People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm
Cortex
Troupeau blue
Joni Mitchell
Ladies of the Canyon
Major Computer Science & Game Development
Graduating Spring 2027
Favorite Venue MGM Music Hall
Tastemaker Since Fall 2024
Quote
“If it makes you happy then it's not a waste of time!”
Major Media Arts & Communication Studies
Graduating Spring 2026
Favorite Venue MGM Music Hall
Tastemaker Since Fall 2023
Quote
“Don't wait. The time will never be just right.”
Major Communication Studies
Graduating Spring 2026
Favorite Venue The Greek Theatre, Berkeley, CA
Tastemaker Since Fall 2023
Quote
“Let the beauty we love be what we do.”
Major English
Graduating Spring 2027
Favorite Venue MGM Music Hall
Tastemaker Since Fall 2025
Quote
"I approached dressing like an extra preparing for a shot in a French New Wave film."
Thomas Rhett, Fenway
Photo by Tejas Marulkar (Biology and Film)
Table of Contents
Cover Story
21
Guitars Against Guns: The 1960s and the Soundtrack of Protest
In the 1960s, musicians wove protest and political thought into the fabrics of their sound in a way that continues to have an important legacy.
Features
KPop Demon Hunters: The Phenomenon
The Netflix movie “KPop Demon Hunters” features a slew of infectiously catchy songs that have taken the Internet and the music charts by storm.
The Death of Radio and the Rise of Streaming
The radio used to be the place to discover new music. With restrictive broadcasting rules and the popularity of music streaming services, the radio has been rendered obsolete.
Drum Machines: The Circuit Boards That Shaped Our Tastes
The drum machine evolved from being a simple way for musicians to keep rhythm to a technology that shaped some of today’s most popular styles of music.
Born with a Microphone — a Breakdown of Nepo Babies
Some kids inherit physical traits, some inherit a microphone and a stage. Musicians who are nepo babies are a trendy but contentious topic in the music industry. 12 15 18 33
38
Internet Language and Gendered Music
42
The “Performative Male” is an Internet stereotype of a guy who’s way too into Clairo and matcha. But does this label actually demean the music it is associated with?
The Unsettled Role of Feminism in Music
Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend sparked a debate about feminism in pop culture and music that is far from the first of its kind.
Swag Springs Eternal
Justin Bieber’s SWAG expands his musical range and reflects his desire to rebuild his reputation in popular culture. 36
Reviews
8
Album Reviews
Essex Honey, Getting Killed, The Life of a Showgirl
Ethel Cain 11
Show Reviews
Etcetera
26
30
Daft Punk
Daft Punk’s signature “French touch” of looped samples and filtered vocals helped the robot- helmet-donning duo become one of the most influential acts in music.
In Defense Of: Addison Rae
Former Tiktoker Addison Rae’s debut album has proven that she has the passion and artistic vision that are essential to a successful music career.
31
Taste of Nostalgia: Sophtware Slump
The Sophtware Slump, released in the year 2000 by Grandaddy, uncannily captures the dissonance between utopian futurism and everyday alienation.
Colony House, The Sinclair Photo by Maya Abel (Communications & Media)
ROCK OMM ENDS
Playboi Carti
November 4 @ TD Garden
For the best feature out of the big apple since FaceTime, Playboi Carti is bringing his Antagonist Tour to Boston on November 4th! With openers like Ken Carson and Destroy Lonely, be sure to pop out to TD Garden and show out for King Vamp himself.
Niko Mallias (Pre-Med Psych)
The Aces
November 11 @ Royale
Fresh off the release of their latest album, Under My Influence, The Aces are bringing their infectious pop-rock energy Roadrunner. Expect punchy guitar riffs, tight harmonies, and the catchy, introspective hooks that showcase their evolving sound on November 11th. Don’t miss the chance to see this Colorado quartet light up the stage!
Kaitlyn Conly (Human Services and Psychology)
Noah Kahan
November 20 @ MGM Music Hall
It’s stick season and Noah Kahan won’t be homesick from New England for long, he’s coming to Boston on November 20th! He’s performing a benefit concert for The Busyhead Project and the Red Sox Foundation so make sure to come over to MGM Music Hall for this special event concert!
Hannah Storer (Computer Science and Game Development)
Dijon
November 29 @ House of Blues
Rockommend: If you’re a fan of alternative R&B and are looking for an evening of smooth vocals with tender lyrics, come see Dijon at House of Blues on November 29th! Be prepared for an intimate atmosphere with instrumentals that will tug at your heartstrings, and a performance that will make you want to “Rewind” the night!
Emily Seitz (Health Science / Psychology)
1 13 2 14 4 17 12 19
Wolf Alice, House of Blues
Photo by Caroline Xue (BNS & Philosophy)
The Happy Fits House of Blues
Jingle Ball TD Garden
Audrey Hobert The Sinclair Shrek Rave (18+) Big Night Live
Grief is one of the few human experiences that moves quietly. The experience oftentimes takes the form of a silent wave, passing unnoticed by some while dragging the unlucky into its depths. Essex Honey, the fifth studio album from Blood Orange, puts a soundtrack to this tide. Six years since his last release and two years after the death of his mother, Dev Hynes returns to his moniker of Blood Orange to explore the intricacies of grief. The result is something far more solemn and varied. Blood Orange takes delicate steps in a new direction on Essex Honey, creating a uniquely intimate and far reaching album to add to an already multifaceted repertoire.
All of Blood Orange’s albums predating Essex Honey are beloved for the vibrant textures of each work’s high energy points: 2018’s Negro Swan delivers “Charcoal Baby,” which dips into pits of acidic synths; “Uncle ACE” from 2013’s Cupid Deluxe is a victorious and mysteriously grooving disco-funk tune; Hynes’s largest hit, “Champagne Coast” off 2011’s Coastal Grooves builds outward into a romantically bittersweet indie-pop classic. Essex Honey provides none of the sort. Shockingly diverse in style from track to track, each angle Hynes explores musically are ones that feel celestial and subdued. For many, this makes Essex Honey lack the shiny appeal its predecessors possess. To a passive listener, the tracks can easily blur
into one another, leaving one unsatisfied and yearning for something more ear-catching. But, dive below the surface and it becomes apparent this muted effect is by design. So much of the album reveals itself in slivers: false stops and starts are littered throughout many songs, and lyrics reshape and repeat themselves across the tracklist. In “Thinking Clean,” Hynes delivers the cutting line, “I don’t want to be here anymore.” On “Westerberg,“ the line takes on a different, fluttering female voice. The resulting effect of this fragmentation is a dreamlike feel throughout. Every song is an amalgamation of familiar pieces, with the sum of each feeling nothing like one another. This, for one, amplifies the genre variation. “Life” is a buzzy bedroom pop track that incorporates jazz saxophone and an interlude of flutes and synths. (The first half of) “I Listened (Every Night)” combines classical bass, hand drums, and acoustic guitar.
This disjointedness also amplifies Hynes’ storytelling – grief lacks a linear timeline or consistency in manifestations, instead lodging itself into lives as a permanent but flickering feeling. Hynes makes a collage of his past and present, capturing not just loss, but the disorientation of growing older and the way memory and mourning shape one another. “The Train (King’s Cross)” communicates soon-to-be-fading adrenaline, shuffling forward but repeating the lyrics “And the worst is yet to come.” “Countryside” explores yearning for both an escape from your condition and a sign the person you’ve lost is still there, pleading “Could it be that you’re alive? / Take me away to the countryside / In the fields trying to hide.”
“Westerberg” discusses haunting a place that was once home and facing the inevitability of aging, singing “Regressing back to times you know / Playing songs you forgot you owned.” The immense attention to detail from Hynes makes the depth of lyrical exploration and quality of execution on Essex Honey fully immersive.
This precision is shared between the album’s lyricism and musicality. On album opener “Look at You,” deep, layered synths create something vast and gentle. The beat nudges the track forward, creating a sense of movement while still somehow feeling molasses-y. Two minutes in, the track comes to dead halt. Hynes is left alone, his layered vocals unsuccessfully masking the solitude that the lyrics communicate: “How can I start my day / Knowing the truth / 'Bout love and a loss of youth?” “Thinking Clean”
carries over a similar effect, a clink-y beat creates movement while melancholy piano chords drag it downward. Two minutes later, a click track then shifts to cymbal-forward drums and a jazz instrumental builds into a bittersweet and encouraging rhythm.
Equally as subtle as the album’s musical style is Essex Honey’s use of guest vocalists. Names like Lorde, Caroline Polachek, and Mustafa go uncredited on some and are inconspicuous on many, frequently adding thin layers of complexity to chords. Hynes himself even fades into background vocals halfway through “Scared of It,” letting Brendan Yates step front. This threads into Hynes’ recurring theme of loneliness; even surrounded by community, his complex grief remains deeply lived-in.
The ocean’s pull continues regardless of if you swim or drown. On Essex Honey, Blood Orange candidly documents the humanity of grappling with each wave. The success of the album comes thanks to Hynes’ ability to document such devastating experiences without attempting to conquer them. Hynes does not fight the tide, allowing the changing current to shape the project’s emotional storytelling and musical journey. In its ebb and flow, Essex Honey becomes a meditation on the fragility of both mortality and human emotion.
Paige Pataky (History, Culture, & Law)
Geese Getting Killed
Released September 26, 2025
Label Partisan Records, Play it Again Sam Genre Art Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Krautrock, Blues, Post-Punk
Tasty Tracks “Getting Killed,” “Islands of Men,” “Long Island City Here I Come”
On a sailboat adrift at sea you lay, frantically awoken by the infernal sun beating on your sweat-soaked face. Your head pounds and your nose bleeds, blood mixing with cocaine residue north of your lips. You ponder where it all went awry, and what choices brought you to sea. Before you come to an answer, an unfamiliar man approaches you from behind, his leather shoes clicking against the creaky floorboards. Brandishing a silver revolver aimed at your forehead, he squeezes the trigger. This is the future Geese imagines for themselves on Getting Killed
Getting Killed is an album born from the feeling of Geese’s meteoric rise. The punk-blues-rock outfit’s buzz reached a bubbling point following their 2023 release, 3D Country, charming fans with zany writing that stayed true to its hard rock and blues roots. The album was explosive, pure fun boiled down to a tight 43 minutes. Following this success, frontman Cameron Winter stayed steadfast in his determination to prove his worth as a true artist, releasing his solo singer-songwriter debut, Heavy Metal, impressing audiences with his cryptic, vivid lyrics and emotive delivery. This is not to say he did not have his detractors — to many, his writing came off pretentious and his falsettos whiny. With the explosion of Geese and the volume of eyes aimed at Winter’s next move, Geese’s third album, Getting Killed, produced
by Kenneth Blume a.k.a. Kenny beats, was released to the world.
The album pushes the artistic bounds of Geese to a scope the band has not touched before, diving deep into themes of self-actualization, forgiveness, conformity, desperation, and navigating a world that can feel fake and cheap. Various motifs appear throughout the tracklist - historical figures, boats, islands, and horses. Winter’s lyrics are enigmatic as ever, rewarding listeners who revisit the work, slowly digesting each track, feeling the desires that each song pines for. His voice reaches new peaks, alternating between crooning, belting, wailing, and layering soulful harmonies, all set to a stampeding bluesy krautrock soundtrack.
