From polemical reworkings of flamenco idioms and the 13th-century Occitan romance Flamenca in El mal querer (2018) to feminine interventions in the Caribbean-flavored musical eclecticism of Motomami (2022), Catalan-born Rosalía Vila Tobella knows how to make a splash. Her fourth studio album, Lux,… Read More
The rapid fame of an AI-generated gospel tribute song titled “We Are Charlie Kirk” highlights strange new connections between American evangelicalism, political identity, and social media culture. Gospel here refers to both biblical-inflected language and a varied set of musical idioms that have circulated across Read More
Big Feelings and Critical NostalgiaReleased in January 2024, I Saw the TV Glow (ISTTVG) caused an improbable sensation for an arthouse film that never quite coheres into a recognizable genre. Though horrifying, it can’t be called a horror movie; at the same time, though highly stylized and full of teenaged existentialism, it’s… Read More
The author would like to thank Adriana da Silva for providing Spanish-language transcription and translation assistance. When Lin-Manuel Miranda hosted Saturday Night Live on October 8, 2016, his opening monologue quickly morphed into an equally personal and political reimagining of “My Shot,” the first solo for founding father Alexander Hamilton, the… Read More
On the evening of August 8, 2008, the Buskirk-Chumley Theater of Bloomington, Indiana, opened its doors for the premiere of ¡Únicamente la verdad! (Only the Truth), the first opera by Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz (b. 1964). The work is a video-opera that was announced as the authentic story of… Read More
These days, you can’t bump the radio dial without Angela Lansbury’s matronly voice commanding we haul out that holly, just this very minute. The song is familiar… Read More
“Old Town Road,” a country-trap hit by 20-year-old rapper Lil Nas X, has become the unofficial soundtrack of 2019. The song has held the coveted top spot on the US Billboard Hot 100 for the past 13 weeks—a feat no other hip hop or… Read More
In one of the final scenes of Avengers: Endgame (Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, 2019), the camera sweeps around Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr.) memorial service, panning across generations of Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) characters, played by some of the most famous Hollywood stars. Read More
Critics haven’t really loved Sia’s album of Christmas originals, Everyday is Christmas. For that matter, neither have listeners, as Everyday’s metacritic score is lagging significantly behind her other albums. Katherine St. Asaph at Pitchfork describes the listening experience as being “like opening a gift where someone’s forgotten to remove the… Read More