Category Archives: Music

Bigger Than Jesus: The Gospel of U2, Leonard Cohen, and Sufjan Stevens

Robert Burke Warren goes deep into his own story to talk about the persistence of God in pop, and how and why non-believers and doubting Thomases still go for it. Continue reading

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Dare To Be Stupid: Comedy Songs, The Best and the Rest

The ability to make people laugh is even rarer than the ability to make beautiful music. The combination of both, executed well, is cause for celebration. Amanda Nazario gives props to parody progenitors Stan Freberg, Allan Sherman, Tom Lehrer, et al, and the 21st century’s own master of making fun, “Weird Al” Yankovic, still riding high after debuting at number one last year. Continue reading

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Simple is Best: The Secret of AC/DC’s Success — A Conversation With Biographer Susan Masino

AC/DC biographer Susan Masino, also a longtime band friend, is perhaps the only writer to enjoy the honor of an actual shout-out in one of the band’s early tunes. (See below.) If that doesn’t give a biographer cred, nothing does. Masino’s Let There … Continue reading

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A Song Shall Lead (and Annoy) Them: “Let It Go” from Frozen

“Let It Go” crystallizes something intense and very real but otherwise formless, and little kids, who, bless them, do not know from “cool,” love it more than any other song, ever. Even boys. For the first time in history, boys do not categorically run from a Disney princess. They are drawn to Elsa. I am fortunate to bear witness to all of this, and so are you. At the risk of overstating it, it feels historic. Continue reading

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Interview with the Paranoid Style

Owen King sits down with Elizabeth Nelson Bracy of the Paranoid Style. Continue reading

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My Night with Nico

What does one do when Fellini movie star, Warhol icon, former bedmate of Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop, and Jackson Browne, and frontwoman of The Velvet Underground leaves the methadone clinic and walks in to your waitressing gig? Holly George-Warren, eminent rock scribe and esteemed guest at The Weeklings, was still slinging hash when she crossed paths with the chanteuse/muse in late seventies Manhattan, but she did not let the opportunity pass her by. Continue reading

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In Defense of Disco

At its height, the “Disco Sucks” movement drew fifty-nine thousand people to a Chicago stadium to watch a shock jock explode LPs, inciting a full-on riot of mostly white dudes. WTF? Our Robert Burke Warren, who became enamored of disco in the lusty confines of a Catholic school broom closet, writes about the music that arrived at the same time as his teens, and how it inspired him. Continue reading

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