161 because this memory is accompanied by a host of other unique sensory inputs: the … Read More
From the opening scene of, Life is But a Dream, it’s clear why The Washington Post criticized the documentary for having “no linear narrative…like a hallucinatory advertisement for success.” The recurring interview with Beyoncé takes place in an unnaturally well-lit … Read More
It is difficult to call the new HBO film “Beyoncé: Life Is But a Dream”—which debuted February 15—a documentary. More than anything, it comes across as self-promotion instead of an objective or illuminating take on its subject’s life. Beyoncé is … Read More
A couple weeks ago, legendary shoegaze band My Bloody Valentine released their first album in twenty-two years. The press surrounding the release of m b v was as extensive as any I’ve seen for a musical release in quite a long time. Why? What’s the big deal about this band coming back after so long?
This article began as something simple: write a nice review of Tame Impala’s critically acclaimed sophomore album, Lonerism. But then something struck me.
