The Breeders’ “Cannonball”
Cannonball, the Last Splash’s breakout hit, is also the weirdest song on the album. The Quietus’s Emily Mackay calls it a “perfect freak.” Other critics suggest the song was too “strange and unique” to be successfully covered by other acts….
LAST SPLASH as the ür-text of 90s modern rock
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…
Relocating Rock in Resilience Discourse
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…
“Girl, So Confusing,” femme cool, and resolution over resilience
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…
On the “alt-” in alt-right and the “post-” in post-punk – more similar than you may think!
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…
What I wrote/did in 2024
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…
Is the “alt-” in alt rock the “alt-” in alt-right?
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…
Ann Deal, “the breeder of The Breeders”
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…
Two upcoming livestreamed talks by me
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…
“No, you can’t take that away from me!”: Wounded Entitlement, 90s alt rock, and financialized media industries
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…
Recent Comments