Getting Killed opens with a disjointed funk groove on “Trinidad,” as Winter sings soft vibratos before screaming, “There’s a bomb in my car!” The track prepares the listener for what’s to come: an album that bears the traditional aesthetics of rock and blues, but isn’t afraid to be brash and maximalist. On “Husbands”, Winter ponders the reception of his music, harmonizing over a stripped-back drum beat of thumping hollow snares and glitched-out djembes. He sees that his artistic self-discovery may tire him, but ultimately frees him: “There’s a horse on my back / And I may be stomped flat / But my loneliness is gone.” The buildup of the song is gratifyingly serene, as layers of vocals descend over one another while Winter longs for his work to be understood long into the future. “Islands of Men” tends with the thought that the world around us is feeling less real by the day and that people are becoming more asocial, pleading people to “stop running away from what is real and what is fake”.
The earthy percussion choices and composition of the album cover both suggest Getting Killed may be paying homage to Japanese psychedelic rock band Boredom’s Vision Creation Newsun. The title track goes to hint further at this, as a choir chants hectic backup vocals bursting out over guitarist Emily Green and bassist Foster Hudson’s hard-rock riffs and Max Bassin’s sharp drumming, mirroring sounds from the experimental rock cult classic. The song alternates between sensory outburst and subdued bliss. Winter meditates on the role of a rockstar in a commercialized world and how he’s affected, with poetic lines like “I can’t even taste my own tears / They fall into an even sadder bastard’s eyes” and “I am taking off my pants / I’m getting out of this gumball machine.” The listener is left
wondering what Winter means when he says, “I’m getting killed by a pretty good life,” which goes unanswered until the closer, “Long Island City Here I Come,” an ending to the project as theatrical as it is domineering. On the track, Winter stares his own fate square in the eyes, belting out to historical and biblical figures asking for truth. As he contemplates the mortality of both his body and memory, an imagined Buddy Holly calls down from heaven, “A masterpiece belongs to the dead / There are microphones under your bed.” He sees that committing your life to art means letting it take over your life; art becomes death, and he doesn’t want to fear it. The performance is truly gut-wrenching, dramatic piano crescendos revealing the only truth Winter can find: that his music will be his death, and he chooses to pursue it anyway.
Instrumentally, Getting Killed is dense. Despite most tracks being three or four minutes, each track is a treasure map, presenting Geese’s chemistry and range while staying true to its theme. “Cobra” and “Au Pays du Cocaine” are both passionate love songs, serenading someone who feels out of reach. These slow jams prove that Geese is capable of captivating an audience without always melting their face off. “100 Horses” and “Bow Down” showcase the vitality of the band, grooving over fierce guitar riffs. “Taxes” offers both somber atmospheres and triumphant cascades, rejecting guilt and societal responsibility in order to accept freedom. The sonic palette of this LP is one of variety, with a flair and attitude that sets Geese apart. It respects its roots without being derivative.
If 3D Country was a first date, then Getting Killed is the wedding. Geese and Cameron Winter’s past couple projects have proven their talent and proficiency. On Getting Killed they showcase to the world they can jam out while the songwriting and structure still is tight and hyper-intentional. Exciting left-turn instrumental passages keep listeners paying attention to the blues and psych-rock jams. The album is impressively stitched together to illustrate the vexations of not just the band’s members, but of everyone who feels lost in a confusing, plastic world.
Sam Pollak (Data Science & Economics)
Taylor Swift The Life of a
Showgirl
Released October 3, 2025
Label Republic Records
Genre Pop
Tasty tracks “The Fate of Ophelia," "Opalite," "Wood"
Few artists have been able to sustain as much public adoration and scrutiny as Taylor Swift. Only a year and a half after her last album, The Life of a Showgirl has arrived as her most polarizing work yet. When Swift releases an album, it tends to be about more than just the music, but rather a cultural moment and reflection of the world’s obsession with celebrity. Following the largest tour in history, the engagement that broke the internet, and a victory in the endless battle for her master recordings, the public was holding its breath to wait to hear what this artist at the peak of her influence had to say.
At the heart of the backlash lies a familiar pattern with Taylor Swift. She has long been known to take inspiration from criticism. Two of the biggest complaints of her previous album, The Tortured Poets Department were that it was too long and that the production was uninspired and repetitive. She technically resolved both of these issues on The Life of a Showgirl, keeping the album at a concise twelve tracks, and returning to longtime collaborators Max Martin and Shellback, who helped produce some of her biggest hits. These changes only served to reveal the largest issue with the album, which is surprisingly the songwriting. The lyrics are sprinkled with cringey and outdated slang. Some highlights (or lowlights) include “Girl-boss too close to the sun” and “I’m not a bad bitch / This isn’t savage.”
Besides the awkwardness, she resorts to old black-and-white storytelling modes that are better equipped to tackle high school situations than more complex experiences in adulthood.
Swift’s lyrical regression is most obvious on “Actually Romantic,” a track that not-sosubtly refers to musical artist Charli XCX, who allegedly released a song about Taylor on her viral 2024 album Brat. While Charli’s “Sympathy is a Knife” is a nuanced look at her insecurities and inability to achieve Swift’s level of fame, Taylor responded with a poorly written and sonically flat diss-track. Framing Charli’s insecurity as obsession is not only shallow writing, but it feels like she’s punching down, as Charli was only just accepted into the mainstream. After winning all of her career and life battles, the song feels like Swift is manufacturing new challenges for the sake of the narrative. As someone who claims to understand the impact of narrative twisting (for example, her scandal with Kanye West), it feels out of character to see her putting other artists down, regardless of whether there was more behind the scenes of their relationship.
Beyond the songwriting, the album suffers from a thematic identity crisis. Swift is known for her world-building, demonstrated especially well on albums like folklore and evermore The Life of a Showgirl suffers from a disconnect between the album’s aesthetics and lyrical content. Coming off of the Eras Tour, there was a chance for Swift to dive into the nuances of performance and celebrity. The album’s campaign focused on imagery of Swift in fabulous showgirl costumes that called back to the Roaring 20s, while the majority of the tracks are petty revenge manifestos or love songs to her new fiancé instead of themes relevant to the “showgirl” concept.
Swift’s relationship with Travis Kelce has been her most public one thus far, going so far as to announce the new album on his podcast. Swift sings about ditching her romantic superstitions after finding the love of her life on “Wood,” one of the most sonically exciting tracks with a groovy guitar riff and disco-influenced production. Despite some clunky lines about Kelce’s “Redwood tree,” the song helps to bring out her more playful side. On “Wi$h Li$t,” she romanticizes settling down into a quiet and private life, singing “Got me dreaming ‘bout a driveway with a basketball hoop.” This idea feels antithetical to Swift’s career, which has been defined by persistent motivation and obsession with the hustle.
These contradictions are fascinating, but feel out of place on The Life of a Showgirl, an album supposedly about her experiences as a pop-star.
The overall production style is much more subdued than Swift’s previous projects with Martin and Shellback. Rather than full-out pop synths, the album is based in piano, electric guitar and bass, and acoustic drums. While the production is not exactly what audiences might have expected based on her collaborators’ reputations, it suits Swift’s voice quite well. The production and Swift’s writing align best on “The Fate of Ophelia,” another standout track from the album. With some of the sharpest melodies in Swift’s discography, it is perhaps her most radio-ready single since 1989
Despite a few successful tracks, The Life of a Showgirl seems to be Swift’s worst received album thus far. Between outdated slang and adult themes, Swift may have lost her ability to stay relatable to listeners of all ages. As she navigates these new challenges, the next steps in Swift's career will likely be decided by her ability to blend the uniqueness of her experiences with the mass appeal that her brand of superstardom requires. The Life of a Showgirl feels like a missed opportunity to give a peek behind the curtain and into the world of one of the most famous artists of our time. As Swift sings in the title track, “You don’t know the life of a showgirl, babe, and you’re never, ever gonna.”
Katie Colella (Music Industry)
Stale
Show Reviews
Ethel Cain Roadrunner 09.12.2025
Emerging from curtains of moss cascading behind a crucifix, Ethel Cain appeared on stage at Roadrunner like a biblical figure: severe, pious, and submissive. Musical and visual artist Hayden Anhendönia, under the name of her stage character Ethel, embarks on the "Willoughby Tucker Forever Tour" after the release of her new album, Willoughby Tucker, I Will Always Love You, settling in to her newfound stardom. She takes her place behind the cross with a conviction that commands the audience's attention from her very first breath.
The low hum that announced Cain's arrival eventually gave way into the tender, soft piano of "Willoughby's Theme."
The instrumental track is an intimate, contemplative start to the show, transporting the audience back into the god-fearing and drug-laden town of Shady Grove, Alabama with a tenderness absent in her previous work. Willoughby Tucker explores Ethel's adolescence, including her first love, Willoughby. Cain takes the stage in a simple sweatshirt and jeans, shedding the heavy floor-length dresses she wore while touring Preacher's Daughter. Cain comes to us without the status or experience of a preacher; Instead, she is young, naive, stripped down.
It's rare that an artist can captivate an audience for the entirety of a seven minute song, but "Nettles" had the crowd singing along as if the track had been released years ago. The instrumentation had a twangier edge, leaning into the Southern influences that underpin all of Cain's work. Her voice has an earthy, rougher quality live, which only
heightens the emotional and sonic impact of songs like "Fuck Me Eyes," which blossomed into an anthem as the crowd exclaimed, "But no one ever wants to / take her home."
The "Willoughby Tucker Forever Tour" was also Cain's first opportunity to perform her 2025 experimental album Perverts
Throughout the setlist, Cain balances the darkness and dysphoria of her ambient work with the heart-swelling teenage anthems of Willoughby Tucker. Cain was joined on stage by Jae Matthews of Boy Harsher for a showstopping rendition of Cain’s "Vacillator."
The vacuous, airy quality of the recorded version was swapped for lush strings as the women sang on their knees, face-to-face, collapsing into one another like two hands folded in prayer. "Onanist," another track from Perverts, was also a standout, as Cain flexes her hand at building soundscapes and atmospheres entirely different from her narrative albums. Using the resonance and openness of Roadrunner to walk the line between silence, beauty, and cacophony, Cain’s band brought her instrumental compositions to life with a force only possible through complete submission to the artist’s unitary vision. The explosive weight of the track blanketed the space, lulling the crowd into a stunned silence.
Cain closed her main set with a shortened version of the long-awaited and long-running "Waco, Texas," an emphatic and cathartic way to end the show. After Cain left the stage, the crowd clearly had not had enough of her prayer. She retook her place at the pulpit, beaconing out to the crowd from behind the cross to perform the gutwrenching "A
House in Nebraska," a track from Preacher's Daughter in which Ethel longs for her teenage years spent with Willoughby. Although it is not a part of the official setlist, Ethel's performance of the song was a nod to longtime fans who take the time to immerse themselves in the folklore she's woven since the release of her first EPs.
Cain closed the set performing the two bangers everyone was waiting to hear. "American Teenager" and "Crush," by far her most commercially successful songs, have not lost their luster over the years of replay. As she continues to evolve as a performer, these songs have become thrilling to hear live, with Cain showing off vocally and engaging with the crowd more than ever. Watching Cain perform feels like more than just an experience; It feels like a revelation. In her own words, it was "the best show of the tour so far."
