A crowd of protestors were gathered outside of Mayor Muriel Bowser’s house in 2020, calling on the city to defund the Metro Police Department (MPD) as music drifted over the crowd. In the middle stood OnRaé LaTeal, a local musician playing songs from her album “The...
The reaction to the music video for “Stateside” by PinkPantheress, featuring Zara Larsson, had me thinking: are we in a new era for music videos? After its release, I saw a complete wealth of fan edits, commentary, and clips of the video circulating on my TikTok “For...
Few genres are as dependent on their audience as Go-go, which insists community as a central characteristic. In 1970s Washington, D.C., Washingtonians craved community. The city was divided into two economic classes. The first consisted of those affiliated with the...
We are now six years into the current decade, and with that time has come lots of incredible music. From the development of hyperpop to the relative fall-off of modern country music to the constant rebranding of indie rock, the 2020s have given us plenty of...
You’ve heard it before: “The era of college bands is behind us.” The conventional wisdom goes something like this—music today belongs to the solo bedroom producer, to the Doechii’s, the Clairo’s of the world, to whoever is quietly uploading demos to SoundCloud at 2...
In the 1970s, Britain was plagued by economic stagnation. High unemployment, mounting inflation, and the introduction of the three-day week (restricted commercial uses of electricity to just three days) pushed many families into financial strain. Punks channeled their...
For several weeks, the song “Walk My Walk” by Breaking Rust topped Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, alongside a number of songs by Caine Walker. All of these charting songs were written and performed by AI, becoming part of a growing trend of AI “artists”...
This past June marked the 30th anniversary of one of my favorite albums, “Jagged Little Pill" by Alanis Morrissette. I think fondly of sitting in the backseat of my parent’s car when “Ironic” would come on the radio. My dad would revel in how much he loved the song,...
This year's Grammy nominations are out, which offers me an exciting opportunity to take a look at a questionable amalgamation of nominees in categories that never quite line up. But who doesn’t love award shows! This year, Kendrick Lamar leads the pack with a total of...
Over the past few years, you most likely noticed the gradual rise of a pop superstar. Although not new to the limelight, the release of Sabrina Carpenter’s fifth studio album “emails i can’t send” and the virality of its song “Nonsense” propelled her to a new level of...