May 2024: Debuting with a full meal of music writing
Howdy!
Welcome to the debut issue of Of Note.
With the release of new Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Maggie Rogers records as well as the start of Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS tour in the last month, there was a lot of focus on profiling and critiquing these dominant and ascending stars. It was fascinating to read about them through many different perspectives. This issue also highlights some great reporting at both national and local levels.
While there’s no set format (at least not yet) for Of Note, I will generally categorize things by theme in some manner to help organize the links and my thoughts.
Enjoy!
Report d'oeuvre
For the Chicago Reader, Kerry Cardoza does something we rarely see: A thoroughly reported follow up. In 2021, Michael Johnston, the owner of popular Chicago venues Schubas Tavern and Lincoln Hall, along with the music discovery platform Audiotree, stepped down from his roles as CEO and president after it was revealed he had secretly filmed a young woman undressing in his home. As we’ve seen with many #MeToo stories, the consequences didn’t last long.
Cardoza’s reporting dives deeply into Johnston’s continued involvement with the businesses. She addresses the complexity of the emotions - the desire to feel safe, to want justice, and to maintain community spaces for music - head on and shows that there may not be a perfect solution:
“What justice looks like might be different for everyone.”
Also, shout out to Sanya Glisic for the striking illustrations that accompany the piece.
Petrusich Platter
Talk to me for long enough and it’s bound to come up sooner or later that Amanda Petrusich of The New Yorker is my favorite music writer. Her ability to capture and describe what music feels like is unmatched. Her human observation skills are razor sharp, cutting away artifice and revealing what’s true. In April, she graced up with a ton of new writing.
Her essay from Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS world tour turns a simple concert report into a mini profile and personal essay that not only conveys the fun of the show and how it diverges from the giant stars stadium shows, but brings a ton of insight into how youth drives much of those differences.
Her critical ears examine Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Departed for a review that balances admiration for Swift’s ambition with “c’mon now” side eye at some of the goofier moments. Be sure to note this killer line:
“What is the point of all that money if it doesn’t buy you freedom from corporate branding?”
The jewel of our Petrusich Platter is this striking profile of Maggie Rogers. Petrusich does such an effective job of capturing Rogers’ mannerisms and tone that by the time she explicitly describes her personality later in the piece, as a reader I was just nodding along in agreement, recognizing something I now already knew. I’m a huge Rodgers fan (to the point that I just waited 7 hours in line to get tickets to her Chicago pop up show) and through this piece, I feel like I have a greater appreciation for both her and her career arc. To read her talk about wishing she had more agency over her viral discovery made me feel for her.
One hilarious moment really captures the magic of this profile:
“Once, when I was pestering her to describe her childhood, she stopped me, suggested that I could probably find most of the information I was looking for online, and then said, “This is a little bit like fact-check-y speed dating,” which did not feel like a celebration of my reportorial prowess.”
Thank you, Amanda, for including that.
Cowboy Carter Four Ways
Beyoncé’s complex, intricate country statement, Cowboy Carter, was ripe kindling for the best critical writers. I was stunned by how many different perspectives there were out there.
Craig Jenkins, Vulture’s reliable and smart music writer, marveled at the scope of Beyoncé’s achievement and works to decode it all, eventually lamenting that, despite her work, those who need its message most won’t hear it:
“But not even Beyoncé can implant a love of this music in people who grew up cut off from it.”
Yasmin Williams, a talented and increasingly popular Black instrumental guitarist, had a cutting critique in The Guardian arguing that Beyoncé is doing nothing more than using black country artists as props to further center and boost herself. The killer kicker is worth it.
In The Atlantic, Spencer Kornhaber, author of On Divas, zags a bit by focusing not on what the album says about genre, but rather what it says about the role of power. He builds a hypothesis that Cowboy Carter’s central theme is the power of the Black family unit.
When I heard Beyonce was making a country album, I knew then I’d be waiting to read NPR’s Ann Powers on the subject. As the author of several books on titanic women musicians (Joni Mitchell, Tori Amos), popular music history (Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music), and a frequent reporter on southern music, few are more well equipped to analyze Cowboy Carter.
Powers took a couple weeks to think about the album and the reaction to it, which leads her to believe that everyone is focusing too much on the seriousness of the concept and not enjoying the subversion happening throughout the album. Beyoncé is having fun and getting weird and that’s just as important.
A Bittersweet Dessert
When I started reading Nate Rogers’ “secret history” of the notorious “monkey peeing in its own mouth” video review of Jet’s Shine On in The Ringer, I did not expect it to be such a wonderful examination of the relationship between artist and critic. Rogers quickly answers the nagging questions - like who “wrote” the review - and uses it as reason to speak with the members of Jet. Their emotions around the review and their music really stuck with me:
“You don’t want to be a fucking footnote, you know what I mean? All artists strive for it, and none of them admit it.”
Thank you for reading!
Justin Anderson-Weber
