• An article on “chill” music playlists on Spotify.
“These days, to describe someone as “chill” is to propose that they’re slightly apathetic, but in a delightfully easygoing way. The rise of chill as an aspirational state suggests that perhaps the best thing to feel is not much at all…Spotify presently classifies chill as a genre, and there are an incredible number of playlists devoted to insuring a chill experience….I find it disheartening to see art being reconfigured, over and over again, as a tool for productivity—and then, when the work is finally done, as a tool for coming down from the work.”
• Music composed for Notre Dame Cathedral.
• An article about Lil Nas X’s controversial country music/hip hop hit.
“For decades, Nashville has essentially framed and marketed the rural experience as white — despite and in defiance of the deep black roots of country music. So when an artist like Lil Nas X — who is black, and raps, and is from Atlanta, with no ties to the country music business — lays claim to rural aesthetics, even in a way that’s partly tongue in cheek, it causes real disruption.”
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