Though the standard narrative of 90s alternative hinges on the explosive success of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Gen Z pop star Olivia Rodrigo is known for having a different take: as she told the LA Times at the end…
In the finale to the first season of HBO’s The Penguin, organized crime mastermind Sofia Falcone/Gigante sets fire to her abusive father’s clothes and family mansion accompanied by indie rock veterans Sleigh Bells’ 2019 cover of “Where Did You Sleep…
In summer 2024, the figure of the “rock star”–someone who parties hard, does equally hard drugs, flouts rules of propriety, and lives a big, very spectacularly messy life–returned to the forefront of Anglophone pop culture, this time branded lime green…
When philosopher Kwame Appiah asked “is the post- in postmodernism the post- in postcolonial?”, he was referring to their shared de-centering of (mainly) Eurocentric master narratives about universality, objectivity, and other Enlightenment values. When I riffed on his 1991 article…
It’s time again for the “everything I wrote/major accomplishments for the year” posts, and here’s mine! 2024 is the 15th year of Its Her Factory’s existence: I started over on Blogger, migrated to my own domain, and now I also…
After my “Alt Rock to Alt Right” panel at the 2024 American Musicological Society, my friend Brian Wright (buy his book!) half-jokingly asked me whether the ‘alt’ in alt-rock is the ‘alt’ in alt-right. (The joke is that I published…
Kim Deal has been talking a lot about her mom, Ann, in her promo for her just-released solo album. For example, “Are You Mine” is inspired by an encounter Kim had with her Alzheimers-stricken mom where she asked Kim, “Are…
I’m giving a number of talks this November, and two of them are going to be streamed over the internet. The first one is this coming Friday November 8. It’s part of the Biopower at 50 conference at Rowan University…
This is my paper for the 2024 American Musicological Society. I’m on the Alt Rock to Alt Right panel with the eminent Theo Cateforis & Alex Reed. Some Sunday in 1992 or 1993 high school freshman Robin confused the heck…
This is the text of my talk September 19th at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Free tickets are available here. Hope to see some of you there! For those who can’t make it, a recording will be posted…
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