might have to see this movie just to definitively eye roll. there’s nothing all that charming about nostalgia for a dying field when you still work in that field, sry

I’m gonna need every woman writer who wrote about music once to calm down about Mile End Kicks and stop quoting the Euphoria “is this play about us” line. The nostalgic fangirling is lame especially for a movie where she fucks her sources

Girlhood at the Epicenter of Alternative Music’s Mainstream Moment Hole’s Melissa Auf der Maur looks back lucidly on her 1990s in “Even the Good Girls Will Cry,” as I seek out memoirs by levelheaded women artists from the generation before mine.

Something that lives rent-free in my head since reading the Hole bassist's memoir: Courtney Love once called Melissa Auf der Maur "Billy Corgan's purse."

THE HAIR-LOSS DRUG REWRITING THE RULES OF MASCULINITY -- a headline about finasteride, which now has a big sparkly feature in the New York Times

If you are very lucky, one day you will find a job you love as much as the NYT loves covering gender-affirming care for cis people

congrats to my foodcrit comrades, this rules

cum get yr honey (and by honey I mean my review of Robyn’s delightful horny-mom album)

wrote about grace ives, who swings for the pop fences and almost gets there

Does Horny Music Have to *Sound* Horny? Our podcast crew goes deep on the merits of thirsty tracks in honor of Kacey Musgraves’ horned-up new single. Plus: Mike and Earl Sweatshirt, and a clinically insane cover of Van Halen’s “Jump.”

Now on our podcast Waste or Taste: J Balvin, Amber Mark, and Steve Vai's methed-out World Cup song, horny country music, Earl Sweatshirt, and more

Slowing Down With Jana Horn This experimental folk singer-songwriter moonlights as a short story author—or is it the other way around?

You don’t just show up to breakfast with a stranger and stick your finger directly in the mother wound over pancakes and eggs. That kind of talk is for the cigarette afterwards.

one of the craziest music stories I’ve heard in a min

of interest to few certain strains of music heads: huge stash of NME back issues now dropping on @archive.org, 300+ issues, 1969-1983 (so far). archive.org/search?query...

On Friday, I proudly joined the workers of the Nitehawk Union – the servers, runners, cooks, and bartenders who make it a real community movie theater – in their fight for a good union contract, with the wages they deserve & need to survive in this expensive city. (2/2)

A tweet that reads “The new academic wealth gap isn't your university. It's not even your advisor's connections. It's who knows Claude can turn 50+ research papers into a thesis chapter in 3 hours and who's still manually coding qualitative data. I just watched a sociology PhD skip 8 weeks of analysis. Here are the 9 prompts they used:”

fuck this so much

we are so not prepared for the mountain of dogshit “scholarship” about to flood journals everywhere

Is Suno the Music Industry’s Biggest Nightmare — or Greatest Hope? Suno, an artificial intelligence music startup, is an increasingly controversial topic. Is it the industry's biggest nightmare or greatest hope?

www.billboard.com/pro/suno-ai-...

the continued normalization and laundering of anti-intellectualism, as seen here, is and will continue to have lasting damaging effects on young and aspiring artists of all mediums for generations to come.

new podcast ep! this is actually not my deranged take!

Corporate Media Buries Story of US and Israel Killing 168 in Girls School Attack No front-page stories in NYT, WSJ, WaPo. No mention on NBC and CBS Sunday Shows. No stand alone segments on Evening News shows. A death count on par with the OKC bombing is relegated to the back page.

“No front-page stories in NYT, WSJ, WaPo. No mention on NBC and CBS Sunday Shows. No stand alone segments on Evening News shows. A death count on par with the OKC bombing is relegated to the back page.” www.columnblog.com/p/corporate-...

Episode 12: February 2026 Headlines | Critical Listening Get more from Critical Listening on Patreon

feb headlines ep of @criticallistening.bsky.social is live! we discuss spotify's recent update to shareholders (aka I read the spotify q4 earnings call transcript so you don't have to) & also chat with @jillmapes.bsky.social about her essay on the wasserman exodus--
www.patreon.com/posts/episod...

I guess my problem with the defense of "Wuthering Heights" on the grounds that Fennell intended to recreate the feeling of reading the book as a hormone-wrecked teen is that Kate Bush did precisely that, *as* a hormone-wrecked teen, in a four-and-a-half-minute song. And she did it better.

asking the important questions over here

this is what happens when you fire real arts critics

Benito is a threat b/c he makes art so alluring and enjoyable you want to understand everything about it and then you end up learning about sugar and slavery and colonialism and the Taínos and Hawaii and then you probably have some thoughts of your own, and that's why art is powerful and dangerous

Meet the Minneapolis Punks Fighting ICE People in the DIY music scene are using the community organizing tactics they learned by putting on shows to battle ICE.

In the greater story of Minneapolis’ resistance to ICE, one chapter absolutely belongs to the punks organizing at every level. They’re observing, fundraising, running supplies, opening their spaces, coordinating, etc.

A story for @rollingstone.com. Thanks to everyone who spoke on the record.

If you don’t cover culture, you’re not a newspaper.

glenna is the only other cool music human to escape teeny tiny hubbard, ohio. we luv to see it!!!!

THE FUTURE IS OURS TO MAKE | Chris Richards | Substack Music reccos/rants/prayers/curses by critic and co-listener Chris Richards. Click to read THE FUTURE IS OURS TO MAKE, by Chris Richards, a Substack publication. Launched 3 hours ago.

I want to do the best writing I’ve ever done and I’d be honored to have you as my reader

First proper electronic missive goes out Monday, February 9

Subscribe here:

thefutureisourstomake.substack.com

THE FUTURE IS OURS TO MAKE

I want more solo newsletter writers to team up and offer discounted subscription bundles… tho at that point I have to laugh bc we are just deconstructing the idea of a publication / remaking it in smol form

lmao I do not miss showing up to find they’ve shoved p4k into increasingly smaller nooks and closets

it sucks so much, and I agree the solo churn is not actually a solution for laid-off writers

this isn’t to say, don’t subscribe to wired. this is a reminder that your contributions to indie outlets and newsletters make a bigger difference on an individual level.

yes but the $40 to wired also goes toward paying CN execs’ multimillion-dollar salaries, a lease they can’t get out of in the WTC, and more corpo stuff that doesn’t make the journalism any better