lizzygrantarchives · 13 years ago
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MTV Hive, January 13, 2012
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Lana Del Rey’s a torch singer for the internet era, splicing found footage for her early videos and nudging pop culture references in pastoral come-hither melodies. So it’s no surprise that she’s been both a smash hit and a lightning rod on the web—the former for her billowing voice, the latter because of her seemingly out-of-nowhere rise to stardom (and allegedly collagen-injected lips). Del Rey is the subject of much vitriol on blogs and websites, and rarely does that vitriol have anything to do with her actual music.
Part of what seems to rankle her detractors is that she peels the mystery from pop process: she is the anti-Gaga, transparent about her transformation from normie to performer. Her costumes in videos and photo shoots include elaborate floral crowns and gauzy gowns, but candids show a very pretty -- but average -- woman who looks very comfortable in distressed skinny jeans and ballet flats, quite like, well, a student at Fordham (her alma mater). She’s not trying to go to the grocery store in McQueen. Most remarkable about Del Rey’s seemingly surefire rise to stardom is that her narrative is largely un-spectacular: a classic smalltown girl from Lake Placid, whose formative exposure to the pop cultural keys and codes that turn people “cool” was limited, but whose smarts and savvy -- and yes, perhaps calculation, but so what? -- propelled her to this point. So when her next album, Born to Die, drops on January 31, with honey-dipped vocals and searing narratives, it will be fascinating to see whether Del Rey gets a Taylor Swift pass and is accepted as America’s moonstruck version of an everygirl.
Interviewing her at MTV’s studios this week, she seemed more like a chill study partner than a woman whose US television debut will be SNL (this Saturday, January 14, on NBC, after which she’ll hit Letterman February 2 and Ellen later that month). Her mild accent is naturally breathy -- without trying, her twang’s a bit like a mafia moll or, more specifically, a forlorn Jackie Kennedy. But that’s the closest she got to the myths in her meme. Online, there are many blog posts devoted to the lack of photographs in which she is smiling, and people seem to expect her to be pouty and haughty based on her model-looking press pics. In person, though, she comes off as sweet and well-spoken, and doesn’t hesitate to crack a smile (or, oh my god, laugh). There’s a dreamer aspect to her demeanor, but it’s tempered by how thoughtfully she seems to choose her words. Hive spoke with her about true love, rap music, metaphysics (as one does) and social activism.
How did you start getting into music?
When I was really little, I liked to sing, just with my mom. I would sing in school, I sang in church, because that’s just what we did. I sang in high school, in choir, a little a cappella group. I didn’t think I’d be a real singer, but I did like to do it. But then I got to New York when I was 18, and I decided that it would be really nice for me if I could be a singer. So I moved to Brooklyn with my boyfriend, and just started singing and playing there.
Did your parents have music around?
They didn’t have too much music around, but they actually both had really nice voices. My dad wrote country songs for fun, and my mom sang for fun. My dad liked the Beach Boys, my mom liked Carly Simon, but we didn’t really listen to them; we just put the radio on -- whatever would be on the radio. Growing up, I didn’t really listen to that much music. My friends and I listened to rap -- to like Eminem or like, god, whatever was going on then -- dance music, electronic stuff. Other than that, we were not that enlightened about all things “cool,” musically. We got there eventually!
When did you start writing songs?
I didn’t write anything that I loved until I was 18, so it was later. When I was younger, I always loved to write -- that was one thing I really liked to do.
"When you lead a different lifestyle from a lot of other people — like you don’t do drugs, you don’t drink, you try and stay above the dark side of things -- it’s just, that was maybe a position I was trying to embody just to stay calm."
I would write fiction on my own time, and I liked writing in school. I thought that was one of the less offensive school subjects, so that was fun for me. I transitioned to singing when I picked up the guitar. I’ve never been good at the guitar -- always been bad -- but it did help me write for the first four years.
I wondered if you wrote -- your lyrics are so narrative.
They sound like stories. I’ve been in New York now seven years, and it’s been a really long road, so the parts of my life that I draw from lyrically are maybe the more dramatic segments of the time that I’ve been here. But they are all true.
Do you feel like you struggled when you moved to New York?
Yeah, it was difficult, as it is for everyone. Maybe myself a little bit more, but that was my own fault.
Some of your lyrics, particularly in “Born to Die,” are incredibly sad. Are you a sad person?
I’m not sad, I’m happy. I feel like I’m happy because I’m at peace with the way that things are. It was difficult for me when I was, I don’t know … for a long time I was lodged in my head, wondering how things were gonna turn out, if things were going to be hard forever. And on a philosophical level, I was consumed with the idea that … what happens? Why are we here, What happens to us after we die? I did have a darker filter on sometimes, but that slowly lifted through doing a lot of different things. And finding true love is something that really did inspire me, lyrically. Because I felt so much the same for so much of my life and then when you find someone exciting, you don’t know that you could actually feel differently than you did before. I was inspired.
Is that how you knew that you found true love?
Well, I know now that it’s different for everyone. For some people, true love is complete serenity and feeling at peace and at home and having a life with someone else. For me, it was true love just because my own version of true love was feeling electric and excited. It really just depends on what you feel like you need, but for me, I had never really felt excited about things before.
You’d never felt excited about things before?
Not that I remember.
Just in love, or everything?
Just like, life. I mean you go to school every day and it’s hard … I lived in a small town and I just thought it was gonna be a long life.
