Songs of Our Lives: “Off to War”
This is fault-line music, dangerous in an unassuming way.
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Posts Tagged: The Beatles
Wanted/Needed/Loved: John Linnell’s Sentimental Nimslo
Photos carry our memories, and in their own unique way our cameras do, too.
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Wanted/Needed/Loved: Andrew Savage’s Punk Possibilities
I kept listening over and over again, and eventually I realized this album was challenging my idea of what punk is.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #83: On George
There really is not a day that doesn’t go by that I don’t stop at some moment and think about George Harrison.
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National Poetry Month Day 31: Adrian Matejka
Every year, The Rumpus celebrates National Poetry Month by running new poems from poets we admire. We feature a different poet each day, and aim to illustrate the variety in voices and styles of poetry being written today.
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Song of the Day: “Gin House Blues”
Today, the so-called British Invasion of the ’60s is remembered primarily for its flagship band, The Beatles. Another English group called The Animals—widely known for their international hit version of the folk song “House of the Rising Sun”—are unfortunately obscured by the long shadow of the former, but their screaming fans knew and loved The Animals’s gritty rock. Their […]
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Swinging Modern Sounds #77: People Give Me Things, Part One
[T]he thing about receiving music from other people is this: there is always some grace associated with the transaction.
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Sound & Vision: Mark Alan Stamaty
Allyson McCabe talks with Mark Alan Stamaty, a Society of Illustrators four-time medalist, and the author-illustrator of ten books.
...moreHoward Stern’s Tribute to Revolver
The radio personality has put together a tribute to his favorite Beatles album, featuring a wide array of artists covering Revolver’s track list. According to Rolling Stone, the episode features: Cheap Trick tackling “She Said She Said,” James Taylor performing “Here, There and Everywhere” and Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats covering “Got to Get You Into My Life”….[also performing are] Dinosaur Jr.’s J. Mascis […]
...moreThis Week in Posivibes: A Frank Ocean Bonanza
It’s not hyperbole to say that everyone is losing their minds over Frank Ocean’s release of Endless, Blonde, and Boys Don’t Cry Magazine. After a four-year wait between albums, this outpouring offers a lot of incredible material to unpack. Blonde’s credit list alone makes perfect fodder for music writers, listing David Bowie, Brian Eno, Kanye West, Jamie xx, Kendrick Lamar, Elliott Smith, Beyoncé, the Beatles, André 3000, and Pharrell, among others. Add in Ocean’s […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Rich Cohen
Rich Cohen discusses his new book The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones, writing book proposals, and interviewing rock stars.
...moreSong of the Day: “You Never Know”
Wilco’s long career, beginning all the way back in 1994, has taken a lot of twists and turns. The band’s identity has morphed at least a few times along the way, but the first single from their eponymous seventh studio album reached number one on the Billboard Triple A chart in 2009. The single, titled “You Never […]
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Songs of Our Lives: Guns N’ Roses’s “Paradise City”
When people asked what I was going to do after high school, I said, “Leave town.” I wasn’t kidding. I hadn’t applied to a single college.
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Albums of Our Lives: Beck’s Odelay
A friend once showed me his dad’s copy of the Beatles’s White Album and said you could find secret messages hidden in the lyrics. I tried to look for the same things in Odelay, but it resisted.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Wanting To Dance
It just felt so comfortable to slide back into singing, “She Loves You,” and know for that moment, everything was the same.
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The Rumpus Interview with Elisa Ambrogio and Naomi Yang
Renaissance women Elisa Ambrogio and Naomi Yang discuss stop motion music videos, the female mythology of rock-n-roll, and giving ourselves permission to be creative, make music, and explore art in an intuitive way.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #58: Crowdsourcing
Music-obsessive activity, in general, appears to be about music. You could, on the surface, mistake it for being about music. But in fact what it is about is memory and love.
...moreSong of the Day: “My Sweet Lord”
Whatever your spiritual orientation, the implicit message of George Harrison’s 1971 single “My Sweet Lord” is undeniably uplifting. The track was allegedly written as a paean in opposition to religious sectarianism. Blending the words “Hallelujah” and “Hare Krishna,” the song urges union and inter-religious harmony (much like some other singles by a little group called The […]
...more“Mellifluent Instances” of Language
“Cellar door” isn’t the only euphonious phrase in the English language. For Printers Row, the Chicago Tribune‘s literary journal, Michael Robbins catalogs some of the “perfectly strung-together words” that have the power to “delight the ear.” And though he starts with a passage from William Gaddis’s The Recognitions, it’s not just books he’s talking about. He describes himself […]
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Hateful Things
Taylor’s arms are around me and I haven’t yet realized that the first boy I’ve ever loved is teaching me how to hate.
...moreThe Beatles as a Pronoun Treasure Trove
Pronouns are really in right now—probably the most popular figure of speech at the moment. And they deserve all the attention because of their linguistic functionality, their significance in unveiling our true social psyche, and their ubiquity in Beatles lyrics. What with lyrics like, “I am he as you are he as you are me […]
...moreLester Bangs on John Lennon
Jacket Copy has scrounged up an old op-ed written by the rock critic Lester Bangs, published six days after John Lennon was killed. “Look: I don’t think I’m insensitive or a curmudgeon. In 1965 John Lennon was one of the most important people in the world. It’s just that today I feel deeply alienated from […]
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