Joseph Manganello (Political Science)
ers,” it’s likely you’ve heard its breakout hit, “Golden,” an encouraging anthem about rising above fear in order to be one’s authentic self. The song’s title also refers to HUNTR/X’s ultimate goal to turn the Honmoon’s color gold – a sign of strength in the barrier. Fundamentally, “Golden” is the soundtrack’s “Let it Go” – an earnest cry to be the best version of oneself over an incredibly catchy melody, with high notes that demand to be belted in exhaustion during karaoke.
The soundtrack has more to offer than chantable bangers, too. Underrated is “Free,” a duet ballad about the relieving freedom of letting someone in. Although not originally written for the movie, “Love, Maybe” is a cheerful number that serves as delightful comic relief. Most intense, and arguably a song that thrives most with its visual counterpart, is “Your Idol.” It is the Saja Boys’s ultimate cry of villainy that also serves as a captivating commentary on K-pop’s sometimes toxic fan culture.
Yet, the movie has more to offer than its infectiously catchy songs. With a run time of an hour and forty minutes, “KPop Demon Hunters” manages to discuss the vulnerability of healing while still poking fun at the theatrics and unflagging fan dedication inherent to K-pop. At the same time, the movie proves a commitment to authentically depict Korea. In 2022, co-directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans traveled to Seoul with their team conducting research to guide their visuals, an effort seen in the film’s accurate cityscape and skyline. Their thoughtfulness extends to the movie’s minhwa (Korean folk art) inspired animal characters, frequent mentions of the bathhouse, and even subtle placement of a napkin under chopsticks in a restaurant scene.
The dedication traces back to Korean-Canadian Maggie Kang, who, in her 12 years of working in Hollywood’s animation industry, hadn’t encountered a project representing Korean culture — something she wanted to see on screen. As a result, “KPop Demon Hunters” was born, a project first conceived from Kang’s interest in Korean demonology and folklore; creatures like the dokkaebi (goblin) and Jeoseung Saja (underworld messenger) are seen throughout the film. Still, Kang felt that the idea needed something more, and it soon became infused with K-pop, birthing a modern day fantasy realm that blends traditional and contemporary Korean culture.
It’s no coincidence that a movie steeped in Korean culture has been so widely embraced. Hallyu,
or the “Korean Wave” — a phenomenon of rising global global interest in South Korean popular culture — has shown lasting impact. Modern K-pop, often traced back to 90s group Seo Taiji and Boys, has been a force for non-English music finding success globally. From PSY’s 2012 hit “Gangnam Style” to BTS’s unprecedented success and dedicated fanbase, Korea’s music industry has flourished abroad. K-beauty and Korean food have steadily veered into the West’s mainstream; Sephora’s website has a section dedicated to Korean-made products, offering results such as glass skin. Likewise, it’s not uncommon to see non-Korean restaurant menus offering fusion takes on bulgogi or gochujang. Korean screen media has also found outstanding success. At the 2020 Oscars, Bong Joon-Ho’s 2019 film, “Parasite,” made history as the first non-English-language film to win Best Picture. Netflix K-dramas such as “Queen of Tears” or “Squid Game” have
values, expected to be done on behalf of family or even the entire nation.
In “KPop Demon Hunters,” Rumi carries a deep shame for being half-demon and at many times is labeled “a mistake.” She learns to hide this part of her identity from everyone under the instruction of her guardian, and former hunter, Celine; Celine’s advice to HUNTR/X proclaims “our faults and fears must never be seen.” As a result, Rumi becomes fixated on erasing her demon markings, ultimately leaving her fearful and powerless.
Rumi’s journey resonates deeply with the Korean experience. Still, shame is not limited to Korea and appreciation of the movie’s message transcends cultures. Kang was intentional about this; for her, it was important to “make the movie as Korean as possible” while touching on deeply human themes, to prove that audiences can relate to stories regardless of
Designer: Sarah Cao ( Design )
Lil Tecca, MGM Music Hall
Photo by Tejas Marulkar (Biology & Film)
Nowadays, tuning into the radio can feel like visiting a foreign country. Many stations play a small and repetitive catalog of fan favorites that feels increasingly stale. At the same time, songs that have passed their moment in the cultural zeitgeist hang around the airwaves as stations struggle to keep up with tastes moving at light speed. The radio is no longer the primary place for songs to be recommended and shared, having largely been replaced by subscription-based streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music. This transition has had profound effects on how music is made, shared, and compensated.
Before one analyzes the ways streaming has changed music, it’s important to understand the limitations that held radio back and made it vulnerable to being replaced. Back in the days when music was primarily stored on physical media such as vinyls, cassettes, or CDs, radio stations filled a gap in the market. It introduced people to new music and freed listeners from the burden of carrying around their music library with them. But as Walkmans gave way to the iPod, it became easier to transport a greater quantity of music and listening habits shifted away from relying on what the radio was playing.
Beyond technological advancements, cultural changes have also contributed to making the radio obsolete. Federal guidelines that govern the use of public airwaves – which AM and FM radio stations operate on – ban the use of curse words and references to sex and drugs. This regulation has been in place since the 1970s, and it is why artists have often released clean or radio versions of their songs. Many artists have come
to view this regulation as restricting and burdensome, opting to forgo radio versions of their songs altogether. This decision has taken on even more significance as hip-hop and R&B — both genres that often run afoul of these restrictions — rose in popularity over the last few decades to become two of the most popular genres in the country. This restriction leaves radio stations unable to play some of the most popular songs even as streaming services offer them on-demand, alienating millions of potential listeners and further shifting consumers towards streaming services. By now the shift to streaming seems complete. Streaming accounted for 84% of the music industry’s revenue last year. Since streaming services have firmly cemented themselves as the dominant players in the industry, they’ve begun exerting their influence to set the rules and terms of engagement for artists. In one of the most noticeable changes of the streaming era, songs are getting increasingly shorter in order to optimize royalty payments. Under Spotify’s payment formula, users only have to listen to the first thirty seconds of a track to register a stream and thus a royalty payment, rendering the rest of the song irrelevant to profit margins. As there are only so many hours in a day, artists
stand to make more money by releasing multiple short tracks that each count towards a payment rather than a few longer songs. Aside from shortening songs, this formula also incentives artists to open with the chorus or a catchier hook in order to keep users listening up to the thirty second mark, which has played a part in shrinking the average instrumental intro from twenty seconds in the 1980s to five seconds in 2015.
In the United States, royalty rates for both radio stations and streaming services are set by the Copyright Royalty Board, which updates the rates every 5 years. While this is supposed to set industry wide standards that considers the interests of both artists and distributors, streaming platforms have created loopholes to pay a different rate that they determine themselves. In 2024, Apple Music announced it would pay artists 10% more for tracks recorded with spatial audio. This announcement generated controversy among smaller artists who pointed out recording in spatial audio can cost an extra ten to twenty thousand dollars per album, posing a barrier for artists who can’t afford those expenses. For its part, in 2024 Spotify reclassified premium accounts as bundles of podcasts and music, allowing the service to pay out a lower mechanical royalty
rate. Spotify was sued by the Mechanical Licensing Collective over this change, and the case remains ongoing in a decision that would impact $150 million of the platform’s revenue.
The shift toward streaming services has created two main ways for music to be shared. The first is through company curated playlists, such as the Spotify mix Rap Caviar that has nearly 16 million followers, a figure that dwarfs the audience of most music radio programs. The second is through a service’s recommendation algorithm that suggests artists and songs a user might like based on their listening history. These two features not only replace a role previously filled by radio DJs, they also place a significant amount of power and influence squarely in the hands of streaming services. Without discerning human tastes, algorithms often base their recommendations on more superficial qualities such as the name of the playlist or songs by artists already in the mix, regardless of whether or not they match the genre or vibe a user is trying to cultivate. A particularly egregious example is Spotify’s daylist mix, which is meant to track your listening habits and suggest songs in genres you tend to listen to at given times. Yet it often gets led astray, and can end up recommending Phoebe Bridgers on a bossa nova playlist or Lorde on a playlist meant for West Coast hip-hop.
While the shift away from a radio centered music industry has made it easier than ever for artists to upload their music to services and connect to fans, this democratization has been a double edged sword. If everyone has the same ease of access to put their music out, it becomes that much harder for individual artists to stand out in a crowd of millions.
This conundrum is exactly why streaming service’s algorithms are so vital, and these platforms know it. Spotify runs their Discovery program, offering artists a chance of improved visibility in the platform’s catered recommendations in exchange for a lower royalty payment. Musicians must then struggle to choose between better chances at visibility or marginally better pay. For smaller artists, this can be an incredibly difficult question to answer as they try to make a living. This situation was complicated further by Spotify’s rule change in 2023 that stopped paying artists for songs that get less than one thousand streams a year in an attempt to crack down on artificial streaming.
These changes aren’t necessarily felt equally across the industry, as larger artists have been able to exert their influence and fame to extract favorable concessions. A prominent example of this unequal landscape was Taylor Swift’s
boycott of Spotify in 2014, when she opted to keep her catalog off the platform until the royalties paid out to artists were increased. Spotify subsequently acquiesced to her demands in 2017, ending the 3 year standoff. Yet this negotiation is one that few artists can conceivably pull off, leaving most performers at the whim of the new streaming kingmakers.
The shift away from radio is just the latest upheaval artists have faced in the last few years as they navigate the industry. In recognition of the new power dynamics at play and the challenges smaller artists face to get by, new proposals have been floated to alter the way streaming companies share their profits. Some advocate for changing how services pay artists for each listener’s stream, giving artists greater control over their profiles and recommendations, and reducing the amount of corporate curated playlists that get recommended to users. While each proposal has benefits and drawbacks, the variety of suggestions indicate a broad discontent among artists. Governments spent the 20th century trying to regulate the radio system to ensure fairness, and it may be time to turn a regulatory eye towards the streaming industry in this new era.
• Connor Bedell (Political Science)
Designer: Allison Lee (CS and Design)
DRUM MACHINES
The circuit boards that shaped our tastes
In 1984, nightclubs in the Bronx were lit up by a brand-new hip-hop track, “It’s Yours” by T La Rock. Produced by Rick Rubin of the Beastie Boys, the track featured percussion different from the breakbeats that had birthed the genre from disco. In fact, for most of the track’s runtime, all that can be heard is a booming bass drum, snappy clap sounds, and clicky hats that sound like a stove about to ignite. Rarely heard before was this type of production: stripped back, yet booming and steady. This track was among the first of many to participate in a revolution in the production of music: the usage of the then-niche drum machine.
The original intention of drum machines was not to be recorded. The drum machine found its first market with performers who desired a source of rhythm while they practiced, particularly organ players — similar to a metronome. In 1978, Japanese company Roland launched the CR-78, a drum machine that uses analog circuits to synthesize drum sounds. While its initial intention was to just be for practice rather than performance, the machine instantly found a home not only with organists, but with many big names in the music industry. The CR-78 backs the famous track ‘I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)’ by Hall & Oates, providing a rhythmic pulse to the laid-back pop rock track, subdued by the electric piano and vocal harmonies. The CR-78 also provides the drums on the introduction of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass”, and the soft hats and snares on Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight”. Still, drum machines remained in relative obscurity as tastes still strongly favored authentic drum sounds over the dim sounds the CR-78 had to offer, with most songs that did use the CR78 used them as add-ons, layering them with acoustic drums.