Did you think you’d stay there your whole life?
I did for awhile, but I left when I was 14. I mean, I could have gone back -- well, I did go back. I was a waitress in town because I didn’t go to school right away, but then I decided to go to college in the Bronx.
Waitressing!
Yeah! I loved it! Everyone always told me I was a great waitress.
You get a lot of stories that way, too. What do you like to do in your free time?
I like to read, write, I like to dance. I’ve been really involved in my community for the last seven years that I’ve been here, in lots of different ways. I’ve been involved in homeless outreach for the last seven years. Drug and alcohol awareness -- I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs anymore. When things aren’t going that well musically, you know … I stopped focusing on music for a long time so I started focusing on other things that I knew more about.
Volunteerism?
Some volunteering. I have a group of friends who work individually with different affiliations, but basically, yes. It’s been good. I consider being able to pursue music a luxury, but it’s not the most important thing in my life. It’s just something that’s really nice that ended up working for me for right now.
Where are you involved?
Just in New York, just in the last seven years. When I realized that maybe singing wasn’t going to be so easy I went back to what I knew how to do, what I was also really passionate about. There’s not many things, but …
What about your videos?
Yeah, for “Video Games” and “Blue Jeans,” I edited. I only work on YouTube cause that’s the only medium I know, but I knew what I was looking for -- the clips I wanted to splice into them. And for “Born to Die,” I wrote a treatment for it called “The Lonely Queen,” so that I would be in a setting that represented Heaven, sort of in like a remote castle in Romania. [Laughs] Walking through the halls flanked by tigers. And then she’d be flashing back to happier times in the arms of her love. And then Yoann Lemoine adapted that treatment and made it more doable. But I love that video. I really do. I can’t believe it turned out so beautifully. I spent a lot of time thinking about where I wanted it to go.
Also the whole concept of a lonely queen. Is that a narrative that ...
Something I relate to? Yeah. I mean, I do feel alone in the things that I do sometimes ... sometimes I feel that I’m walking my own path. I’m not anymore actually, but I think that I did. When you lead a different lifestyle from a lot of other people -- like you don’t do drugs, you don’t drink, you try and stay above the dark side of things -- it’s just, that was maybe a position I was trying to embody just to stay calm. But I’m always thinking back to the way that things were, especially in terms of a particular relationship that was tumultuous. And Brad, the guy in the video, he’s in the video because he kinda reminds me of that guy. So yeah, it was really perfect, because everything came together.
What do you like to read?
I really like to read biographies, just like I like to watch documentaries; I like to figure out how people did what they did, why they ended up where they were. Mainly I like singer’s biographies. And two years ago, my favorite was Elizabeth Taylor’s biography, which was by her biggest fan who’s also written a lot of books on her, like all her romances. Also, Anthony Scaduto’s book on Bob Dylan was really good. And you know, I studied metaphysics in college so I’m always kind of reading on the side for fun.
What does metaphysics entail?
It’s not as complicated as it sounds. There’s different branches so it depends on which branch you’re studying. If you’re studying something like cosmogony, you’re studying about the origins of the universe, and how reality came to be reality. Like this space that we’re sitting in now -- how did we come to inhabit this place? And why this reality strikes us as it is. I studied that up in the Bronx.
Do you still live there?
I just moved back in with my friend in Brooklyn actually, because I’m never really here now and I wanted to be with a friend again.
So have you been practicing all week for SNL?
Well, no, I haven’t because I’ve been working. I don’t even know what I’m singing! I know it’s “Video Games” and I think “Blue Jeans,” but I thought it was supposed to be “Born to Die,” so I have to go figure that out. I better fucking figure that out! [Laughs] There’s a lot going on so there’s a lot of catching up to do.
Are you excited?
Yeah ... I’m excited if it goes well. If it doesn’t, I’m gonna kill myself! But yeah, what an honor. And who knows why, but it’s really nice for me.
What do you hope for your record?
You know, I say this and I really, really mean it: Everything I hoped for, I got it. It is just beautiful. My main hopes for the record were just in terms of what it sounded like and who worked on it. And now I have this crew who I’ll just work with forever. It’s amazing. This kid Justin Parker, and my producer Emile Hayne, the Philadelphia Orchestra ... my main hopes were just that it sounded gorgeous, and it does. And the rest? You know, whether it’s received well or not, I did a good job. So I’m not too worried about it. Because you can’t say it’s bad, because it’s just beautiful -- it’s just strings and beats.
Do you hope to tour the world?
No, what I’d honestly like to do is just stay here in New York. I’ve been here for seven years and I just love it here. I’ve been to almost every country and really, for me, nothing compares to New York. I’m just obsessed -- I’m in love. Every day in New York is a good day. I mean, here’s my ambitions: my big plan is to get residency back down in the West Village. When everything is said and done, I’ll do my tour, I’m gonna do my live television, but what I’d like to do is have residency in the West Village and do my other work that’s important to me on the side. And that would be a better life than most because I’d be doing what I wanted.
That’s on some Bob Dylan shit.
Bob wanted to tour the world! He was like … he really fucking wanted that. He started in the West Village, but he had visions of extreme stardom. He complains about it now, but he really wanted it! Do you live in the city?
I live in Brooklyn, close-ish to you. I was at Glasslands last night.
What did you see?
Some friends who are rappers!
Oh, do you know this band called Flatbush Zombies?
OH MY GOD, YO!
