- Lil Jon: The Popcast (Deluxe) Interview
- The Justin Timberlake Conundrum
- Popcast (Deluxe): Is Reality TV in a New Golden Age?
- Popcast (Deluxe): What’s an Industry Plant Anyway? Plus: Ariana Grande
- Tate McRae, Dua Lipa and the Fight to Be ‘Main Pop Girl’
- girl in red: The Popcast (Deluxe) Interview
- Popcast (Deluxe): Is TikTok Done? 4 Crises Holding the App Back
- Remembering Toby Keith and His Complexities
- Popcast (Deluxe): Pop Stars vs. the Attention Economy
- Covering the Rise of Tracy Chapman
- Popcast (Deluxe): Usher, Beyoncé and Ye Lead a Busy Week in Pop
- How Usher Arrived at the Super Bowl Halftime Show
Remembering The Village Voice, Music Criticism’s Crucible
Writers and editors share 40 years’ worth of memories about helping invent a language to talk about music, and the artists they critiqued — some grateful, some not.
Hosted by Jon Caramanica; produced by Pedro Rosado.
Late last month, the owner of The Village Voice, the storied alternative weekly that for decades had been a leading light for music criticism, among other things, announced that the publication would be closing.
Much of how we think about contemporary music criticism traces its roots to The Voice, which was a 1960s counterculture bible, a 1970s and 1980s downtown bible, and after that, a boisterous town square for cutting-edge conversation about cutting-edge arts. The writing was passionate and intricate, and the coverage was wide. The paper provided crucial early coverage of hip-hop, was dedicated in its coverage of jazz and modern classical, and weighed in on obscure rock and hyper-mainstream pop.
On this week’s two-part Popcast, several former Village Voice music editors and music critics, whose tenures date from the paper’s early years up to the last decade, look back:
Part 1 (above): The Early Years
Robert Christgau, who for several decades wrote The Voice’s Consumer Guide column, and who is currently the Expert Witness columnist at Noisey and the author of the forthcoming collection “Is It Still Good to Ya?: Fifty Years of Rock Criticism, 1967-2017”
Jon Pareles, a former Voice critic and music editor and now the chief pop music critic for The New York Times
Nelson George, who covered hip-hop extensively for The Voice in the 1980s and who is a producer of the upcoming Cinemax series “Tales From the Tour Bus”
Kyle Gann, who for years covered modern classical and new music for The Voice, and is now a professor of music at Bard College
Joe Levy, a former Voice music editor and now a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and host of the “Inside the Studio” podcast
Part 2 (below): The Later Years
Ann Powers, a former Voice music editor and currently a critic and correspondent for NPR Music
Evelyn McDonnell, a former Voice music editor and currently an associate professor and director of the journalism program at Loyola Marymount University
Chuck Eddy, a former Voice music editor and the author of several books including “Terminated for Reasons of Taste: Other Ways to Hear Essential and Inessential Music”
Rob Harvilla, a former Voice music editor and currently a staff writer at The Ringer
Tom Breihan, a former Voice music writer and currently a senior editor at Stereogum
Find the Right Soundtrack for You
Trying to expand your musical horizons? Take a listen to something new.
Will country music welcome Beyoncé? That’s the wrong question.
Vampire Weekend on its new album. (It’s not a “doom and gloom record.”)
The encounter that put the pianist Kelly Moran on an unexpected path.
Tyla avoids a bad romance, and 9 more new songs on the Playlist.
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