Editorials

Did you catch Monday night’s episode of Gossip Girl? If you did, chances are you heard Vitamin String Quartet’s lush string arrangement of INXS’ “Never Tear Us Apart” throughout the lavish wedding recpeption. You might have also heard VSQ’s arrangement of Pat Benetar’s “We Belong” as Blair and her prince headed out onto [...]

If you’ve been in a long supermarket line recently, you’ve probably seen the leather jacketed members of The Black Keys gracing the cover of this month’s issue of Rolling Stone. You may even be privy to the attention-grabbing lede:
“Rock & roll is dying because people became OK with Nickelback being the biggest band in the [...]

Music criticism is difficult. It can be hard to have a solid, journalistic opinion on every piece of new music and feel out a rating based on that opinion. Then, they have to convince people that their feeling is more than just a relative, subjective opinion, but that it contains factual authority about the album’s [...]

I once had an intense late-night discussion with friends concerning who’d survive the impending zombie apocalypse (hiya, 2012!): Keith Richards, Ozzy Osbourne, Willie Nelson, or Snoop Dogg.
Keith Richards was quickly nixed because he’s practically undead as is.
“Well, so is Ozzy!” The Stones contender contested.
“Not true! He’s the Prince of Darkness — that’s different!” I asserted.
And [...]

What was the first album you ever bought for yourself? If you can’t answer without feeling a pang of embarrassment, you understand that the evolution of your personal music taste can take many twists and turns. What was once close to your heart in your adolescence may have you selling records in your teenage years.
What [...]

Yesterday’s kings of soundtracks were the composers of iconic themes for cash cow franchises. These were people whose work drew just as much attention as the films they scored, like John Williams on Star Wars or Danny Elfman on Batman. While they’re still around today, composing for films every year, it seems that the most acclaimed, [...]

“The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don’t know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they’ve been listening to the sad songs longer than they’ve been living the unhappy lives.” – Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
Therein lies the rub. [...]

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December 1980 must’ve felt especially cold with the death of John Lennon fresh in the news. But every year around this time, Lennon is brought back to life with new articles about his life – as well as “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” on repeat at shopping malls across America.
With the Beatles’ [...]

Some lyrics are like poetry. But when songwriters tire of writing songs, they often turn to genuine poetry, novels, plays and other more concrete forms of literature to express what they cannot with a backing band. Stripping away all the fabric of music, audiences are left with simple yet intimate black and white musings on [...]