SHUT! UP! JUST SHUT UP! [Laughs] So me and my friend had this marathon the other night and he showed me that, I was just like … It’s just really weird -- Flatbush Zombies, A$AP Rocky, Azealia Banks, it’s something glossy, some of it’s weed rap but it’s all do-it-yourself videos. It’s really great! The whole time I lived in Brooklyn, I never felt like there was really a scene emerging, but now there is.
Brooklyn and Harlem rap right now is so ill. It’s a real New York scene forming.
Yes, that’s what it is! When I was here, MGMT was blowing up, but after that it was like, nothing. But that’s what’s happening right now.
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Originally published on mtvhive.com with the headline Lana Del Rey Will Kill Herself If SNL Bombs, Loves Weed Rap.
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sivavakkiyar · 1 year ago
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New Nina Simone dropped!
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kennicuzzz24 · 1 month ago
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"Your Girl" is a song recorded by American singer Mariah Carey for her tenth studio album, The Emancipation of Mimi (2005). She wrote the track with Marc Shemer and the latter produced it with her as Scram Jones. Lyrically, "Your Girl" is about Carey approaching a potential lover in a confident manner. She uses belting as part of her vocal performance. Critics described the music as containing pop, soul, gospel, jazz, and disco influences; some compared it to works by rapper Kanye West. It samples vocals and an acoustic guitar from the 2003 Adeaze song "A Life with You".
In music reviews, critics compared Carey's vocals to their state in the 1990s. The song's short length and her demeanor on it also received commentary. Some viewed "Your Girl" as one of the best tracks on The Emancipation of Mimi. Island Records did not issue it as a single from the album. Carey later released two remixes featuring rappers as part of a digital extended play. She performed the song live during the 2006 Adventures of Mimi concert tour and the 2024 Celebration of Mimi concert residency.
Following the album Glitter (2001), American singer Mariah Carey opted to join Island Records and released Charmbracelet (2002). For its follow-up, The Emancipation of Mimi (2005), she intended to create a more lighthearted record. "Your Girl" is the tenth track on the album, which was released on March 30, 2005. The label did not release it as a single. In April 2020, Carey said this was planned from the beginning despite it being one of her favorite tracks on the album. She wrote that the song "should have been a single" in her memoir later that year. Retrospectively, Entertainment Weekly writer Michael Slezak attributed its lack of radio airplay to the number of other worthy tracks on The Emancipation of Mimi. Chris Gardner of The Hollywood Reporter described the song as a deep cut.
"Your Girl" was later promoted as part of the #MC30 campaign marking three decades of Carey's career. On January 29, 2021, she issued an extended play to digital outlets containing a version featuring Diplomats members Cam'ron and Juelz Santana and a second remix featuring the rapper N.O.R.E.
Two minutes and forty-six seconds in length, "Your Girl" is the shortest song on The Emancipation of Mimi. Critics labeled it a slow jam and a power ballad. Carey wrote the song with Marc Shemer and the latter produced it with her under the stage name Scram Jones. All work occurred at various locations in New York City. Dana Jon Chapelle and Brian Garten engineered the song with assistance from Rufus Morgen at Honeywest Studios. After Pat "Pat 'Em Down" Viala mixed it at Right Track Studios, Herb Powers mastered "Your Girl" at The Hit Factory. It features background vocals from Carey and Mary Ann Tatum.
"Your Girl" contains a sample from the 2003 Adeaze song "A Life with You", written and performed by New Zealanders Feagaigafou and Logovi'i Tupa'i. It incorporates the same acoustic guitar and speeds up a few lines of the duo's voices in the chorus. Scram Jones obtained clearance after performing at a party for the group's record label Dawn Raid Entertainment. The arranger and guitarist of "A Life with You", Dominique Leauga, alleged he was not credited for his contributions.
Carey's singing incorporates belting early on in "Your Girl". The lyrics are about her confidently addressing a prospective lover. She says "I'm gonna make you want to get with me tonight" and assures him she will "put naughty thoughts into your mind". For Pitchfork's Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, the focus is on Carey's assertiveness rather than a relationship. In The New York Times, Jon Pareles said she uses an impersonal delivery. The song is "innocent, yet still a bit grimy" according to Carey.
Critics interpreted the composition differently. According to Clayton Smales of the Townsville Bulletin, "Your Girl" is a pop-leaning song. Guy Blackman of the Sunday Age felt it has a "down-tempo disco feel" and Sal Cinequemani of Slant Magazine said it is a derivative of the Motown sound. Slezak stated the chorus contains gospel influences; The Jakarta Post's Tony Hotland thought jazz and soul elements were present. Joey Guerra likened "Your Girl" to a retro soul record in the Houston Chronicle and Nick Marino called it "a simple old-school jam" in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Escobedo Shepherd said it was "based on the Kanye [West]-style, sped-up soul record trend that was aflame at the time" of recording. Todd Burns of Stylus Magazine also thought the production was influenced by West, while BBC Music writer Adam Webb viewed it as a revision of the "classic soul sound" common in Carey's previous work.
The song's composition was a subject of critical commentary. Blackman and Slezak called the chorus catchy. The Sunday Herald Sun said the song was too brief and Marino thought its length encouraged replays. Billboard's Nolan Feeney wrote: "Anticipation and longing are hallmarks of many a great pop song, but sometimes you just have to cut to the point".
