Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Why Hipsters Hate On Lana Del Rey

December 19, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Lana Del Rey singing at a microphone

BY THE TIME SHE MADE HER WARBLED NATIONAL DEBUT on Saturday Night Live in early 2012, a thousand conspiracy theories had already bloomed about the singer Lana Del Rey. With looks reminiscent of a ’70s-era Bond girl, a backstory that includes a stint living in a trailer park, and a couple of lush-sounding, grainy-looking music videos, Del Rey had emerged in the summer of 2011 and quickly captivated the online tastemaking elite of the alternative-music scene. You can see her appeal to the indie crowd in this video for her song "Video Games:" http://youtu.be/cE6wxDqdOV0 But when it ... Read More

More like this: Culture & Society, January-February 2013
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Pop Charts Still Dominated by Men

December 14, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

In 1997, Rolling Stone magazine famously celebrated the rise of the female pop star, boldly declaring that “Women are ruling the roost.” It took less than a decade for that dominance to decisively shift back to men. That’s the key finding of a newly published study, which concludes that “gender inequality continues to characterize the world of popular music.” A Canadian research team led by Concordia University sociologist Marc Lafrance reports male artists continue to dominate the Top 40 sales charts, and the gender gap is even wider in terms of airplay. Lafrance and his ... Read More

More like this: Findings, Media
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The Exploitation of Muggles in Harry Potter’s World

July 8, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Every so often, we find a study that makes us question our place in the cosmos. Zakir Husain's paper in the Journal of Creative Communications, "Wizards, Muggles and Economic Exploitation Dependency Relations in the World of Harry Potter," is one such treatise. In it, the Delhi University economist posits that "the Wizarding world remains an epitome of the colonial society prevailing in the pre-World War I era, tightly bound within through blood, lineage and money, and sustained through exploitation of the peripheral non-magical world. Muggle lovers like Mr. Weasley may clash with ... Read More

More like this: July-August 2011, Science, The Cocktail Napkin
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Music Festivals Offering a Greener Listening Experience

April 16, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

When you put thousands of people in one place, whether for the Republican National Convention or Bonnaroo, things are bound to get ugly — for the environment, that is. Between the energy employed to power sound equipment, the paper products used to feed the masses and the water bottles necessary to keep people hydrated, concerts and political rallies are hardly climate-friendly events. And that's not even taking into account the fuel it takes to get attendees, staff or performers to the venue. Although some assemblies, like President Obama's inauguration, have been criticized for doing ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Science & Environment
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Triumph of the Cyborg Composer

February 22, 2010 • By • 136 Comments
mmw_composer_0310

The office looks like the aftermath of a surrealistic earthquake, as if David Cope’s brain has spewed out decades of memories all over the carpet, the door, the walls, even the ceiling. Books and papers, music scores and magazines are all strewn about in ragged piles. A semi-functional Apple Power Mac 7500 (discontinued April 1, 1996) sits in the corner, its lemon-lime monitor buzzing. Drawings filled with concepts for a never-constructed musical-radio-space telescope dominate half of one wall. Russian dolls and an exercise bike, not to mention random pieces from homemade board games, peek ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Magazine Feature Story, March-April 2010, MUST READ
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The Industry of Cool?

November 14, 2009 • By • 1 Comment

Face it: The new millennium has been a wild, mostly slumping, ride for the music industry. Our favorite new (or back-from-the-dead) artists have recently displayed no shortage of ham-fisted ideas, outlandish stunts and embarrassing consumer product tie-ins in an attempt to cultivate awareness for their upcoming albums. Naïve young indie bands, still valuing the buzz of the rapturous review (but the most likely to receive a scathing one), are instantaneously crowned or shredded by the unrelenting hype machine of hipster music havens such as Pitchfork Media, NME and Spin. Dinosaur rock ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Findings
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There’s Good In Pandora’s Box, Too

October 10, 2009 • By • 1 Comment

Book a flight online and you'll be offered various add-ons: a hotel room at your destination, a rental car waiting at the airport, tickets to a show, "a mani-pedi," jokes Tim Westergren, founder of the Internet radio station Pandora. The music industry could learn something from the travel business, he says. "The health of your industry depends on your alliances with surrounding industries," he says. "If you play your cards right and you structure your deals correctly you can get to a point where one and one is greater than two." Westergren, a musician himself, started what's now ... Read More

More like this: BLOGS, Media, Mediator
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