Of course Kim Kardashian has a single coming out, and of course Kanye is in the video. I think it’s fascinating that music has become totally unmoored from skill, or artistic sensibility, it’s a part of the celebrity production process. Producers and songwriters and editors and the people who do your hair and help you pick your dress before you hit the red carpet are essentially... 

Probably my favorite cultural event of the year is the Christmas Revels, which I go see with one of my best friends from college every December. The performance of traditional music and pagent ends with this poem by Susan Cooper, which I adore. It’s called “The Shortest Day”:And so the Shortest Day came and the year diedAnd everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white worldCame... 

Thanks to a tweet from Shani, I devoured this two-part series on dancehall music and homophobia in Jamaica over the weekend. I won’t say anything else about it specifically because I really, really hope that people go read it. But to me, this is what’s important and interesting about cultural criticism. I may bungle my way into arguments over movie trailers, or gush over Robyn, but really,... 

Commenter Jonathan detects a strain of sexism in the criticism of Taylor Swift for writing songs that are fairly overtly about her exes: Plenty of musicians write songs inspired by relationships they’ve had with other famous people, but it always seems that where men get their work treated as music, women’s work is treated as tabloid fodder. (That’s a Perez Hilton video embedded in... 

Given my music-video obsession, I feel a bit out of sorts that I haven’t been able to come up with something to say about Willow Smith’s “Whip My Hair” clip: The video’s undeniably cute, and Smith seems like a talented kid, even if I am not exceptionally moved by the song, which is no “I Want You Back.” It just seems cute, and boppy, and fine, and I wonder... 

I don’t quite have enough to put all my thoughts in order here, but I’m interested in the near-simultaneous news that Paul McCartney’s teaming up with HP to post a large archive of material online, Ed Burns is making a low-budget movie for television, and Kristen Bell is insisting that she’d bankroll a Veronica Mars movie out of her own pocket. There are obvious and substantial... 

Of course, it’s ridiculously grandiose for Kanye West to shoot a 40-minute narrative music video based on his new album. On the other hand, I kind of think it makes sense at this point in his career. “Heartless,” the Hype Williams-directed video is probably the one that’s stuck in my consciousness most: But his videos have always been full of strong, striking images rather... 

I wrote about the music video for “Magic” and how B.o.B. continues the theme of alienating party videos.  Read More »

Rich Cronin, the frontman for LFO, just died at 35 after a long battle with leukemia. I have been, uh, less than charitable about LFO’s music in the past, but to go this way is awful. It seems like appropriate penance to confess that I kind of adore “Girl on TV”: I’ve always liked songs that express that desire to be on the other person’s mind, for a kind of emotional... 

Reading this profile of Katy Perry, I had a moment of regret that her faith doesn’t actually play a more prominent role in her public presentation and music. One of the things I find vexing about coverage of evangelical Christianity is that it consistently expresses shock that individual observant Christians can also be thoughtful and witty about sex and sexual presentation in ways that don’t...