Carey's performance received mixed reviews. Andy Gill of The Independent said her vocals were so histrionic she is "almost as bad as all the Pop Idol wannabes that reflect her disastrous influence". In comparing her voice to its state in the 1990s, Burns thought Carey sounded weaker, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel critic Dave Tianen said she used the same excessive style to bad effect, and Orlando Sentinel writer Jim Abbott argued it was better because she exercised more restraint. According to the Sunday Herald Sun, the song serves as an effective showcase for Carey's vocal range. Her presence received positive feedback from critics who viewed her as exuding confidence.
Some critics called "Your Girl" the best or one of the best tracks on The Emancipation of Mimi. It has appeared on rankings of Carey's music. In 2005, Slezak listed it among her 10 best songs. Billboard ranked it at number 38 on their 2020 list of Carey's 100 greatest songs.
Carey has performed "Your Girl" infrequently since its release. She sang it during her 2006 concert tour, The Adventures of Mimi. In 2020, she uploaded an a capella version to her social media accounts for the fifteenth anniversary of The Emancipation of Mimi. This formed part of a series of at-home performances by Carey during the COVID-19 pandemic. It received a positive review from Billboard's Glenn Rowley, who said she "delivers vocals fit for the gods". In 2024, Carey gave her first live performance of the song since 2006 for her Las Vegas concert residency, The Celebration of Mimi.
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ausetkmt · 1 year ago
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Nina Simone Sings the Blues
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“Backlash Blues”
Nina Simone Sings the Blues
1967
Simone’s friend Langston Hughes mailed her the lyrics to this song in poem form, and she took immediately to his indictment of “Mr. Backlash,” a personification of white oppression of black America’s small gains (and the “black, yellow, beige and brown” among them, equally oppressed). Simone delivered these promises and threats with a slinky blues rasp, forecasting that the person to receive the backlash would be the oppressor himself. Its lyrics also dovetailed with the rise of the Black Panther Party, which had begun exercising their right to open-carry in their efforts to protect the black people of Oakland from police brutality. Simone sang easily, measuredly, with the confidence that one day a score would be settled: “Do you think that all colored folks are just second class fools?” –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd
Listen:“Backlash Blues”
“I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl”
Nina Simone Sings the Blues
1967
In the 1960s, Simone left her first label, Colpix, ended up at Phillips, and then hopped over to RCA Victor. In 1967, she recorded her debut album for RCA: Nina Simone Sings the Blues, a hard-driving, tough-talking collection of originals and covers. On “I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl,” she borrows the basic blues progressions from “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” a 1920s cautionary standard originally popularized by Bessie Smith. But Simone comes up with an original lyric that bypasses social commentary and conjures up bawdy flirtatiousness and lust instead: “I want a little sugar in my bowl/I want a little sweetness down in my soul/I could stand some lovin’, oh so bad/I feel so funny, I feel so sad.” Impressive in her thematic range, Simone had no problem mixing double entendre lyrics about ribald sex and in-your-face politics on her albums: “I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl” appears alongside her classic civil rights protest song “Backlash Blues.” Songs like this serve as a reminder that the revolutionary activist who can’t occasionally admit to being horny isn’t really the revolutionary activist we need. –Jason King
Listen:“I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl”
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movingspaceart · 2 years ago
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shrimpkardashian · 2 years ago
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Review itself is kinda blah but I'm glad this got BNM.
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thepsynok · 2 years ago
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Album: SOS Artist: SZA Genre: #RnB #HipHop #Pop ℹ️About The Album : SOS is the second studio album by American singer SZA. It was released through Top Dawg Entertainment and RCA Records on December 9, 2022. Julianne Escobedo Shepherd of Pitchfork named the album "Best New Music", stressing how it "solidifies her position as a generational talent, an artist who translates her innermost feelings into indelible moments". 💭Thoughts : This is special, you can take every track individually and vibe with it, and then you can play the whole album and you’ll find yourself right in the middle of it. The music arrangement is beautiful, the producer has done such a fantastic job to something that was already so amazing. I am going to come to this album when I find myself going through one of those days. Yes, it’s a mood, and yes, it’s that good. 🍸Goes Best With : Let’s make ourselves an Aperol Spritz for a refreshing cool experience considering you’ll need it. Get yourselves Prosecco and Aperol, and ensure they’re chilled for maximum flavour, then squeeze an orange peel and garnish with the same, and oh, don’t forget the ice, lots of it. Enjoy ! Favourite Tracks: 🔥SOS, 🔥Kill Bill, 🔥Seek & Destroy, 🔥Love Language, 🔥Blind, 🔥Snooze, 🔥Gone Girl, 🔥Ghost in the Machine (feat. #PhoebeBridgers), 🔥F2F, 🔥Nobody Gets Me, 🔥Conceited, 🔥Special, 🔥Too Late, 🔥Far, 🔥 Open Arms (feat. #TravisScott), 🔥Forgiveless (feat. #OlDirtyBastard) Featured Tracks: ✨Kill Bill, ✨Special #SZA #SOS #Aperol #Presecco #Orange #Music #MusicReview #KANSASreviews #Musik_Co_ #TasteYourMusic #PsyNok #Psyn0k #FavouriteTracks https://www.instagram.com/p/CpS7IkoMmUd/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
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wonderg78-blog · 2 years ago
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nbcnews05 · 2 years ago
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SZA: SOS
Read Julianne Escobedo Shepherd’s review of the album. https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sza-sos/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr
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draculasdaughter · 3 years ago
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Crimson Peak (2015) Reading List  
TW: trauma, abuse and incest. 