Still, Roland saw the future of drum machines, seeing an opportunity to give musicians more creative power surrounding their drum patterns. In 1980, The TR-808 was released. Like its predecessor, the TR-808 machine made all of its sounds purely through analog circuits. Roland wanted their machines to be affordable, and using a memory chip to load and play samples was still fairly expensive. In an attempt to get their machines used on more tracks, Roland made the sounds featured on the machine louder and more assertive. The approach of making analog drums meant for taking center stage backfired, as the TR-808’s brash synthetic sounds felt unconventional for the time. Despite being used in popular songs such as Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” and Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”, the TR-808 was mostly a commercial failure. Retailers drastically cut prices to clear stock, making the machine quite easy to acquire.
The TR-808 seemed destined to collect dust in pawn shops and used music stores. However, what the professionals of the music industry considered trash, young upstart artists saw as a cheap entry into music making. The availability of TR-808 helped it find a place in the emerging genre of hip-hop, with its punchy kicks and snappy snares and claps complementing the rhythm-heavy sounds. Classic
rap acts of the 80s like Run-D.M.C. and Public Enemy have the iconic kicks and claps littered through many of their tracks. Suddenly, the initial setback of the TR-808’s synthetic sounds began to be its largest strength, allowing the DJs to fine-tune each drum hit to their liking. In particular, the bass drum had a “Decay” knob which let the sub-bass frequencies of the drum rattle for a prolonged amount of time, and the “Tuning” knob allowed for precise tweaking of the pitch. The TR-808 bass became more than a drum hit; it was a tonal instrument. The melding of rhythm with trunk-rattling bass was underway, a characteristic that would define hip-hop music to come. In later years, the term “808” would become synonymous with any sub-heavy sustained bass sound that’s as melodic as it is rhythmic. Nowadays, the iconic sound can be heard widely across trap music as a key element that sets the musical pulse and melody simultaneously. The TR-808 in many ways is just like the genre of hip-hop itself: defying conventions of its time and embracing a DIY approach to music.
into it. Previously, DJs had been sampling by splicing reels of tape and manipulating turntables to loop records, but now producers could easily create sequences of samples using a 4x4 grid of touch-sensitive pads, a technique that became commonly known as “sample chopping”. Producers would upload their samples to their MPC, record a sequence, and then most would do what was called “quantizing” their sequence, meaning adjusting the rhythmic imperfections of the recording to align the samples perfectly to the beat. J Dilla famously refused to quantize his recordings in order to let the kinks stand out. Listening to Donuts, you hear a distinctly human quality in the instrumental, which feels strange for music made entirely electronically. J Dilla is just one example of the creative revolution brought about by sample chopping.
At the same time of the TR-808’s rise, other drum machines were making splashes as well. Analog drums, which are sounds created with electric signals and circuits, weren’t as ready for mainstream ubiquity as samples, which are digital recordings of real drums. While the $5,000 price tag of the sample-based Linn LM-1 made it inaccessible to most, using drum samples to program a beat became a growing practice in the music industry. Both Prince and Michael Jackson were drawn to the LM-1, as the use of drum samples in drum machines lent the artists the creative reign to program their own beats with more realistic sounds. In 1983, learning from the mistakes of the TR-808, Roland rolled out the TR-909 as a mostly analog machine made to sound more conventional than the 808. Its combination of analog kicks and claps with sampled hats and cymbals gave way to the modern house and techno sound: bouncy rhythms with steady thumping bass and hats played in swing. Artists like Daft Punk, Madonna, and Bjork all used this machine to create timeless music.
If you take a trip to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, you will see enclosed in a glass case a dusty dark-gray metal box, littered with rubber buttons and knobs and a compact blue LCD screen. This machine is anAKAI MPC3000, specifically the one producer J Dilla used in 2006 to make one of the most revered instrumental hip-hop projects of all-time, Donuts, right before his tragic passing. It was the first (relatively) affordable all-in-one sampler. With this revolutionary equipment, producers were not only able to sample drums, but any sound they could load
Sample chopping is used everywhere in the modern era of music, providing artists tools to show off their expressive range through selection, chopping style, and ability. Kanye West similarly used the AKAI MPC to chop sped-up soul samples for his breakout album, the College Dropout, famously originating the “chipmunk soul” beat. Clams Casino is a producer known for using chops of vocalists like Imogen Heap and washing them in reverb effects to create a silky, ethereal aesthetic to hip-hop songs, famously on “I’m God” by Lil B and “Wassup” by A$AP Rocky. Daft Punk are known for their sophisticated sample chopping, pulling from far and wide to create legendary tracks. Their most impressive feat is “Face to Face”, on which fans speculate anywhere from 19 to 70 different songs were sampled. The result is a mind-blowing, triumphant song.
The standalone drum machine to some is a relic of the past - a fun toy, but unnecessary to learn for aspiring producers, as digital software provides the user more powerful reign over their music than ever. This much is true, but unlocked within each piece of drum hardware are the secrets behind the musical styles we enjoy today. Any young producer may start sequencing trap hi hats and 808s on FL Studio, not knowing that their sounds originally came from a machine that was a commercial failure, and that the buttons they click are made to look like the buttons on that foreign piece of equipment. Oftentimes, brilliance comes not from infinite possibilities, but from the limitations you are presented with. Like how a sonnet writer must follow a certain rhyme and rhythm, or how Pixar made Toy Story while CGI technology was in its infancy, creating a song with sixteen step buttons, sixteen analog sounds, and twenty seven knobs forces the creative spirit to innovative places.
Ȗ Sam Pollak (Data Science & Economics)
Designer: Jade Hausmann ( Design )
The 502s, House of Blues
Photo by Ananya Singh (Political Science & Economics)
Guitars Against Guns:
The 1960s and the Soundtrack of Protest
In times of mass conflict, music is more than a comfort - it becomes a powerful tool. The relentless cycles of war, injustice, and violence inspires artists not only to uplift spirits but also to challenge and critique the very systems that enabled such suffering. This dynamic reached a new scale in the 1960s. Music, culture, and politics were no longer operating in their own isolated spheres of influence but were actively shaping each other. Rather than serving as a nostalgic time capsule, the 1960s can be understood as a laboratory for new ideas about what music could do and who it could reach. Across genres, artists wove protest and political thought into the fabrics of their sound, crafting a powerful synergy that amplified social and political movements of the time.
Folk Music
As fighting between North Vietnam and South Vietnam intensified, so did US involvement in the region. Backed by the Soviet Union and China, the looming threat of victory by communist North Vietnam was enough to incentivize the U.S. to funnel millions of its healthy, young, male population into one of the most devastating conflicts in history - marked by profound trauma and a staggering loss of life. Though initially popular, as the fervor of McCarthy-era anti-communism
waned and the death toll climbed with no clear end in sight, support for the war began to erode by the mid-to-late 1960s. Americans increasingly questioned what they were truly fighting for.
Within one genre, however, denunciation of war had long been a wcentral moral pillar, predating the public’s shift in sentiment: folk music. From its inception, folk music was infused with anti-war motifs, drawing on pacifist traditions and early protest songs such as Alfred Bryan’s “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier” (written in response to World War I). Politics, peace, and folk music were deeply intertwined. The 1960s witnessed a major folk revival which served as a continuation as well as an adaptation of these sentiments. Whereas folk music of the 1930s. and 1940s developed under the shadow of the Great Depression, the outbreak of World War II, and fears of being blacklisted as a communist, the 1960s provided a different cultural backdrop. A growing youth movement, shifting social norms, and the emergence of a broader counterculture enabled folk singers to critique the government and U.S. policies more openly.
“Politics, peace, and folk music were deeply intertwined.”
Designer: Rachel Viets (Criminology and Criminal Justice)
The 60s folk revival was spearheaded by Woody Guthries, Arlo Guthries (Woody’s son), Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez. These artists were among the first to voice their opposition to war in the early 1960s, a time when doing so could still brand someone a traitor. In 1962, Dylan wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Masters of War.” Although these early songs were not yet explicitly about the Vietnam War, they delivered blistering critiques of U.S. militarism and planted the seeds of a growing uneasiness towards blind patriotism. These artists performed their anti-war songs at concerts, clubs, and on campuses, and the momentum behind their music and the movement they represented began to grow.
Psychedelic Rock
One of the most prominent and defining cultural figures of the 1960s was Ken Kesey. Best known as the author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, Kesey was equally influential as a countercultural icon who helped popularize and destigmatize psychedelic drug use, particularly LSD. In the mid-1960s, Kesey would regularly host gatherings, known as “Acid Tests”, blending music, light shows, and communal LSD trips to push the boundaries of consciousness and human creativity.
Though the 13th Floor Elevators can be credited as the first “official” psychedelic rock band emerging out of Austin, it was the Acid Tests and the broader psychedelic revolution along the West Coast that became the breeding ground for the genre’s explosive growth. These gatherings featured early performances by bands such as The Grateful Dead (then still called the Warlocks) and Jefferson Airplane. They infused experimental studio effects, distorted guitars, and free-form song structures into their sound, evoking the feeling of an altered state of consciousness.
Alongside the rise of psychedelics came a surge of interest in spirituality and Eastern philosophies. This spiritual dimension further distinguished psychedelic rock from its predecessors, giving the genre a philosophical identity rooted in experimentation and transcendence. These values aligned with left-wing politics and helped fuel the anti-war protests that defined the late 1960s. The Grateful Dead, for example, performed at the 1968 student takeover of Columbia University protesting the Vietnam War, played outside California’s San Quentin Prison on behalf of the Black Panthers, and raised bail money for those arrested during the People’s Park uprising.
“Psychedelic rock encouraged people to question authority, embrace alternative lifestyles, and imagine a world grounded in peace and collective consciousness.”
Although Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead asserted that the music he wrote aimed for something beyond politics, it is undeniable that his band, and psychedelic rock as a whole, played a vital role in opening people’s minds to new ideas. Psychedelic rock encouraged people to question authority, embrace alternative lifestyles, and imagine a world grounded in peace and collective consciousness.
The British Invasion
While folk and psychedelic rock were distinctly rooted in American counterculture, the British Invasion introduced a transatlantic surge of new sounds and attitudes. Beginning with the Beatles’ arrival in 1964, followed by the Rolling Stones, The Who, and countless others, British bands reshaped the American music landscape. Unlike the more overtly political folk scene, the earliest British Invasion bands did not initially frame their work as protest music.
Their lyrics were largely centered on love, freedom, and youthful rebellion. However, as the 1960s wore on and the Vietnam War intensified, the British Invasion acts evolved alongside their audience. They began weaving subtle critiques of authority, war, and conformity into their songs. The Beatles’ later albums, particularly Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, incorporated psychedelic sounds, Indian instrumentation, and themes of peace and self-awareness. Tracks like “Revolution” openly addressed political upheaval, while “All You Need Is Love” became an unofficial anthem of the peace movement. Other bands similarly blurred the line between music and protest. The Rolling Stones’ rawer, grittier sound and provocative lyrics spoke to alienation and resistance to social norms. The Who, meanwhile, used rock-operatic storytelling to capture generational tension and critique societal institutions, as in their 1969 album Tommy
The British Invasion did not just influence sound but also performance and spectacle. The larger-than-life concerts and mass media appearances helped politicized music reach an unprecedented global audience. This spectacle-based model would later be adopted by benefit concerts and political rallies, making the British Invasion a key bridge between entertainment and activism. They helped to bring counterculture and protest to the mainstream.
