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Demonstrators against police brutality.
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The Explicit Anthem of Anti-Racist Protest

Rap group N.W.A. understood vulgarity and controversy were necessary to draw attention to police brutality.
by Felicia Angeja Viator via Made By History on June 22, 2020
Dr. Dre.

The Complicated Truths of Dr. Dre’s ‘The Chronic’

No rap album has quite the mythology attached to it—as a game changer, a king maker, a genre expander. But legends aren’t exactly fact.
by Justin Sayles via The Ringer on April 20, 2020
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Coronavirus Has a Playlist. Songs About Disease Go Way Back.

Coronavirus songwriting has gone as global as the pandemic itself, creating a new genre called pandemic pop. It’s a tradition with a long history.
by Anthony DeCurtis via Retro Report on April 17, 2020

The Unquiet Hymnbook in the Early United States

This post is a part of our “Faith in Revolution” series, which explores the ways that religious ideologies and communities shaped the revolutionary era.
by Christopher N. Phillips via Age of Revolutions on March 2, 2020

Heavy Metal, Year One: The Inside Story of Black Sabbath's Groundbreaking Debut

A look back on the album that kick-started a worldwide movement, half a century since Ozzy Osbourne first bellowed, “What is this that stands before me?”
by Kory Grow via Rolling Stone on February 11, 2020

Why are Pop Songs Getting Sadder Than They Used to Be?

The most popular songs today are sadder than they were 50 years ago: can cultural evolution explain this negative turn?
by Alberto Acerbi, Charlotte Brand via Aeon on February 4, 2020

Afloat with Static

Jenny Turner reviews "Face It" by Debbie Harry.
by Jenny Turner via London Review of Books on December 14, 2019
Photo of a large crowd at the Altamont Festival, 1969.

What Happened to Rock and Roll After Altamont?

On the Grateful Dead's “New Speedway Boogie,” and the true end of the Sixties.
by Buzz Poole via Literary Hub on December 6, 2019

The Songs of Canceled Men

A new book asks how music criticism can reckon with the lives of immoral artists.
by Joe Bucciero via The Nation on November 19, 2019
Blind Willie Johnson animation

Drawn and Recorded: Blind Willie in Space

Dark was the night, cold was the ground, and brilliant is that song drifting through space.
by Drew Christie, Bill Flanagan via Aeon on October 31, 2019

How Isaac Hayes Changed Soul Music

The political rumblings beneath his 1969 album, "Hot Buttered Soul."
by Emily J. Lordi via The New Yorker on October 1, 2019

A Lifetime Of Labor: Maybelle Carter At Work

Maybelle Carter witnessed the dawn of the recording era and helped create country music as one of the genre's biggest acts.
by Jessica Wilkerson via NPR on August 14, 2019

An Ives Fourth

Nostalgia or nightmare?
by Sudip Bose via The American Scholar on July 4, 2019

William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ‘n’ Roll

From Bob Dylan to David Bowie to The Beatles, the legendary Beat writer’s influence reached beyond literature into music in surprising ways.
by Casey Rae via Longreads on June 11, 2019
Still from a video game animation of a Black cowboy aiming a pistol at another.

‘Old Town Road’ and the History of Black Cowboys in America

A songwriter-historian weighs in on the controversy over Lil Nas X’s country-trap hit.
by Dom Flemons, Jonathan Bernstein via Rolling Stone on April 5, 2019

Oklahoma Was Never Really O.K.

A new production exposes the darkness that’s always been at the heart of the musical — and the American experiment.
by Frank Rich via Vulture on April 2, 2019

Punjabi Convoy

A history of trucking in America, told through the music that has kept truckers company on the lonely road.
by Nick Murray via Popula on March 25, 2019

The Most Important Album of 1968 Wasn’t The White Album. It Was Beggars Banquet.

It saved the Rolling Stones, altered the trajectory of music history, and turns 50 this week.
by Jack Hamilton via Slate on December 6, 2018
Painting of the mouth of a cave.

Down in the Hole: Outlaw Country and Outlaw Culture

Country music has often stood, as it were, with one foot in and one foot out of the cave.
by Max Fraser via Southern Cultures on October 16, 2018

The Vietnam War: A History in Song

The ‘First Television War’ was also documented in over 5,000 songs.
by Justin Brummer via History Today on September 25, 2018
Colorful illustration of Larry Norman, haloed by yellow.

The Unlikely Endurance of Christian Rock

The genre has been disdained by the church and mocked by secular culture. That just reassured practitioners that they were rebels on a righteous path.
by Kelefa Sanneh via The New Yorker on September 17, 2018
Two posters of the "We Can Do It!" posters with Rosie the Riveter hang on a wall.

Rosie the Riveter Isn’t Who You Think She Is

While the female factory worker is a pop icon now, the “We Can Do It!” poster was unknown to the American public in the 1940s.
by Erick Trickey via Retropolis on September 3, 2018
The cover of Behold, a Pale Horse by Milton William Cooper.

The Conspiracist Manual That Influenced a Generation of Rappers

How "Behold a Pale Horse" found its way to the Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep’s Prodigy, Busta Rhymes, Tupac Shakur, NAS, and more.
by Mark Jacobson via Vulture on August 22, 2018
Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin Was the Defining Voice of the 20th Century

No one else sang as well as her, and no other singer changed popular music as much as her.
by Jack Hamilton via Slate on August 16, 2018

John Wesley Harding at Fifty: WWDD?

Bob Dylan's confessional album resisted the political radicalism and activism of 1967.
by Anthony Chaney via U.S. Intellectual History Blog on June 13, 2018

The Historical Roots of Blues Music

The blues is not "slave music," but the music of freed African Americans.
by Lamont Pearley Sr. via Black Perspectives on May 9, 2018

Agriculture Wars

On country music as a lens through which to trace the corporatization of American farming.
by Nick Murray via Viewpoint Magazine on March 12, 2018

‘The Snake’: How Trump Appropriated a Radical Black Singer’s Lyrics

A former communist from Chicago wrote the song in the 1960s, decades before Trump turned it into an anti-immigrant fable.
by Eli Rosenberg via Washington Post on February 24, 2018

Mourning John Perry Barlow, Bard of the Internet

Barlow was a poet, a cowboy, a philosopher, and the internet's staunchest ally.
by Steven Levy via Wired on February 7, 2018

Wouldn’t You Love to Love Her?

A biography of Stevie Nicks does little to dispel the magic.
by Emily Gould via Bookforum on January 3, 2018
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