Last updated: May 17, 2022.
Papers & Articles
Ghosts Are Movies: A Love Letter to Crimson Peak, Aaron Stewart-Ah 2015.
The ghost is just a metaphor: Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak, nineteenth-century female gothic, and the slasher, Evangelia Kindinger, 2017.
Ghosts are Real: Digital Spectatorship within Analog Space in Crimson Peak, Patrick Brame, 2017.
Monstrous Domesticity – Home as a Site of Oppression in Crimson Peak, Emilia Musap, 2017.
A 'fascinating conundrum of a movie': Gothic, Horror and Crimson Peak (2015). Frances A. Kamm, 2019.
The Fall of the House of Usher: A look at Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak, Claire M, 2019.
“Capture a Feeling of the Old”: Guillermo Del Toro’s Crimson Peak (2015) and the Victorian Gothic, Marine Galiné, 2020.
Challenging the Victorian Nuclear Family Myth: The Incest Trope in Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak, Dina Pedro, 2020.
Fictionalising the unspeakable: Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak (2015) as a trauma narrative, Dina Pedro, 2021.
Visual Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema: A Neoformalist Cognitivist Analysis of Visual Storytelling in Gothic Romance Film Crimson Peak, Pieters, I.N.A., 2021.
The influence of Art Nouveau on 'Crimson Peak', Kim, Ju-ae, 2022 (Korean).
Books & Chapters
Crimson Peak: The Official Movie Novelization, Nancy Holder, 2015.
“Introduction”, Inhuman Materiality in Gothic Media, Aspasia Stephanou, 2019.
Ann Radcliffe’s Legacy and del Toro’s Crimson Peak, Deborah Kennedy in Gothic Afterlives: Reincarnations of Horror in Film and Popular Media, Lorna Piatti-Farnell (ed.) , 2019 — Chapter Preview Only.
Ghostly Presences: Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak, Ann Davies in Ghostly Encounters, Stefano Cracolici & Mark Sandy (eds.), 2020.
Interviews
Interview: Guillermo del Toro, Carolyn Cox, 2015.
Designer Kate Hawley Talks The Menacing Beauty of Crimson Peak's Victorian Costumes, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, 2015.
Guillermo del Toro's Go-To Costume Designer Talks, Lauren Sarner, 2015.
CRIMSON PEAK: Tom Hiddleston Talks Progressing from Romance to Kink, Guillermo del Toro, and More, Steve Weintraub, 2015.
Others
Crimson Peak Movie Script (Written by Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins).
Crimson Peak and The Color of FEAR Frame By Frame (Video).
Guillermo del Toro & Mario Bava (Video, Article, and Tweets).
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greatfay · 5 years ago
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“—how sickening it must be, a woman artist constantly watched by bigoted tabloids interested in tearing you down from the man you love, how they did Mary M. and Jesus—and underscores the sorrow woven through MAGDALENE. The fact that sorrow spurred a musical growth this formidable, though, is evidence enough that twigs will always find her way back home.”
—Julianne Escobedo Shepherd
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npr · 6 years ago
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M.I.A.'s 2007 hit, "Paper Planes," straddles the line between critiquing and indulging American culture, with its anthemic chorus and gunshot sound effects. The principled ear worm earned the No. 1 spot on NPR Music's "The 200 Greatest Songs By 21st Century Women+" list, as part of this year's installment of Turning the Tables. As critic Julianne Escobedo Shepherd writes, "'Paper Planes' made M.I.A. famous, but more significantly, it solidified her as a biting analyst willing to use her pop stardom to expose the flaws in the very system of pop stardom itself."
"I think it's amazing how it stood the test of time," M.I.A. says. "I'm actually deeply honored, and I want to say thank you to NPR. That's amazing. I've never come first at anything. Like definitely a massive historical moment in my journey, to be recognized as someone who's made this song. It's nice, because to me it's so layered. And it did represent a time where we had the financial crisis and also the immigrant stuff, also it's about sort of mixing genres. To me, it has a lot of memories and meaning. Yeah, people still like the song, which is kind of amazing."
'It's Amazing How It Stood The Test Of Time': M.I.A. On 'Paper Planes' 11 Years Later
Photo: Mike Coppola/Getty Images
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jody-michael · 6 years ago
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The merch is extremely annoying for someone who has tried to get my friends to come with me to visit my mom for years, and then yet some of those friends who haven’t done so (yes, it’s personal) just happened to pop on a private jet to listen to an album by a guy whose new best friend is Candace Owens. It’s extremely annoying that Kanye is trying to make Wyoming ~the concept~ some hot new kitschy hypebeast shit, after I’ve spent my entire life trying to parse my complex relationship with my particular home state, and now the cool teens of the cities are going to think that Wyoming is cool, while the actual weirdo teens of Wyoming are gonna continue to be gripped by ennui and throwing tiny concerts at the community center and maybe, if they’re lucky enough to live in Cheyenne, smoking weed at the skate park and dreaming of another, bigger life.
