Tomahawk Chopped and Screwed: The Indeterminacy of Listening
I’m happy to introduce the final post in Guest Editor Justin Burton‘s three part series for SO!, “The Wobble Continuum.” I’ll leave Justin to recap the series and reflect on it a little in his article...
View ArticleSounding Out! Podcast #26: Wobbling the Speakerspace
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Wobbling the Speakerspace SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST One last transmission from the Wobble Continuum series: a mix,...
View ArticleOf Resilience and Men: How Bieber, Skrillex, and Diplo Play with Gender in...
I want to listen to WAÜN in the context of Bieber’s performance of gender, specifically with an ear toward the way Skrillex and Diplo mix elements from dancepop’s 2015 toolkit to produce a track that...
View ArticleTrap Irony: Where Aesthetics Become Politics
This beat ‘bout to get murdered Thought this was Future when I heard it –Uncle Murda (“Panda” remix) Desiigner sounds kinda like Future. Probably you’ve noticed? Everyone else has. While some...
View ArticleMalcolm Gladwell’s Bad Aesthetics
Malcolm Gladwell, who recently wrapped the first season of his podcast Revisionist History, has been on a roll lately. Not a particularly endearing one, though. I’ve been trying to locate his nadir,...
View ArticleYou Got Me Feelin’ Emotions: Singing Like Mariah
Mariah Carey’s New Year’s Eve 2016 didn’t go so well. The pop diva graced a stage in the middle of Times Square as the clock ticked down to 2017 on Dick Clark’s Rockin New Year’s Eve, hosted by Ryan...
View ArticleBenefit Concerts and the Sound of Self-Care in Pop Music
Less than two weeks after a suicide bombing killed 22 people at the Manchester Arena following an Ariana Grande concert, the singer was back on stage in the city. She capped her three-hour One Love...
View ArticleTeach Me How To Dougie Like A Mediocre White Man
In the third episode of Twin Peaks: The Return (2017), we meet Dougie Jones, a new character who is, as an otherworldly being will tell him, “manufactured.” Dougie’s sonic presence on the show is...
View ArticleThey Can Hear Us: Surveillance and Race in “A Quiet Place”
The family in A Quiet Place (2018) lives a life marked by incessant trauma. Invisible to the hunters who are far more powerful than they are, the family remains safe from direct assault as long as they...
View ArticleWon’t Back Down: Tom Petty, Jason Aldean and Masculine Vulnerability
October 2017: a week after a Las Vegas gunman killed 58 people at an outdoor festival during a Jason Aldean set, Aldean squared up to the Saturday Night Live mic and soldiered through then-recently...
View ArticleCan’t Nobody Tell Me Nothin: Respectability and The Produced Voice in Lil Nas...
It’s been ten weeks now that we’ve all been kicking back in our Wranglers. allowing Lil Nas X’s infectious twang in “Old Town Road” to shower us in yeehaw goodness from its perch atop the Billboard Hot...
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The Queerness of Wham’s “Last Christmas”
Christmas pop songs tend to revolve around just a few basic topics: 1) Jesus, 2) Santa, 3) Did you notice it’s winter?, and 4) Love. These aren’t mutually exclusive categories, of course. For instance,...
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