Scientific Reports
A peer-reviewed study of six decades of lyrics (1960–2023) using transformer models tuned to Moral Foundations Theory finds a rise in moral "vices" (harm, cheating, subversion) and a decline in virtues (care, purity) — lyrics as a cultural barometer.
Line Noise
Ben Cardew's piece on Line Noise makes the case that Nancy Sinatra is one of pop's genuinely subversive figures — not adjacent to the mainstream but actively undermining it, from LSD odes disguised as easy listening to the deeply strange Greek-mythology fever dream of Some Velvet Morning. The argument hinges on her partnership with Lee Hazlewood, whose influence Cardew treats as load-bearing rather than incidental.
Never Hurry a Murray (Robin Murray)
Robin Murray's piece on Anthony Fantano argues that the internet's most divisive critic is annoying precisely because he's right — and that's the engine of his durability. Artists hate him, audiences trust him, and Murray uses that tension to untangle why critical friction still has market value in a streaming era optimized to sand every edge off.
Futureproofing
Futureproofing goes deep with Robert Henke on what it actually takes to make dense electronic music cohere. The Monolake co-founder is candid about how Gerhard Behm functioned as a necessary counterweight — stripping back what Henke compulsively added — and how losing that dynamic forced him to internalize restraint as a strategy.
vijay iyer
On Substack, Vijay Iyer writes about Greg Tate — what it meant to be fully heard by him, through Burnt Sugar rehearsals, Baraka's band, and a post-9/11 airport pat-down Tate named in two words. Less eulogy than a meditation on how radical listening becomes an act of love, and how that shapes the artist you become.
Concrete Avalanche
A roundup of 11 of the best albums released from China in the first half of 2026, spanning genres from emo and indie-rock to hyperpop, ambient, and jazz.
Carl Wilson, 'Crritic!'
Carl Wilson's Substack 'Crritic!' traces the Ex across five decades through six songs — a useful frame for a band whose longevity defies easy explanation. Wilson grounds the argument early: the Amsterdam anarcho-punk squatting scene that birthed them in 1979 was formative but limiting, and their real story begins when the borrowed outfits fell away and the rhythmic invention took over.
Free City Rhymes
Free City Rhymes makes the case that Luciano Cilio's Dialoghi del Presente belongs beside Pink Moon and Bad Timing — a largely solo Italian record from the 70s, rediscovered late, that sounds like Morton Feldman reimagined with folk instruments. The Jim O'Rourke parallel is convincing, and the close reading of Patrizia Lopez's ghostly vocal entrance is the kind of specific that earns the comparison.
2020 Music Group
Alexander Iadarola's newsletter opens with a viral meme about Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads, then uses it to pick at a genuinely interesting problem: what does probabilistic surprise even mean when video compresses in a moment what prose needs four sentences to explain? From there it pivots into a defense of bad music as a critical tool — Skrillex included.
Cuba on Record
A curated playlist of songs dedicated to Diego Maradona, with personal reflections from the author about covering Maradona's time with Sevilla in 1992 and witnessing Argentina's 1986 World Cup victory in Buenos Aires.
