Tag: music video
Madonna Is Always One Step Ahead
We like our female icons, as they age, to go quietly—to tiptoe backwards into semi-reclusion, away from our relentless curiosity and our unforgiving gaze. Tina Turner managed this arguably better than anyone else, holed up for the last decade of her life in a gated Swiss château with an adoring husband and a consulting role on the hit musical about her life, watching a younger performer step nimbly into her gold tassels. Joni Mitchell retreated to her Los Angeles
Country Music Is More Popular—And More Angsty—Than Ever
Country music, the century-old genre of nostalgia, tradition, and twang, has never been more in style. Last week, for the first time in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, the three most popular songs in America were country songs. One explanation for the milestone is that the genre’s artists and audiences are finally leaning into streaming: This year, country has experienced a 20 percent rise in listenership, a surge outpaced only by those of Latin music and K-pop.
But
Before YouTube’s Algorithm, There Were ‘Coolhunters’
Everyone had to see this. It was early 2007 when Sadia Harper called her YouTube co-workers to her desk to watch. On her screen, a preteen with a buzz cut and an oversize dress shirt was belting out an Alicia Keys song. “This kid is amazing,” Harper said. The singer’s mother had been badgering her with emails to feature her son, Justin Bieber, on YouTube’s homepage.
Harper was one of YouTube’s “coolhunters,” a team once tasked with curating videos on
Where Did the Internet Challenge Go?
Ten years ago this month, the Harvard men’s baseball team put a video on YouTube in which they danced and lip-synched to Carly Rae Jepsen’s No. 1 hit, “Call Me Maybe.” It was funny because, well, you know: They were muscle-y boys with serious jawlines, and they were doing choreography that involved punching the ceiling of a van; this was back when a lot of people thought that pop songs were really stupid and for girls. So the video got
The Problem With Emily Ratajkowski’s ‘My Body’
Rewatching the music video for “Blurred Lines,” the totemic Robin Thicke song, is an interesting project. In 2013, when it was released, the song spawned a new microeconomy of commentary denouncing it as a distillation of rape culture, or fretting over whether enjoying its jaunty hook was defensible. (“I know you want it,” Thicke croons presumptively over and over, even though honestly, no, I do not want it at all.) In the video, directed by the veteran Diane Martel, three