Best Music Journalism: June 2014

Oh! You Kid! (Jody Rosen, Slate)
The tagline for this piece is a pretty great description of what you’ll get. “How a sexed-up viral hit from the summer ’09 – 1909 – changed American pop music forever.” Jody Rosen has been doing work on music from this time period for a long time now – check his excellent White Christmas if you haven’t already – and I’m always impressed with how wonderfully modern he makes the music from the early 20th century sound. This is music writing at its finest, putting things seldom heard these days into a context where anyone can understand and appreciate it.

Ordinary Machines: Pretty When You Cry (Lindsay Zoladz, Pitchfork)
Lindsay Zoladz is one of my favorite music writers from the past few years, even if she doesn’t often talk specifically about music all that much. It’s her insights as to the social aspect of listening that I find so fascinating, and this recent piece about Lana Del Rey is no exception. In it, she talks about “gloomy online teen-girl aesthetic,” and skewers the still-pervasive idea that females should be taking the photographs of the band – and not fronting them.

Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire's Music Biz Misadventures (Leon Neyfakh, Rolling Stone)
Leon Neyfakh’s recent day as a robot was a stellar piece of personality-led reporting, so I was sure that this Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire would be equally as entertaining. I wasn’t wrong. eXquire is having a tough time of it at the moment, trying to recalibrate his career after a single hit catapulted him to a major label record deal and confined him to an impossible persona. It’s a well-worn tale, but Neyfakh catches vivid details – the moment where eXquire steals an umbrella, for one – that make this feel incredibly fresh. 

Nashville's Son: The Life and Death of an Indie-Rock Prince (Amanda Shapiro, SPIN)
I wasn’t quite sure about this piece when I first clicked on it, because the subject matter wasn’t immediately interesting to me. (I’m not a huge fan of the bands that have come out of Nashville over the past few years.) But after a few hundred words, I was hooked. The amount of detail that Amanda Shapiro has gotten about Ben Todd’s life and death is incredible, and she unspools the tale slowly enough to draw you in – and quickly enough that there’s an inexorable momentum to the whole thing. Todd’s death is tragic, but his mark will clearly be felt on Nashville for a long time to come. 

Go Aerosmith: How “Head First” Became the First Digitally Downloadable Song 20 Years Ago Today (Devin Schiff, Noisey)
I distinctly remember playing Aerosmith’s Revolution X in a video game arcade for a number of hours one summer afternoon long ago, pumping quarter after quarter into the machine. Around that same time, the group became the first to offer up a song for digital download as well. But – as Devin Schiff neatly outlines in this piece for Noisey – it wasn’t the group making these sort of cross-platform decisions. Schiff finds the record company team that was behind what was essentially a marketing stunt. (The track took more than an hour to download.) Nothing earth-shattering here, but a nice piece that details a moment that pushed the music industry “begrudgingly forward.” 

Honorable Mention

The 14 Pieces of Software That Shaped Modern Music (John Twells, FACT)
A few months late on this one, but this is a masterful listicle that both entertains and educates.

Think Before You Clap: You Could Be Beat Deaf (Elizabeth Blair, NPR)
Ever wonder why your friend doesn’t have rhythm? This article may explain why.

A Journey To Avebury: Stewart Lee Interviews Julian Cope (Stewart Lee, The Quietus)
Irascible comic meets “local mad cunt.”