Marvin Gaye was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame posthumously in 1987. Its biography of him names a little-known doo-wop song called “God Only Knows” as “critical to…
First, Brandon Hicks finds the essence of military conflict in his comic, “War.” Then, Arielle Bernstein talks to self-proclaimed “anti-racist feminist” Tamara Winfrey-Harris in the Saturday Interview. Winfrey-Harris’s blog, What Tami…
Father John Misty is the stage moniker of Joshua Tillman, the erstwhile drummer for indie sensations, Fleet Foxes. The laugh tracks on Father John Misty’s slyly catchy ballad, “Bored In…
Happy Memorial Day! In this weekend’s Saturday Essay, Amanda Parrish Morgan returns to a favorite film of her childhood, Dead Poets Society, as a high school English teacher with a more…
After the heartbreakingly gentle song, “John My Beloved,” ends, Sufjan Stevens takes a single audible breath. The breath, like many of Stevens’s choices on his revelatory new album, Carrie & Lowell,…
Soul staple Clarence Carter is most famous for his 1968 ballad, “Slip Away,” in which he urges his love to keep their relationship quiet. However, his baritone is anything but quiet…
First, the topic of artificial intelligence is the focus of drama in the Saturday Review of Ex Machina. Joe Sacksteder describes the “murky moral terrain” of the film, which follows an unwitting…
The rapper and elusive lyricist Earl Sweatshirt projects a certain underdog quality. His debut album, Earl, came out in 2010, when he was 16. It garnered him widespread attention, which only…
First, the wonderful “My Poem,” by Grant Snider, personifies the act of creative writing. And Brandon Hicks’s latest comic, “The Drunk,” offers a whimsical look at the road to political success in…
The diversely talented Perth, Australia-based recording artist Kevin Parker is known more widely by his stage name, Tame Impala. Often described as a psychedelic musician for the 21st century, Parker…
For National Poetry Month Days 25 & 26, Christian Anton Gerard and Ada Limon provide us with poems of love and luck. Then, Sean Donovan has good things to say…
Billy Joel’s long career has garnered him perhaps more accolades than are possible to enumerate. In 2013, he received a Kennedy Center Honor—the equivalent of the French Legion of Honor or…