Soul Music
Rooted in gospel traditions and rhythm and blues, soul carried both the spiritual depth of Black church music and the urgency of political struggle. Early pioneers like Ray Charles and Sam Cooke laid the foundation, blending sacred and secular sounds in ways that resonated deeply across racial lines. Cooke’s 1964 anthem “A Change Is Gonna Come” became a touchstone of the Civil Rights era, capturing the mix of hardship, resilience, and longing for justice. By the mid-1960s, labels like Motown in Detroit and Stax in Memphis amplified soul’s reach. While Motown acts such as The Supremes, The Temptations, and Marvin Gaye often presented a polished sound designed for crossover audiences, their music still carried undertones of empowerment and pride. Stax artists like Otis Redding and Booker T. & the M.G.’s leaned into rawer grooves that reflected the lived experiences of Black communities in the South.
As the decade progressed, soul music became increasingly explicit in its political expression. James Brown’s “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud” (1968) was a bold embrace of Black pride and self-determination which aligned with the rise of the Black Power movement. Aretha Franklin, crowned the “Queen of Soul,” brought both gospel intensity and feminist strength into her performances. Her rendition of “Respect” was not just a personal demand but a rallying cry that resonated with both civil rights and women’s liberation activists.
The power of soul was amplified by its visibility. Soul music was blasted on televised performances, radio airplay, and large scale concerts and its message stretched beyond racial and generational lines to reach not only black audiences but sympathetic allies.
In the 1960s, music was more than just a backdrop to a time of massive social and political upheaval, it was a catalyst for change. Across genres, artists gave voice to dissent and within their concerts and records. Today, the legacy of 1960s protest music endures, reminding us that in times of conflict and uncertainty, music remains one of the most powerful tools we have to question, resist, and envision a more just world.
■ Olivia Kramer (Mathematics)
Carseat Headrest, MGM Music Hall
Photo by Jackson Goodman (Data Science & Business)
Royel Otis, MGM Music Hall
Photo by Caroline Xue (BNS & Philosophy)
National Parks, MGM Music Hall
Photo by Ananya Singh (Political Science & Economics)
Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Cristo became the one of the most influential acts in music by setting the standard for what was cool. Rejecting the quirky (if occasionally saccharine) attitude of the Britpop bands dominating Europe and the nihilistic outlook of Nirvana and their grunge peers in America, the duo chose to form a third path. Known as Daft Punk, they donned robot helmets and programmed punchy beats. Their signature touch would become the sound of electronic dance music, then pop, and then the world. This “French touch” of filtered samples and loops vocals coupled with rock’s brash energy and attitude rapidly took off. Before Daft Punk, ravers dismissed rockheads as pretentious and the rockheads deemed dance music as faceless. It did not take long for the group to bridge the gap and create music that everyone could enjoy – and that means everyone. As their career exploded, Daft Punk was cool for rappers, indie kids, and prominent creative visionaries alike. Even when they ditched their techno roots for a late-career disco pivot with live musicians and analog gear, they managed to cement their place among legends like Michael Jackson and Donna Summer.
Homework (1997)
Daft Punk’s debut took a few years to come together, but its impact was felt almost immediately. Daft Punk had signed with Soma Quality Records after meeting DJ Stuart MacMillan, but were given a great deal of freedom and control in mixing and recording whatever they liked. Without the constraints of a major label contract, the duo’s experimentation led to the birth of several singles, including the bouncy “Da Funk,” their first commercial hit. The mechanical and rhythmic house track hit indie clubs and college campuses as hard as “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Losing My Religion” had just half a decade prior. As hype around their name grew and the pressure to deliver a follow-up rose with it, Daft Punk decided to release many of their singles as an album.
TO DANCE LOSE YOURSELF A Daft Punk Discography TASTY TRACKS
“DA FUNK”
“ALIVE” “ROLLIN’ & SCRATCHIN’”
Homework, referencing the made-in-home-studio nature of most of the tracks, instantly killed what was left of the Eurodance sound plaguing European clubs in favor of thumping French house beats. It produced an even more massive hit in “Around the World,” a 7-minute circumnavigation of electro house music fit for house parties and remixes. Fittingly, it served as Daft Punk’s crossover hit to North American audiences while dominating dance charts in Europe and Australia. “Around the World” embodies much of what makes Homework great; it’s repetitive, but the hooks are so captivating that you can’t help but move along with the futuristic beat. Homework is the Daft Punk album most rooted in pure house music. However, some of the group’s more amateurish qualities shine through here, like the drawn-out sections of “Rock’n Roll” or the somewhat antiquated hook of “Oh Yeah.”
Despite some dated elements, Homework has maintained a stunning amount of relevance in contemporary dance music. “Revolution 909,” the first fully-fleshed out track on the tape, is a funky French house track ready for modern party playlists, and was sampled by Fred Again.. in his 2022 hit “Jungle.”
Discovery (2001)
Discovery is a once-in-a-lifetime record, and is often cited as the essential Daft Punk album, if not the quintessential starter electronic dance album. The era marks the start of Daft Punk’s famous look – robot costumes and a mysterious stage presence – and signature sound that relies heavily on samplers and vocoders. Transcending dance music into pure pop, the result is a spellbinding hour of effortlessly glossy hooks and drops. The first four tracks stake their claim as an all-time great opening run for an album, starting with “One More Time,” a dancefloor staple that includes vocals heavily processed through autotune,which was unconventional at the time. “Aerodynamic,” an extended coda, features a prominent guitar riff and propels the listener directly into “Digital Love,” a beautiful track laced with desire and longing. The opening stretch concludes with “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,” another unrelenting Daft Punk classic notably sampled by Kanye West in his 2007 hit “Stronger”. These four tracks are pure French house, but encompass a shockingly wide range of the duo’s musical ability.
Other highlights include the slower tracks “Something About Us,” and “Veridis Quo,” which demonstrate Discovery’s range. “Face to Face” is often mentioned as the pinnacle of Daft Punk’s sampling ability. The track allegedly samples over seventy soft rock and folk tracks, painstakingly stitched together to form a deceptively complex love song. It represents the complex technical skill of Daft Punk to stitch together unrelated samples into party-ready earworms.
Discovery’s legacy and impact surpasses even that of Homework. It has been credited with setting the foundation for pop production for future decades, far beyond the immediate reach. The EDM boom of the 2010s and its accompanying festival culture is massively indebted to Discovery’s big drops and sample-driven hooks; acts such as Skrillex, Avicii, and deadmau5 all cite Discovery as influences for their sets. It was practically the sole reference point for mid-to-late2000s bloghouse acts that channeled French electro into a new movement – Justice, SebastiAn, and even Crystal Castles, to name a few. And the amount of respect it garnered for electronic dance music as an art form for a “concept album” is almost unquantifiable. With Discovery, Daft Punk had cracked the code to timeless dance music.
TASTY TRACKS “ONE
MORE TIME”
“VERIDIS QUO”
“DIGITAL LOVE”
Human After All (2005)
It has been said that you can’t be a true fan of an artist if you can’t point to one blemish in their discography; most Daft Punk fans will immediately point to Human After All. Human After All was the group’s first project that did not feel like an immediate cataclysmic shift in the genre. Daft Punk ran away from the undercurrent of joy and spirit present in their previous works and veered in a minimalistic and cold direction. The results are mixed; the repetitive nature of most of the Human After All tracks heavily limit their replayability. A few highlights nonetheless shine. The brash and unapologetic “Robot Rock,” repeats the titular phrase for nearly five minutes with unflinching mechanical precision. The deadpan vocals on “Technologic” sound too flippant at first, but the bouncy rhythm is quickly inescapable (and would go on to be interpolated in Charli XCX’s 2024 hit “Guess”). Still, most critics dismissed Human After All as a major step down for Daft Punk, claiming it lacked the creativity and immediacy of their past projects. It would take a massive feat to incite a reevaluation.
TASTY TRACKS
“ROBOT ROCK” “THE BRAINWASHER” “TECHNOLOGIC”
Alive 2007 (2007)
TRACKS
“AROUND THE WORLD / HARDER, BETTER, FASTER, STRONGER” “HUMAN AFTER ALL / TOGETHER / ONE MORE TIME / MUSIC SOUNDS BETTER WITH YOU” TASTY
When Daft Punk announced their global tour in 2007 (beginning with their first US performance in over ten years), doubters wondered how successful the duo’s comeback could really be. Perhaps Daft Punk knew this, because they committed to an all-out display of showmanship for this tour. Alive 2007 is the accompanying live album for this tour.
The Alive 2007 tour recontextualizes tracks from their first three projects by mashing them up, remixing, and altering the original strong structures. Though the streaming tracklist only totals 13 songs, over 30 tracks are incorporated into the live set, often with extended sections or alternate mixes. These versions often bring out the best of Daft Punk’s most brazen tendencies. Tracks
“PRIME TIME OF YOUR LIFE / BRAINWASHER / ROLLIN’ AND SCRATCHIN’ / ALIVE”
from Human After All benefit the most from these reworks. The once-dreary “Television Rules The Nation” is paired with Discovery’s “Crescendolls” to form a progressive house masterpiece, and the title track is combined with “One More Time” to provide an electrifying closer. The standout moment of Alive 2007 is the gargantuan “Prime Time Of Your Life / Brainwasher / Rollin’ and Scratchin’ / Alive,” which coalesces over a decade of their career into a ten-minute epic.
The recording of Alive 2007 is taken from their Paris performance at Accor Arena in June 2007, and incorporates crowd noise and chants from fans. These cheers propel the listener through the journey and add a human element to the robotic mixes. No video recording of Alive 2007 was ever produced; Bangalter said that the fan-generated clips on the Internet do a far better job at capturing the energy than an official recording ever could. One reviewer said that “too much scale, flesh, and bodily effluvia” would be lost in any visual depiction of the tour. Regardless, the hour-and-a-half of electro house stands on its own as another career peak for the duo. The tour and recording of Alive 2007 not only won back the critics and fans lost from Human After All, but is credited with serving as a major turning point for dance music’s footing in America, similar to Beatlemania’s effect on American rock and roll. In short, Alive 2007 solidified Daft Punk as pioneers at the top of their game, dominating electronic dance music and pop culture.
Random Access Memories (2013)
Daft Punk had conquered house, mastered electro, and staked their claim as the decidersof what was trendy. It was only fitting that the conclusion to their storybook career was to make something timeless. Random Access Memories, the final Daft Punk project, came about as the duo was bored of the samples and loops that had informed their career thus far. After exhausting those methods to the fullest (including their work on the soundtrack to Disney’s 2010 film “Tron: Legacy”), they turned to live musicians and session arrangements. Recorded in complete secrecy and with the intention of cultivating a “west coast vibe,” Random Access Memories is a slick disco LP with polished, smooth vocals by studio musicians. Promoted through an extensive marketing campaign, Daft Punk put up billboards and appeared on late night shows to advertise the album while staying true to their classic robot look. The sole pre-release single, “Get Lucky” (a collaboration with Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers), was leaked online and subsequently released for download. Despite the leak, it became a smash hit.
