Jessica Ryan

The pair started building what would ultimately amount to a 15-song album that includes an amorous duet between the show’s leading couple, a comedic solo for the show’s nonconformist tomboy and an opening number that they wrote with a lavishly dressed Broadway ensemble flitting around the stage in their heads.

As the spark of an idea started to build, she sought help from a collaborator, Emily Bear, a 19-year-old composer and musician who had been introduced to the world as a 6-year-old piano prodigy but was hoping to prove herself as more than just a former spectacle for daytime talk shows.

In hindsight, the reasons for the failed promise seem somewhat obvious: the Creator Economy was never really meant to be a solution for 99% of the hundreds of millions (or quite possibly billions) of creators that exist today; instead, it was designed to operationalize the financial infrastructure for the top 1%–the creators who have already broken... See more

Last year, Barlow had watched the first season of Netflix’s saucy period drama about the elite marriage market of Regency England, along with millions of others searching for escapist entertainment during the pandemic. A 22-year-old aspiring pop singer with a sizable TikTok following, she posted a song that she wrote with a simple but, she thought,... See more