Jane Birkin’s Famous Love (Sex) Song
How the songs of the 1960s and ’70s captured the sexual liberation of women.
The Concert That Promised a Thousand Years of Peace
Guru Maharaj Ji, the teenage leader of the Divine Light Mission, was poised to usher in a new era. His huge Houston gathering proved to do anything but.
Athanasius Kircher’s “Musical Ark”
The first algorithmically generated music came to us in the seventeenth century, courtesy of Kircher and his Arca musarithmica.
Music Only for a Woman: The Birth of Easy Listening
A 1970s radio format geared towards the "feminine psyche" featured musical rearrangements with softer and gentler styles of the day's hits.
Ladies and Gentlemen, It’s The Kim Sisters
The diversification of talent on American variety shows obscured the reality of race relations in the United States during the Cold War.
Making Music Male
How did record collecting and stereophile culture come to exclude women as consumers and experts?
Reggae in Australia
In the 1970s, Willie Brim, a member of the Buluwai people, learned about Peter Tosh and Bob Marley from hippies who lived near his community. And the joy began.
“It’s Tight Like That”
A "dirty" song recorded by Georgia Tom and Tampa Red in 1928 launched the "hokum" blues.
Tape Heads
The Mellotron, an electronic keyboard of recorded samples, heralded the digital age, and its use in “Strawberry Fields Forever” changed pop music history.