Random Access Memories was released in full on May 17, 2013. It was immediately noted for its blend of timeless songwriting and homages to soft rock and disco history while maintaining traces of the robotic pop that Daft Punk had been known for. Their most successful album in North America, it received far more industry love than any of their previous releases. Tracks include “Instant Crush”, a sleeper synthpop hit that features vocals from The Strokes lead vocalist Julian Casablancas, and “Give Life Back To Music”, a funky yet smooth opener that lays the groundwork for the nostalgic and soulful production all over Random Access Memories. Random Access Memories would sweep the Grammys, including a coveted Album Of The Year trophy, and remains their highest-selling album to date. Though it was unknown to them at the time, this would be their final fully-fledged work together, but they had ended their discography with something simply ageless.
TASTY TRACKS
“INSTANT CRUSH” “GET LUCKY” “FRAGMENTS OF TIME”
Following Random Access Memories, the duo’s career slowed down. They continued creating some music together, and contributed two massive singles to The Weeknd’s 2016 album Starboy. “Starboy” became their first US-chart topper, but it would be their last studio output. Following some solo work for both members, Daft Punk announced their disbandment in 2021. In true android fashion, the split was announced through a clip of the robots parting ways – one exploding, one walking into the sunset. No reason was given for the split. The duo may have headed in their own directions , but their legacy will always be inextricably intertwined with the spirit of electronic dance music.
Ȗ Gabriel Barbier-Saiah (Criminal Justice/Psychology)
IN DEFENSE OF
In recent years, there’s been a pervasive belief that musicians owe their listeners authenticity. The success of singersongwriters like Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish have pushed the idea that a musician’s music persona and actual personality must be inextricably linked. When an artist can’t prove their genuinity to their audience, their decision not to show their true colors is correlated with a moral failure. But authenticity isn’t always necessary. Pop stars have employed songwriters for decades, and their personal style doesn’t always match up with how they present to the public. Forcing musicians to bare their authentic selves to the public can be an unrealistic and harmful expectation.
This “lack of authenticity” criticism is often directed towards Addison Rae. In 2019, Rae got her start on TikTok, an app that allows users to share short-form videos, and quickly became one of the most followed users on the platform. She gained fame for following dance trends and being a founding member of the Hype House, a creator collective. While people enjoyed her content,
Rae’s image was ditzy and sanitized, and she was never seen as a trendsetter or tastemaker.
But does an online persona or an artistic vision truly show a person’s true nature? And even if someone is authentic, can’t they still change?
When Rae first made her foray into music in 2021, fans were immediately skeptical. Her debut single, “Obsessed,” was forgettable and generic. Two years later, Rae gave music another go with her EP AR. This time, she selected singles that played into the playful yet provocative persona she began to craft, and started to form connections in the music industry that aligned with her creative vision.
After a year-long string of singles, Addison Rae released her debut album Addison in 2025. This version of Rae is hoping to seduce a completely different target audience than her TikTok-era self. Rae has traded in viral dances for choreographed music videos, staged TikToks for candid Instagram stories, and an unremarkable balayage for a distinct shade of honey blonde. Although these changes seem quite drastic for Rae, they make sense for someone hoping to establish herself as a respected artist.
Critics of Rae believe that she doesn’t have the skill or grit necessary to be taken seriously and that her association with more alternative artists like Charli XCX and Arca is purely performative. Rae might not have the performance or vocal ability that some of today’s most popular pop musicians have, but her album has proven that she has the passion, determination, and artistic vision that are integral to a successful music career.
Rae has always seemed to have an interest in experimental music. In 2022, her personal Spotify profile was leaked to the public, and her playlist history shows that she’s been listening to musicians like FKA Twigs and Arca for years. Addison takes inspiration from 90s art pop and avantgarde electronic music, but her reverence for mainstream pop icons is apparent on the album. On “Money Is Everything,” Rae
directly shouts out her inspirations when she sings “DJ play Madonna / I wanna roll one with Lana, get high with Gaga.” The Icelandic setting of the “Headphones On” music video evokes Björk, while Rae channels Britney Spears by wearing a gem-studded brassiere in the music video for “High Fashion.”
When celebrities pivot into a music career, they often mistakenly believe that their current image is enough to garner success. Rae knew that her TikTok persona would not translate to success as a musician, so she used her influence and resources to form a team that could help her create the pop star persona she desired. She recruited her friend Lexee Smith as her creative consultant, and the two developed Rae’s signature aestheticized weird-girl look. This look was translated into artful music videos crafted by a talented team that capitalized on Rae’s dance background.
Rae also has the desire to improve her songwriting skills. She worked with established songwriting and production duo Elvira Anderfjärd and Luka Kloser to write all the lyrics on Addison, and Anderfjärd and Kloser produced it. According to Anderfjärd and Kloser, writing with Rae felt “effortless,” and the group had an intangible chemistry. Addison’s success also helped Anderfjärd and Kloser win more production jobs in an industry in which female producers tend to be underrepresented. Rae’s decision to work with a close-knit team of writers and producers that are all women shows her intent to make a w in the music industry that is unapologetically and genuinely female.
Addison Rae had every opportunity to treat a music career as a cash grab, but instead, she decided to dedicate herself to the craft of performance. Rae’s pop star image may be carefully curated, but her passion for popstardom is anything but inauthentic.
Ȗ Rilyn Szabo (Behavioral Neuroscience and Design)
Y2K. A year branded by a neumeronym so sleek it solidified the year as cool before it even came to be. The turn of the millennium carried the momentum of dizzying technological, cultural, and social expansion. Progress felt inevitable, yet beneath the optimism lurked a question: how far could it go, and could we keep up?.
For all its promise, the dawn of a new era can feel strangely hollow on a personal scale. Beneath the gild of hope for the future, a nagging anxious thought surfaces- well, now what? How do you reconcile the realization that even in a futuristic world, your old struggles persist- you are still you?
It’s this dissonance between utopian futurism and everyday alienation that Grandaddy captures so uncannily on The Sophtware Slump . Released June 6th, 2000, well into the turn of the millenia, the album explores these themes throughout a series of zany stories unfolding across eleven tracks. Incompetent pilots, useless machines, and a drunken suicidal robot named Jet are the characters at the center of this album and the pawns in Grandaddy’s exploration of human value amidst technological advance.
The Sophtware Slump ’s opening track “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot” immediately immerses the listener in this uneasy world. The Pilot, disorganized and helpless, becomes an archetype of the worker “destined” to be replaced by automation. “Adrift again, 2000 Man / You lost your maps, you lost the plans” casts him as a wanderer in a digital age where even navigation feels unstable. He clings to tools of a bygone era as he watches all that he was accustomed to slip away, washed out by the tides of
But if The Sophtware Slump opens with a human overwhelmed by progress, it quickly flips perspective. “Jed the Humanoid” gives voice to a robot,a creation of the very forces that sidelined The Pilot, who nonetheless feels the same ache of purposelessness. Jed, built lovingly from kitchen scraps, learns to walk, talk, and create. For a moment he is the future. Yet his novelty fades, and his makers move on: “We gave Jed less attention / We had new inventions.” Left alone, Jed numbs his loneliness with alcohol until his systems fail. His ending is both tragic and absurd: a robot ultimately succumbs to human flaws, dying not in a blaze of malfunction but a puddle of loneliness and neglect. In Jed’s story, Grandaddy collapses the boundary between human and machine, suggesting that both suffer under the same relentless churn of obsolescence.
The album continues this interplay of human and technological fragility. Songs like “Broken Household Appliance National Forest” and “Miner at the Dial-a-View” extend the metaphor, populating a world where junked appliances form their own ecosystems and where workers use video screens to glimpse places they’ll never visit. Grandaddy’s settings are surreal but familiar, spaces where human yearning is filtered through malfunctioning machinery. The landscapes he creates hum with static and nostalgia, suggesting that progress doesn’t erase our longing for connection; it only reframes it through screens and circuits.
What makes The Sophtware Slump so prescient is how it understood the emotional cost of progress long before the age of smartphones, social media, and AI. Two decades later, its anxieties feel sharper than ever. As artificial intelligence, automation, and machine learning reshape daily life, Grandaddy’s stories resonate as cautionary parables. The album foresaw that technological upheaval wouldn’t just threaten jobs, it would unsettle our sense of identity. Its characters, human and otherwise, embody the emotional fallout of a world obsessed with improvement yet haunted by isolation.
Musically, this theme of ambivalence is embedded in the sound itself. Analog synths mingle with warm acoustic guitars, digital textures swell beneath organic drums. The production feels simultaneously expansive and fragile, mirroring the emotional push and pull between technology and humanity. Grandaddy doesn’t choose sides between nostalgia and innovation; instead, they build a sonic landscape where both coexist uneasily, illuminating each other’s flaws and beauty.
Ultimately, The Sophtware Slump isn’t about rejecting progress but about asking what it costs. It reframes the millennium not as a triumph of technology but as an existential reckoning: what do we lose in the name of advancement, and what remains stubbornly human amidst it all? This album is the answer; a quiet reassurance. It is a reminder that you’re not alone in feeling outpaced but there’s beauty, and even community, to be found in the glitches, mistakes, and pauses between progress.
Olivia Kramer (Mathematics)
Designer: Nina Roshe ( Graphic Design )
Thomas Day, Brighton Music Hall
Photo by Vivaan Lunkad (Computer Science)
Some kids inherit physical traits, some inherit a microphone, a stage, and a Grammy. What’s one thing Clairo, Matty Healy from The 1975, and Ben Platt all have in common? If you guessed being a nepo baby, you’d be correct! You’ve probably seen the phrase “nepo baby” scattered in comment sections and aggressive news articles if you’ve been on the internet in the last few years. But what actually is a nepo baby? And why is everyone arguing about them?
A nepotism baby, or nepo baby, is an artist whose success is due to their famous and successful family in their same or similar industries. The term has been gaining popularity over the last decade, stirring up online discourse around the validity of the artists’ success. Often, the phrase “industry plant” is uttered in connection to nepo baby. While the two terms both engage with an artist’s success and the invalidity of it, they are not the same. An industry plant is an artist whose rise to fame seems to have come out of the blue, with some secret large record label backing them or a hidden marketing tactic. While this can overlap with nepo baby, the two phrases are not interchangeable.
you won’t find many nepo babies practicing in their garage waiting for their big break. With success and fame comes money, and lots of it.
And with money comes lots and lots of resources; infinite vocal lessons, performance guidance, and expensive equipment are huge advantages to artists in the early stages of their career. This brings us to the question, why are people so upset? The reason is these extra opportunities feel unfair when there are equally, or more, talented artists who work hard every day yet never catch a break. A lot of fantastic and influential music has come from bands and artists who had to gain their success from the ground up, and as financial barriers to that success grow it is only getting harder for artists to catch their “lucky break,”. It's easy to see how it can be frustrating when a nepo baby performs a song they don’t care about with lyrics they didn’t write, and instantly skyrockets to the top of the charts.