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eckshecks · 8 years ago
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A Conversation With Mary Timony on Helium, Being a Rock God, and Weird '90s Nostalgia
Julianne Escobedo Shepherd Today 11:20amFiled to: HELIUM 6.8K 29 12
Mary Timony playing Coachella 2016 with Ex Hex. Image via Getty. Mary Timony, a DC-based multi-instrumentalist who’s been a staple of American underground rock since 1990, is ready to unleash the archive. She is prolific and adventurous, most recently playing in the bands Ex Hex (with Laura Harris and Betsy Wright) and Wild Flag (with Carrie Brownstein, Janet Weiss and Rebecca Cole), and with a cluster of solo and side projects over the past few decades that expressed her ever-wandering imagination and ingenuity.
But it was Timony’s restless, baroque, ferocious band Helium, which she based in Boston from 1992 to 1998, that first elevated her to nationwide prominence as a unique guitarist, singer, and lyricist, and it is that music she is currently gearing up to recontextualize. In May, the top-tier indie label Matador will reissue Helium’s two full-length albums (The Dirt of Luck and Magic City) as well as a new collection of rarities, demos, and b-sides from its EPs and seven-inch records (that’s called Ends With And, which references a lyric from Helium’s first “hit,” “Superball”). In June, Timony will play those ‘90s songs on tour, perhaps less a product of nostalgia and more like exerting visitation rights on her formative years—the notion that to move forward, it can be crucial to look back.
The riot grrrl movement of the 1990s has been exhaustively chronicled, but Helium perhaps less so, despite that it was musically and philosophically adjacent to the movement. Though obviously feminist at the time—the band’s first EP, Pirate Prude, contained multiple songs alluding to sex workers expressing their power intellectually and through vengeance—there was a marked distance between Timony’s lyrics and their intent, a curtain of distortion that kept them at arm’s length and open to more interpretation than, perhaps, the in-your-face indictments of many riot grrrl bands at the time.
Her myriad women fans, at least, seemed to get it—a confluence of vivid and sometimes religious imagery and ominous dares to temptation. The songs interpreted the unease that comes from struggling against gendered expectation, defiant but duplicitous. In Helium’s nascent beginnings circa 1993, Timony used her alto snarl and heavenward soprano to explore and question the murky territory within the Mary-Eve dichotomy. On the stomping ‘95 song “Baby’s Going Underground,” she sang:
Baby, I saw they kicked you down
Now you’re the only dirty trick in town
The stars are bright under your nightgown
A star is bright, a star is round Among other feminist bands of the time, and even within the overall ‘90s underground rock scene, Helium existed on a different plateau. Timony was a woman playing with and leading men—Ash Bowie on bass and Shawn Devlin on drums—in an indie rock scene that was dominated by them. She was a classically trained guitar virtuoso in a landscape that did not valorize virtuosity.
And consequently, despite the clear anger in her lyrics, she was often viewed as a fetish object by these men (who, as I recall, still thought of themselves as inherently more progressive, simply because they were participating in alternative culture, whether their actions reflected it or not). A 1995 SPIN profile observed the tension at play in the Pirate Prude EP—“postfeminist-signifier fans noted the Superman S pinned on Timony’s negligee [in the ‘XXX’ video] and understood the gender-tease equation”—and illuminated some of the motivation behind it: “People would assume,” she said, “I was the girlfriend of the band.”
Timony dealt with these issues with a lyrical magnifying glass, never obvious (and eventually, with 1997's Magic City, in a streak of personal feminist storytelling framed by fantastical allegory). “I was so angry,” Timony told Jezebel. “The lyrics are my take on feminism, written from a really personal place.”
Last week, I spoke with Timony by phone about unearthing her archives and re-examining the music she made when she was young. This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.
JEZEBEL: My first question is about process—how you physically went through and unearthed all these old demos from the 1990s?
MARY TIMONY: It was kind of like a treasure hunt through the junk in my basement and my attic, and contacting everyone I know from those days who might have something. I actually did go through hours of four-track tapes to try to find demos, and that was a process, even trying to find out how to play the tapes—I had to go buy a four-track at a music store, and none of them were labeled. It was a project I was working on for months.
I also went through a similar process with the photos, because we realized we were going to need approval from everybody who took them, so I had to look up all these people, like, random people who took a photo in Germany. It was a really crazy process, just getting in touch with all these people I hadn’t talked to in like 25 years.
What was it like, to go back and re-examine that era of your life?
It wasn’t as painful as I thought! A lot of that early Helium stuff before The Dirt of Luck, I’ve always felt pretty embarrassed by, because I cannot listen to my voice, I just did not know how to sing. But it’s been enough time now that I’m able to see it as something I did a long time ago. It’s not as embarrassing as it was.
The idea of looking back at yourself when you were young, revisiting that self, can be strange. Was that a process, too?
I was definitely more of an angsty, troubled person, but I guess that’s normal. I really had some shit I was mad about. [laughs] You know, the typical twenties thing; things seems so extreme when you’re that age.
In revisiting all your Helium music, what really struck me was that you were deploying these political concepts, but your lyrics weren’t necessarily overt. I wonder about your approach at that time, and how it shifted over the years of playing in the band.
I know what you mean. First of all, being a girl that played guitar at that point in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, definitely felt like more of a statement; it was just “weirder” than it is now. I felt more isolated, kind of like I was doing something that not a lot of women were doing, or was not a “womanly” interest, like being a truck driver or a mechanic. It was really different then.
So I couldn’t escape that. And then I was really thinking a lot about how women are seen, and how it feels to fall into that. I had a lot of stuff I was angry about, and I was really feminist, and the whole riot grrrl thing was happening in D.C. when I lived here and Bikini Kill moved to town. I was pretty influenced by that, but also at the same time, I am who I am and I was just making music, so I think the lyrics are just my take on feminism but written from a really personal place.
