The New Alternative
Last month, Nirvana entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the first time in nearly two decades — only their fifth time in history — thanks to a comic-book movie. The band’s 1991 track “Something in ...
26 Apr 202230min
Jump-starting the creative process with Allison Ponthier
Allison Ponthier knows the hardest part of making anything is getting started. When she was young, she “always wanted to write songs,” fanatically scribbling rhymes in a diary, but gave it up — the pr...
19 Apr 202219min
A Higher Power Ballad
The recorded version of Justin Bieber’s “Peaches” opens with a full-blast chorus alongside driving percussion and ringing guitars. But when he performed the song at this year’s Grammys, the song’s ins...
12 Apr 202226min
How sound becomes hearing
We love listening to music at a ridiculous level of detail. But the other day we heard a podcast that made us fundamentally question the accuracy and reliability of our own listening skills. In it the...
5 Apr 202240min
Listening 2 Britney: Gimme More
There’s no more iconic Britney lyric than the opening of “Gimme More.” It's 2007, four years since her last album In The Zone was released, and Britney is affirmatively back with the uptempo track lea...
29 Mar 202226min
Listening 2 Britney: Toxic
In 2003 Britney Spears released “Toxic,” a song that would make converts out of pop skeptics, be named one of the greatest tracks of the 21st century by multiple publications, and become a personal fa...
22 Mar 202227min
Listening 2 Britney: I'm a Slave 4 U
In the first three years of Britney Spears’ pop music career, she released annual, consecutive albums. In 1999 we got Baby One More Time – its lead single was #5 on the Billboard year-end Hot 100 char...
15 Mar 202228min
Listening 2 Britney: ...Baby One More Time
On a crisp Autumn morning in 1998, the world was introduced to the voice of Britney Spears, and pop would never be the same. Britney’s mix of vocal fry, percussive pronunciations, and timbral play on ...
8 Mar 202229min