So how much do famous parents really matter? The answer is, honestly, a lot. While small artists have to fight tooth and nail for every connection and every consideration by a record label, nepo babies already have those connections;record labels jump at the chance to sign J.J. Abrams or Sofia Coppola’s daughter (Gracie Abrams and Romy Mars). Having famous parents in general helps, but having successful parents in the music industry really is hitting the jackpot for any young artist who dreams of being on a stage. The benefit of having a parent already signed to a record label or owning one means
Being a nepo baby doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t care about your music or aren’t a talented artist, but authenticity is often viewed as almost equally as important as the sound itself. Many people care about the artist’s process and want to feel a connection to the artist, especially when genuineness is in the heartbeat of specific genres. Genres like hip-hop, blues, post-punk and punk rock are just a few examples of genres that were pioneered by artists and movements that came from adversity, and this spirit has remained an integral piece of these genres. When a nepo-baby artist rises to fame in these genres without that authenticity element, many fans of the genres feel like the artist cheated their way to success and that their music is not genuine or easily resonated with. An interesting nuance to this is bedroom pop, a genre which grew in popularity through online communities in the late 2010s and remains a popular genre to this day. In a genre like bedroom pop where authenticity and writing music literally in your bedroom is the definition of the genre, there are a surprising amount of nepo babies praised as key artists. Clairo and Gracie Abrams, two of the most famous current nepo-babies, both grew to fame in the bedroom pop genre, despite having parents who
directed the Star Wars franchise (J. J. Abrams) or who have large connections with the music industry (Geoff Cottrill). An interesting piece to this is that these artists’ careers grew exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic, where everyone was stuck in their rooms. This allowed the artists to present themselves as more bedroom pop-y, filming videos and livestreaming in their bedrooms. In some genres, authenticity is more vital than in others, but in terms of a song’s ability to resonate with a listener, it is a lot easier to connect with someone’s music when you can picture them in their bedrooms pouring their hearts out in a journal over a life event instead of just being handed a page of pre-written lyrics with production ready to go.
The importance of authenticity isn’t the case in every industry, and neither is the concept of hating on nepo babies. In sports, successful children related to other pro athletes are often praised as just being part of an athletic family or that their exceptional skill runs in the blood. One could argue that this is because there is no physical art being created – if they can play the sport and win, then fans are happy. However, nepo babies in music do play the sport and they do win, but they’re having their hand held and guided the whole time. What “winning” in the music industry means is not as clear cut as a scoreboard on a field; do the most sales win? Or the amount the artist influences a genre for years to come? Do Grammys and VMAs signify a winner? One of the most beautiful parts of music is everyone’s ability to interpret it for themselves, even if that makes the line of how success is defined blurry. A large part of any art, including music, is the meaning behind it and the interpretation, which lends itself toward artists who fans know are personal with their music, and not just there for the money or pure success.
The nepo baby title is not easy or simple to get rid of, even if a nepo baby is viewed as “talented”. An artist sells many records, and “it's just due to their parents’ fame.” An artist has good songwriting skills, and “I’m sure they have a whole team of songwriters backing them behind-the-scenes.” However, it is possible for nepo babies to “prove themselves” in the industry. Often this happens when a nepo baby surpasses their family members in fame, like Miley
Cyrus or Matty Healy, or express large personal connection and talent with their songwriting like Gracie Abrams. Matty Healy’s work with his band The 1975, as well as a writer and producer for artists like Beabadoobee and The Japanese House have allowed him to somewhat shake that nepo baby title off. Gracie Abrams’s songwriting skills about mental health and relationships have been noted as genuine and praised highly by well renowned songwriters in the music industry, supporting her talent and success as not undeserving. Abrams’s public acknowledgment on being a nepo baby and emphasis on how much she enjoys music and songwriting has also helped her shake that label. Although the nepo baby title can be given to any qualifying artist, the internet backlash and extent the title sticks with the artist reflects a gender bias, with male artists’ skills and success seemingly being validated more than female or marginalized gender artists from the same nepo-baby background. Although it can be easy to judge or discard artists just because they are nepo babies, it’s important to take the time to interact with an artist’s music itself. Although there may be a vast amount of insincere nepo babies, there’s some real gems who use their resources sparingly and pave their own way. It is important to acknowledge when an artist has an advantage from family connections and resources, however the music itself should be evaluated as well. In addition, there are many artists who have extreme talent and unfortunately don’t get the success they deserve, and the industry should try to bring those artists up rather than continue the current trend of strong favoritism to those with connections. The discussion on nepo babies is not clear cut; some are truly talented, some still work hard to achieve success on their own, and to put it frankly, some just don’t deserve their success at all.
Ȗ Hannah Storer (Computer Science & Game Development)
Designer: Emily Seitz ( Health Science & Psychology )
The Performative Male subverts gender stereotypes. He rejects traditional presentations of masculinity by misquoting Sally Rooney and listening to Clairo through wired headphones. Having Laufey and boygenius on his Spotify Wrapped is indicative of his commitment to dismantling the patriarchy. With a half-finished matcha in his heavily-accessorized hand, the Performative Male absent-mindedly flips through feminist literature to display allyship and turns women’s rights into an ironic TikTok trend.
This 2025 image of a “performative” Clairo listener is vastly different from the 2017 image when she first began releasing music on YouTube. Listening to Clairo was for the indie, soft-spoken teenage girls who felt seen by her lyrical vulnerability. Her discography is defined by an intimate understanding of experiences many women share under patriarchy. “Pretty Girl” describes the pressure girls internalize to perform femininity and submissiveness. “Sofia” describes the conflicting feelings of yearning and shame queer girls work through with their first crushes. For the girls who have a personal connection to Clairo’s work, the rise of the Performative Male can feel like a threat to the music that was precious to them as they navigated gender expectations
growing up. Considering how significant gender identity is to Clairo’s songwriting and fan base, some believe that a man can’t have the same deep connection to her music—that his interest in women artists must be feigned if he can’t truly identify with them. Perhaps he only embraces the emotional complexity captured by Clairo’s music in order to prove how deep and sensitive he is—his rejection of traditional standards of masculinity must be a shallow attempt at fitting the “female gaze” in order to manipulate and attract women.
While Clairo’s music deserves to be recognized for its gendered themes, perhaps gatekeeping her music is more symbolic of gatekeeping vulnerability. Claiming that only women can take genuine interest in an artist known for her emotional vulnerability has real consequences. The “Performative Male” trope is a fresh rebrand of shaming men for sensitivity, as if any expression that strays from traditional masculinity is inauthentic. In other words, men are only supposed to be masculine, so anything else must be a facade. If you don’t fit into the distinct social categories convenient to the moment, you must be faking it. Authenticity is unachievable when every expression must fit an aesthetic to be considered valid.
Aesthetic labelling harms an artist just as much as it does their audience. Cheapening
her music to a flag for a disrespected aesthetic denies it the dignity of being recognized as distinct work tied to her own artistic identity. Rather than being appreciated for how her lyrical themes have resonated with so many, she is associated with the image of a man pretending to read feminist literature at a coffee shop. The stigma of the Performative Male pushes people away from her music, until they believe no one who listens to her music does so because they actually appreciate it.
For however consuming it is right now, the “Performative Male” will fall as quickly as he rose. Social media trends move at a disorientingly fast pace. In an environment where everything is instantaneous and impermanent, an artist must fit into an aesthetic that is current and lasting enough to hit before everyone is on to the next. The pressure this puts on a musician to accommodate their style causes a genuine loss of artistic diversity and genre evolution. When the success of an artist becomes dependent on the traction of their catchiest song as a Tiktok sound, creative expression takes the back seat to playability. The current state of pop music is indicative of this development. Pop music sounds increasingly homogenous as it becomes reliant on simply-structured, repetitive melodies
"The 'performative male' trope is a fresh rebrand of shaming men for sensitivity, as if any expression that strays from traditional masculinity is inauthentic."
that lack complexity—as long as they are danceable enough to make a video go viral, dimensionality isn’t valuable. Authenticity is no longer important—performativeness is how you make it far.
Music has always been a tool for social change. Punk vocalized the antiestablishment spirit of working-class youth, jazz showcased Black pride and community amid segregation and lynchings, hip-hop brought attention to racial injustice and systemic poverty in urban communities. Music advances culture, shapes movements, and defines identity by breaking norms and challenging conventions. Meanwhile,
flattening music for playability reinforces an expectation for sameness. The insistence on the unforgiving standards of internet categories confine artists to cut-and-paste aesthetics that will inevitably go out of style. In a world increasingly inseparable from social media, popularity is fleeting and hot. In the meantime, individuality is suppressed, difference is discouraged, and change-making unimaginable.
Every image of a Clairo listener from 2017 to 2025 is hurt by the “Performative Male” label: the teenage girls looking for relatability and the young men exploring vulnerability. Rather than being worried
about how performative the Performative Male may be, we should be worried about performative internet aesthetics threatening the musical authenticity that drives change.
Ȗ Mya Jassey (Media and Screen Studies & English)
In today’s pop landscape, every artistic decision is a potential flashpoint subject to intense scrutiny. Yet another instance of this presented itself when the reputation of Sabrina Carpenter’s newest album preceded its release. The album cover for Man’s Best Friend, released alongside the album’s official announcement, sparked a polarizing online discourse over Carpenter’s expression of feminism or lack thereof. Some deemed the album cover to be regressive, misogynistic, and unjustifiable. Others stood behind it, claiming that the artwork’s playful irony is an intelligent extension of Carpenter’s overall brand. The debate exposes a deeper anxiety within pop culture. On either side of the argument, people fail to recognize that both the actions they’re discussing and the talking points they use to do so are not the first of their kind. Placing Carpenter in a wider context reveals the inconsistencies our society has in requiring artists to be activists, begging the question: where is feminism’s place in pop culture right now?
The album cover for Man’s Best Friend depicts Carpenter positioned on all fours while a male figure partially out of frame grasps her blonde hair as though holding a leash. While some defend the art as ironic satire that is consistent with Carpenter’s cheeky lyrical persona of being simultaneously attracted to and shaming of men, others critique it as an act of complicity with patriarchal norms that is thinly veiled as sexual empowerment. Listeners anxiously awaited the album’s release to see just how Carpenter would connect the divisive album artwork into her consistent lyrical irony around sexuality and misandry. Unfortunately for Carpenter, criticism did not cease upon Man’s Best Friend dropping. Negative reviews slammed the album for being a rushed, forced continuation of its predecessor. Not only were Carpenter’s lyrics far less unique, but also far too vanilla to truly conquer the male gaze. Conversations against Carpenter expanded beyond the album’s cover, but also its content. Online thinkpieces denounced Carpenter for her lyricism and branding being overly male-centered and unchallenging to patriarchal structures: by expressing her libido for men while also pointing and laughing at their patheticness, Carpenter paints men as bad without ever challenging the system that makes them that bad, therefore allowing their
any choice a woman makes is inherently feminist because a woman made those choices autonomously. While partially true, choice feminism often places decision making into a vacuum that doesn’t exist. It ignores both how intersecting identities restrict many women’s choices and how patriarchal socialization rewards women for conforming in ways that ultimately reinforce these oppressive systems. The argument against Carpenter claims she’s regressive for making her brand intrinsically tied to her relationships to men. This view overlooks a systemic perspective on feminism. Carpenter may target men’s flaws, just not the structures that produce them. Likewise, demanding that all true feminists decenter men misses the point entirely by not confronting the men themselves or the systems that keep inequality alive. Carpenter trashes on men, then winks at the audience as if to say “well, you have to love them!” This is not a revolutionary concept. But, disregarding Carpenter’s message for its lack of radicalism also disregards the many audience members who may genuinely find those concepts revolutionary because of their own lack of exposure to a more advanced form of female empowerment. Targeting Carpenter or the specifics of her artistic choices without acknowledging the systems at play that make these forms of expression profitable creates a narrow view of feminism that will initiate zero progress.