I was thinking about how it must have been so annoying to be this virtuosic guitarist, and then like all these dudes are playing barre chords and being hailed as like, indie rock gods.
It took me a long time to figure out how I fit in anywhere, I think. I went to music school and I was pretty genuinely nerdy, I was just into like, practicing guitar. But also, I didn’t really want to be in that world. I wanted to be a punk rocker. It really took me a long time to figure out how those two could connect.
It’s weird, because I teach kids guitar now, and kids are exposed to so much now because of the internet, it’s just a lot easier to figure out these things. You don’t have to choose one kind of music that you’re into or choose one kind of person you’re going to be, because they’re just exposed to so much stuff. So a lot of things I did at that age were just trying to figure out how I fit in.
I think that’s really apparent to me when I listen to the early Helium stuff. I studied guitar, I was in school for classical guitar for a little bit, but I didn’t know how to sing at all. I was terrible at singing, which is a really weird combination. Also with the early Helium stuff, the place I was coming from with how I was playing guitar was in this way I was almost deconstructing what I had learned and making myself play really sloppy. Like the Pirate Prude EP, for me, at the time, I was trying to play sloppy. You wouldn’t know that, but I was like, playing with one finger, using the whammy bar in a really sloppy way. I guess I was really angry in general at the world at the time, so it was a way of playing in an angry way.
Do you remember when you realized where you fit in?
After that EP, when I was like 25; I think the Dirt of Luck, when I listen back, was me figuring out what I wanted to do and the music that I wanted to make. I finally was like, This is coming from me. I’m not reacting to what I’m supposed to be doing, or angry at people; it felt like it was coming from a place inside of me [laughs].
It’s so hard being young!
I always felt like it was a lot easier for most people than it was for me, but maybe I’m wrong about that, maybe it’s hard for everyone! There’s a whole weird world you’re trying to get through.
I wonder what it was like for you, because you were coming out of adolescence and into adulthood in a pretty specific, somewhat public eye, and in that male-dominated indie rock world, where everything was so gendered. Some of the old articles I went back and read about Helium were so off-putting, men kind of not knowing how to figure out your band.
I feel like I really quickly found out that if you say you’re a feminist, at that time anyway, there was a big reaction to that, and it wasn’t understood except by other women. I think peoples’ attitudes about that stuff has changed a lot. To talk about being a feminist at the time was more loaded; I remember being really weirded out by how the band was written about. I was just a dumb kid trying to figure it out, but still mature enough to figure out how to be diplomatic in interviews and stuff.
And now, you’re what I would consider a career musician; you’ve been playing in bands this whole time, you teach guitar. How do you place all that into your trajectory?
It never feels like I’ve figured it out. It’s easier now, I guess, but it’s been a struggle, man. It’s not an easy thing to try to do with your life at any level of activity or money. It’s always a hustle, just being self-employed in general. Being an artist is easy in some ways because you make your own schedule, you’re following what your passion is and stuff, but there’s not a lot of stability and the money and your schedule and—everything’s up to you all the time!
But I don’t feel as worried about it anymore. Throughout my twenties in Helium, we weren’t the greatest businesspeople, I think. We never wanted to tour so we weren’t making money, I had to have temp jobs the whole time; I was working in hospitals and filing papers, doing really shitty jobs throughout my twenties. Touring is not easy, but I kind of feel like we did not do a great job at those kinds of things. It’s been a journey! [laughs] But I’ve figured it out a little more now.
Helium promotional pic ca. 1995. Image by Stephen Apicella Hitchcock. I also wonder about Helium’s evolution with The Magic City, when you progressed into a more baroque style of playing guitar. Were you trying to re-incorporate your classical knowledge?
With Helium, we always spent a lot of time in the studio, so the albums sound different because the people who produced them were pretty involved in the band and creative decisions. But I would say that in general, The Magic City is more of a classic rock record, less angry. I got more into escapism themes, and [producer] Mitch Easter had all these crazy instruments in his studio so I ended up playing a lot of overdubs; now when I listen back I’m like, Oh my god, why did I add that sitar on that song? I wish someone had stopped me! On that record, I definitely learned you can add way too many overdubs.
I think with the Helium stuff, we were pretty lazy about practicing before we went into the studio, which is bad. [laughs] You learn things when you get older! I just assumed, Oh, we can just fix it up in the studio but... that doesn’t happen, really. You just spend up spending a lot of time there. So now I’m really inclined to practice really hard and demo stuff out; working on the Ex Hex record, we just demo’d and demo’d and demo’d. Now I’m more focused on actually listening to what things sound like and how everyone’s playing.
I’m also curious about the alternate tunings you used on those Helium albums.
I’ve been mostly re-learning the guitar parts for The Dirt of Luck; I dropped down the E string to a low D on a couple of songs, but there’s a lot of distortion and harmonics on that record. A lot of the leads are... I don’t know why I did this thing where I played leads with one finger, but I did. On Magic City, Ash had a guitar where all the strings were tuned to E, and there’s a lot of distortion on it, and he’d bow it with a drumstick. It’s this droney sound, it’s on “Baby’s Going Underground” and “Superball.”
Back then there was an almost Wild West notion in underground rock music, where you could just do whatever you wanted, this sort of post-Shaggs thing where anything was right. Do you think that still exists now?
