Feature·Music
MUSIC · FEATURE
The Last Waltz Is an Obituary Written Before the Death
Scorsese filmed The Band's farewell as a eulogy. The group it buried kept arguing about the funeral for decades.
Jules Okonkwo·24 Oct·4 min read
SECTION
Music
28 pieces in this section.
Music
Stop Making Sense Is a Film About Building a Band From One Man and a Boombox
Everyone remembers the big suit. What lasts is the order of the songs, which is the order in which a lonely man lets other people into the room.
Jules Okonkwo·5 Oct·4 min
Music
The Fourth Lyric Lorenz Hart Wrote for the Same Tune
Richard Linklater's Blue Moon keeps Lorenz Hart at Sardi's all night on the opening of Oklahoma! and ends on the song he wrote because a publisher asked him to.
Jules Okonkwo·16 Sep·5 min
Music
The Record Springsteen Carried Around in His Pocket
A $55 million studio film about a man refusing to let a four-track demo turn into a studio record. The film took $45 million. The cassette had the better argument.
Jules Okonkwo·7 Sep·4 min
Music
The Demo Singer Who Ended Up With the Number One Record
HUNTR/X are three drawings. Golden went to number one on the Hot 100 and won an Academy Award anyway, because the woman singing it had been doing this job in other people's names for years.
Jules Okonkwo·1 Aug·5 min
Music
The X-Ray on the Cover of Virgin Is Not a Metaphor
Thirty-four minutes and fifty-one seconds, no cool-down, no exit ramp. Lorde's fourth record is the first one that sounds like a body instead of a report from one.
Jules Okonkwo·20 Jul·4 min
Music
Pavements and the Joke That Turns Out to Be Sincere
Alex Ross Perry made four films about Pavement at once and braided them together. The braid should not hold. It holds, and somewhere in the middle it stops being funny and starts being true.
Jules Okonkwo·8 Jun·4 min
Music
Only God Was Above Us: Vampire Weekend at Full Power
Vampire Weekend's fifth album, released in April 2024 after a five-year wait, is the record where the band finally stopped being a band about youth. A year on, the shift is the interesting thing.
Jules Okonkwo·6 Sep·4 min
Music
Short n' Sweet: Sabrina Carpenter's Fully-Funded Year
A year on from Short n' Sweet, Sabrina Carpenter is the first pop star of her generation who has successfully metabolised the Disney-pipeline training into something that is not, finally, Disney.
Jules Okonkwo·19 Aug·5 min
Music
Brat Summer: What Actually Happened
Charli XCX's Brat was the pop event of 2024. A year on, the question is not whether the record was good. The question is what Brat Summer actually was, who it was for, and why almost everything it inspired was bad.
Jules Okonkwo·15 Jul·5 min
Music
Mk.gee's Two Star & the Dream Police: The Guitar Record the Year Needed
Mk.gee's debut full-length is the strangest guitar record a twenty-something American songwriter released in 2024, and nine months in it is still rewiring what popular guitar is allowed to sound like.
Jules Okonkwo·3 Jul·7 min
Music
Kendrick vs Drake: Notes on a Massacre
A year after 'Not Like Us' broke streaming records, changed halftime shows, and drove a superstar into the career wilderness, the question is no longer who won. The question is what the beef actually was.
Jules Okonkwo·10 Jun·5 min
Music
Cowboy Carter: The Beyoncé Record That Became a Genre Argument
A year out, Beyoncé's country album is not a country album. It is a demolition project. An argument for Cowboy Carter as one of the most important genre interventions of the decade.
Jules Okonkwo·30 May·5 min
Music
Songs of a Lost World: The Cure's Sixteen-Year Album
The Cure's first album in sixteen years arrived in November 2024. A year later, the wait was the point.
Jules Okonkwo·28 May·5 min
Music
Tigers Blood and the Second Waxahatchee Record
Katie Crutchfield's follow-up to Saint Cloud did not need to do anything except be good. It is good in specific, deliberate ways, and those ways are the record's argument for itself.
Jules Okonkwo·14 May·7 min
Music
GNX and the Kendrick Lamar Surprise-Release Argument
Kendrick's surprise-dropped November record is the victory-lap album that also functions as a genealogy lesson. Both registers are doing specific work, and both work.
Jules Okonkwo·6 May·7 min
Music
Alligator Bites Never Heal and the Year Doechii Stopped Waiting
Doechii's Top Dawg mixtape landed in August 2024, won Best Rap Album at the 67th Grammys, and did the specific thing most debut-tier rap records cannot do: hold the weight of a dozen genre switches without buckling.
Jules Okonkwo·24 Apr·7 min
Music
Mahashmashana and the Long Father John Misty Project
Josh Tillman's sixth Father John Misty record arrived in late November on Sub Pop. It is the longest the project has sounded and, in a specific way, the least defended.
Jules Okonkwo·22 Apr·7 min
Music
In Waves and the Long Wait for the Jamie xx Follow-Up
Jamie Smith's second solo record landed in September on Young, almost a decade after In Colour. It is the sound of a producer who has been DJing for nine years and finally decided to write the album the nights were asking for.
Jules Okonkwo·2 Apr·7 min
Music
Nilüfer Yanya's My Method Actor and the Uses of a Third Record
Nilüfer Yanya's third record arrived in September 2024 as the specific consolidation work a third album is supposed to do, and the consolidation has produced the strongest writing of her career.
Lena Ashworth·28 Jan·7 min
Music
Bon Iver's SABLE and the EP as Formal Recovery
Justin Vernon's Bon Iver returned in October 2024 with a three-track EP after a five-year studio silence. The short form is the point, and the record argues for it specifically.
Jules Okonkwo·22 Jan·7 min
Music
Magdalena Bay's Imaginal Disk and the Slow Return of the Album
Magdalena Bay's second full-length arrived in August 2024 to a slow critical build and a fanbase already waiting. Five months on, the album is the strongest argument for the form in current pop.
Jules Okonkwo·12 Jan·7 min
Music
CHROMAKOPIA: Tyler, the Creator's Paranoia Record
Tyler, the Creator's eighth album dropped on a Monday morning, which was a specific choice. The record itself is the specific choice that matters.
Jules Okonkwo·15 Nov·5 min
Music
Chappell Roan: The Slow-Motion Pop Star
Chappell Roan's album came out in September 2023. Her stardom arrived in summer 2024. The eleven-month gap is the interesting thing.
Jules Okonkwo·18 Sep·5 min
Music
Charm: Clairo Grows Up Again
Claire Cottrill's third album, produced with Leon Michels, is the record where she finally finds the sonic register her songwriting has been reaching for.
Jules Okonkwo·16 Aug·4 min
Music
Hit Me Hard and Soft: Billie Eilish Grown Up
Billie Eilish's third album is a quieter, longer, more patient record than the one she was commercially expected to make. It is also, easily, her best.
Jules Okonkwo·8 Jun·5 min
Music
The Tortured Poets Department: Taylor Swift's Unedited Record
Taylor Swift's eleventh studio album, released as a double in April, is the longest piece of popular music she has ever put out, and the most urgently in need of an editor.
Jules Okonkwo·6 May·5 min
Music
Deeper Well: Kacey Musgraves' Retreat
Kacey Musgraves' fifth album is the record of an artist deliberately stepping back from the cultural centre she had briefly occupied. An argument for the retreat as a specific creative choice.
Jules Okonkwo·8 Apr·5 min