While valid, both this criticism and praise of Carpenter can lack the same broadened perspective Carpenter’s lyrics do when it comes to tackling the patriarchy. This reflects a greater consequence of digitizing activism. Instead of engaging with feminist literature or advocacy, feminism online often gets narrowed down into simplistic, individualistic alternatives. This boiling down can be seen on both sides of the Carpenter debate. The argument made in favor of Carpenter’s artistic choices utilizes “choice feminism,” the belief that
The controversy also leaves a question unanswered: what is Carpenter’s ultra-feminist alternative? Looking to other artists, there are troubling inconsistencies in cultural responses when it comes to feminism missing the mark. To gain the online feminist seal of approval, the clean-cut alternative for Carpenter would be to make a project that was overtly empowering to women. However, when other celebrities have attempted this path, audiences haven’t always approved. Katy Perry’s latest album, 143, walks this road. Despite the album being completely rebuked on a musical level, critics repeatedly pointed to Perry’s total tone-deafness in producing a painfully generic pop-feminist album that seems to forget inequality still exists. Lead single “Woman’s World” effectively declares “girl power!” in the face of a violent surge in misogyny in recent years. Adding to the fire, Perry’s collaborator for all but one song off 143 is producer Dr. Luke, who was accused of sexual assault and taken to court by his former collaborator Kesha in 2014. While making the digestible choice is seemingly commercially safe, it will fail if it’s inauthentic.
But will it fail? Taylor Swift’s career as a supposed feminist singer reveals the opposite. Swift was coined a pop-feminist icon in the late 2010s primarily for reclaiming power from the men who wronged her — She won a symbolic one-dollar verdict in court after a DJ who publicly groped her then sued her for defamation; and she ultimately regained control of her master recordings after
then-upcoming superstar Olivia Rodrigo, Swift made millions in a copyright infringement case against Rodrigo for her hit song “Deja Vu” vaguely sounding like Swift’s “Cruel Summer.” Swift was also rumored to have strategized the releases of the whopping 37 different versions of her album The Tortured Poets Department to block other female artists from reaching the top of the charts – like the UK-only flash sale of TTPD variants during the exact week Charli XCX’s BRAT was set to surpass Swift on the UK charts, or the special album releases that coincidentally came out the day Billie Eilish’s album Hit Me Hard and Soft hit streaming. After making billions off the language of girlhood and female empowerment, Swift gains even more wealth at the expense of her female competitors. Yet, audiences are unreactive. Swift was the best-selling recording artist in the world for the past three years. Even when evidently self-serving and insincere, pop feminism is accepted when coming from attractive sources.
Regardless of whether or not Carpenter is a feminist, her choice to make an ironic exploration of subversion is a unique one. One artist who agrees is former Black Midi frontrunner Geordie Greep, who made his solo career introduction in 2024 with The New Sound. The album is a supposed satirical exploration of male loneliness through the lens of the album’s subject, an obnoxiously unpleasant man so puffed up with grandiose, delusional notions of romance that he spirals
into lunacy. The album’s lyricism is shockingly vulgar. Greep sings lines like, “Another lonely executive cunt / The kind that only knows how to pay to touch” that are astonishingly lewd in describing women. Critically applauded as a critique of the type of man Greep takes on in each track, reviews for The New Sound seem to completely trust Greep’s execution of irony. These critics don’t even think to question if Greep himself just really likes to call women these degrading things. While it is important to note Greep’s significant lack of fame and influence in comparison to Carpenter, it feels convenient to dismiss that Greep is a less famous and influential man executing the same irony Carpenter attempts and, apparently, fails at on Man’s Best Friend. In the choice between failing to be an ironic man-lover and failing to be an ironic misogynist, which would you choose?
Celebrity activism can rarely be judged individually because of how it reflects systemic contradictions around power and commodification. Both sides of the argument around Sabrina Carpenter’s feminism accuse their opponents of misrepresenting feminism in a way that is damaging to the overall movement. But, both sides overlook the fact that the discussions they are encouraging are not new, and have remained in circulation because they ultimately go nowhere. This stagnation is because feminism’s definitions and applications are so splintered that society lacks a consensus to follow. These debates then function less as collective attempts to clarify feminism’s goals and more as cycles of controversy to keep pop culture turning.
ȖPaige Pataky (History, Culture, & Law)
Christian Kuria, Brighton Music Hall
Photo by Vanessa Chan (Business)
SWAG Springs Eternal
When Justin Bieber released an album succinctly titled SWAG in July, it seemed time to admit that America’s pet teenager was all grown up, and maybe a bit out of touch. He’s come a long way from the honeyed falsettos of My World and club bangers like “Where Are Ü Now.” Since the release of Justice in 2021, Bieber has gotten married, ended his professional relationship with his longtime (and much reviled) manager Scooter Braun, become a father, and been diagnosed with a neurological disorder. Dropping the album with no promo besides Instagram teasers hours before its release, SWAG is a bold move from an artist who is no stranger to success. The album’s cover, a black background with black text reading “SWAG” a lá Charli XCX’s BRAT, offers little insight into what the album could sound like. SWAG is a perplexing and eclectic body of work, expanding Bieber’s range and placing him in a more cutting-edge league of contemporaries. However, the album does not only have lofty goals musically. SWAG/ reflects Bieber’s desire to reclaim his reputation and relationship.
Irreverent as always, SWAG is Bieber showing off that he can do whatever he wants. The album is a departure from his previous work, which seemed to be chasing a radio-friendly mix of R&B, pop, EDM, and hip-hop that never settled comfortably into a cohesive sound. SWAG features lyric-heavy guitar songs that leave space for the singer to wrestle with his life in and out of the spotlight. Bieber is as confessional as he is crass, at times addressing his wife, at others addressing the public. As he settles into adulthood, he explores the fear of God and revision of self that comes with aging. A recurring theme is a failure to change, a resonant message from a star who always seems to end up in the tabloids. Some of these attempts fall flat, like the cringe-worthy lovefest “GO BABY,” in which Bieber sings “That’s my baby, she’s iconic / iPhone case, lip gloss on it,” or the half-baked repetition of “DADZ LOVE” featuring Lil B. However, other songs reflect an exciting maturation in Bieber’s approach. Tracks like “WAY IT IS” with Gunna depict the life he envisions for himself with
his wife, Rhode Beauty magnate Hailey Bieber: “Dreaming of travelin’ places we’ve never seen / Seeing you carry my child with a diamond ring / Hope we can settle down start a family.”
Bieber spends the first half of SWAG warming the listener to a new sound and public persona. The result is quite lovely; he plays to his strengths and things seem to be going along quite well. Enter Druski.
Druski, infamous internet comedian, is without a doubt the most confusing feature on SWAG. On “SOULFUL,” the first of the interludes, Druski says that Bieber’s “soul is black.” In another of the interludes, Druski coaches the singer through “STANDING ON BUSINESS,” referencing a viral clip of Bieber confronting paparazzi. Each interlude is as cringey as the next and sets an awkward tone for the following song. Although Druski’s inclusion reflects Bieber’s attempts to modernize his image and sound, choosing to structure the album around recordings of the comedian rattling off nonsense and offering Bieber a blunt is puzzling considering the self-possessed, introspective nature of the album’s lyrics.
Bieber’s taste in collaborators for the album is otherwise excellent. Sexyy Red brings her signature sticky-sweetness to “SWEET SPOT,” while Dijon pushes Bieber into strained, longing vocals on “DEVOTION.” On the title track, Cash Cobain tees Bieber up for a sleek and sexy dance track. Influenced by the work of artists like Dijon and Mk.gee, who are two of the main producers of the album, Bieber tries his hand at more alternative sounds. The palette of SWAG consists of fuzzy guitars and muffled drums. The style suits Bieber’s voice and allows him to experiment without sacrificing the cohesion of the album. Writers like Eddie Benjamin, Daniel Caesar, and Carter Lang, who wrote many of the best tracks on SZA’s albums Ctrl and SOS, seem to push Bieber to explore a more diaristic approach to songwriting.
Bieber uses this new style to defend and explain his perplexing relationship with his wife. The public’s perception is undeniably negative; Many commentators claim Bieber is still in love with Selena Gomez, while others stitch together clips of the pop star closing a car
door in Hailey’s face or refusing to turn around after she falls running from paparazzi. Bieber has not helped his own case, referring to his wife as “bitch” in both songs and Instagram captions and making awkward confessions of unsupportiveness. The unflinching declarations of love made on many of the songs of /SWAG/ do not seem to match what fans observe from the outside. These tracks could be a look behind the curtain, revealing a sweetness and vulnerability in their relationship that absolves Bieber of his bad behavior. Alternatively, these tracks could be more insidious, as Bieber’s insistence on his love for Hailey seems defensive and reactionary in the wake of their seemingly complicated relationship. Some tracks admit conflict in the marriage, while others seem eager to brush it aside.
The waves made by Bieber’s genre shift (and somewhat shocking exchanges with Druski) had only just settled when he once again surprise released /SWAG II/, a musical and spiritual successor to the first album. Bieber explores the same themes on the sequel album, infusing his hypersexuality and heady romanticism with religious fervor and dreams of domesticity. The pair of albums resist the negative bend that Bieber’s public image has taken in recent years.
Child stars that remain famous into adulthood are often treated like legacy acts before the time they are thirty years old. Before /SWAG/, Bieber was a celebrity better remembered for his not-so-subtle Instagram shade towards Selena Gomez and callousness towards his wife than any music he made post-Purpose. At first glance, it seemed like there was no clear radio smash on SWAG Then “DAISIES” shot to number two on the Billboard charts after its release. After all, he is Justin Bieber SWAG and SWAG II reflect that Bieber is not only aware of his complicated reputation, but eager to change it. The albums seem to have landed well among fans, but Bieber faces an uphill battle in reestablishing himself as a prince of pop in a world that requires its stars to be not only good musicians, but good people. Solipsistic, oversexed, and sentimental, /SWAG/ is a sign of the times.
• Joseph Manganello (Political Science)
Designer: Yuthika Pandey (Psychology & Design)
Puzzles
CROSSWORD
ACROSS
5. Timothee Chalamet played this artist in a skit on SNL.
7. This beam of sunlight lost out on "Best New Artist."
8. Clearly the Grammys weren't "charmed" by this artist's album.
9. The Grammys were not hit hard or soft by this artist's album.
DOWN
1. Iconic Boston slang that is also the title of a musical that was robbed at the Oscars.
2. Don't even "Get Me Started" on how this artist didn't win a Grammy...
3. This artist was simply tortured by the Grammys.
4. This artist won an iconic feud this year.
6. A meal is featured in this one artist's Grammy-nominated album.