You mean back in the ‘90s, you could just sort of make your own thing up?
Yeah, where you could do whatever you wanted to do, and if you didn’t really know how to play an instrument it didn’t matter, it was a response to classic rock and hair metal where you’d have to do these riffy solos.
That’s so true, there was this whole feeling that amateurism was cool, and I feel like that blew my mind, because I grew up in the ‘80s, my older brother was really into the Grateful Dead and stuff, and I took classical lessons. When that came along, I just could not wrap my head around it, and it kind of blew everything I knew out of the water. But it was cool. I don’t know if that could exist now, because every type of music, every way of thinking about music, all exists at the same time now. I don’t think anything’s shocking anymore; in a way, that’s good, because people learn a lot and are able to become really good musicians. But I don’t know.
Does that confluence of everything affect what you do now? Ex Hex leans, to me, sort of simpler and more minimal. What is your approach now in songwriting?
I’ve been approaching it pretty differently. When I started playing with Janet and Carrie and Rebecca in Wild Flag, that was a really good experience for me because I really did start thinking about editing and arranging stuff you write now. But I’ve never felt like being creative is easy. There have been times when it’s been easy, but I think I’ve gotten a lot more self-conscious about it. Part of it is that with Ex Hex, I’ve been trying to write a specific style of music, pop, which I’m not very good at doing. In some ways I write pop songs, but I feel like I should probably be a person who makes noise. The things that come easiest to me is just like, weird shit that people don’t like. It’s really hard to make things that you love and that other people love!
But Helium, to me, always felt like a pop band. I don’t know if it was the ‘90s climate of rock being a lot of dudes moaning in a minor key, but your songs were so hook-y. How is it re-learning all those songs for the tour?
It’s been really hard, actually! I’ve been practicing some of them, and it was definitely weird when I was learning them. Now it seems like not that different from stuff I’m doing now. The guitar parts are harder in some ways, and weirder—there are things I would not write now—but it’s been fun to revisit it. You get in a certain way of doing things, and revisiting how I used to play has made me break out of the way I was thinking of guitar now.
I really like the guys that are playing in the band right now and I think it’ll be fun. I tried to get the original Helium back together but Ash is just super-busy right now and he really couldn’t do it. Other people have careers and children, so of course I’m like What, I don’t get it? I’m just like, a lifer.
Mary Timony will play the songs of Helium on tour in June. Matador will reissue The Dirt of Luck and The Magic City, as well as the rarities/b-sides compilation Ends With And, on May 19. Tour dates and pre-order info can be found here. Julianne Escobedo [email protected]@jawnita Culture Editor, Jezebel
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ausetkmt · 1 year ago
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Nina Simone - Is It Finished
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“Funkier Than a Mosquito’s Tweeter”
Is It Finished
1974
Nina Simone’s palate was always broad, but with this reimagining of a Tina Turner barnburner, she used minimalist funk arrangements as a platform for her unleashed vocals—mewling and crawling at alternate intervals, the disgusted cursing of a woman highly over a dusty dude. The openness of the 1970s served her more adventurous impulses well, though by the time she cut “Funkier,” she was fully spiraling into depression and alcoholism. (Who could blame her, with the serrated knife that had been the late 1960s, from Civil Rights to Vietnam?) Her edge showed in this song: Her voice cracks with exasperation, alluding that the predator she sings about might well be the good ol’ US of A. Spent, she wouldn’t record another album for four years. –Julianne Escobedo Shepherd
Listen: “Funkier Than a Mosquito’s Tweeter”
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hillarybeattrump-blog · 8 years ago
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Kanye-Trump alliance backfires: Taylor Swift dedicates 6th album to Black Lives Matter
MANHATTAN — The Kanye-Taylor feud escalated Thursday with Swift taking to Instagram to announced she's dedicating her sixth album to Black Lives Matter, a move that pop music pundits are interpreting as a "major rebuke to Kanye."
It all began in December when fashion designer and provocateur Kanye West revealed he’d voted for failed Republican candidate Donald Trump, who lost to President Hillary Rodham Clinton by a humiliating 3 million votes in November.
West explained his support for Trump as stemming from his “loyalty to the underdogs of American politics." The musician's reasoning was met with widespread derision on Twitter and pained, rueful and incredulous reaction on Black Twitter. Writers Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton dedicated a special segment of their hit feminist podcast Another Round to imploring Kanye - who once accurately observed that "George Bush doesn't care about black people" - to "return to rationality for the love of God."
But things got crazy on Thursday when Swift - a country music darling whose blonde hair and white skin has been praised as "the epitome of female political speech" by Trump supporters and the KKK - announced via Instagram that her upcoming album will be "dedicated to the badass feminists of color who have stared down police at Black Lives Matter protests." 
Swift's shocking announcement hit pop music pundits and social media like a bomb, causing Nashville to go into meltdown and the Dixie Chicks to Tweet "About time."  New York Times music critic Jon Caramanica convened his long-suffering copy editors, beloved colleague Wesley Morris, and Jezebel's Julianne Escobedo Shepherd for an emergency episode of the NYT Popcast to discuss what Caramanica described as "the suddenly uncertain state of miscegenation in pop music."
Shepherd said the megastars' political positioning reflects "the dystopian undercurrents that have been coursing through a racially fraught America since November’s election" and "the fact that Taylor Swift hates Kanye more than she likes her white privilege."
Morris said he looked forward to hearing the album.
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