What Was Childish Gambino?
Donald Glover in an interview with The New Yorker: “Authenticity is the journey of figuring out who you are through what you make.”
phoebe and added
For a long time, Donaldson admits in a number of podcast appearances, he was afraid of putting anything complex in his videos — what if a viewer didn’t get it and stopped watching? Donaldson might very well be an advertiser’s absolute dream, the logical endpoint of an internet that’s been flattened into a samey, straightforward sludge of optimized ... See more
Patricia Hernandez • The End of the MrBeast Era
These are two very different modes of cultural interaction. Charli’s approach invites participation: the memes exist for remixing, the portrayed scene and its participants exist to be followed and engaged with on social media—the culture of Brat is open and participatory, giving anyone a ticket to join the global digital party. Kendrick, on the oth... See more
Ruby Justice Thelot • In Praise of Gatekeeping
sari and added
Some commenters scoffed at the sight of celebrities carping about the work of being famous. But these artists have hardly been lazy or reluctant to play the music business’s games. Each of them is known for elaborate music videos, spectacular stage productions, and otherworldly fashion. They’ve hustled, for all of their careers, to seem larger than... See more
Spencer Kornhaber • TikTok Killed the Video Star
Sterling Proffer added
Rogers was one of the first pop stars to achieve fame by unintentionally captivating the Internet, and, strangely, she was also one of the last. These days, virality is not so much a lightning strike as a marketing scheme, reverse engineered by executives and masquerading as serendipity. A. & R. representatives often scout new talent by dissect... See more
Maggie Rogers’s Journey from Viral Fame to Religious Studies
Alex Burns added
A world in which artists think like entrepreneurs, he writes in the Atlantic, is one where “You’re a musician and a photographer and a poet; a storyteller and a dancer and a designer ... which means that you haven’t got time for your 10,000 hours in any of your chosen media. But technique or expertise is not the point. The point is versatility. Lik... See more
Rebecca Jennings • Everybody Has to Self-Promote Now. Nobody Wants To.
an aspect of pop appreciation that latently informs everything else about it: the tyranny of the new.
Chuck Klosterman • But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past
The energy given to the act of reading and explaining helps musical moments transition into cultural ones. Take Kendrick and Drake, a feud that escalated from jousting about reputation (on Kendrick’s verse on Future and Metro Boomin’s track Like That , and Drake’s retort Push Ups ) to later trading allegations about domestic abuse (Drake’s Family M... See more