The Inhailer 2025 Indie 500 took place this past Memorial Day Weekend, and as usual I have some thoughts on how the composition of this year’s countdown reflects the contemporary status of modern rock/alt/indie/etc. The 2025 chart made a very…
In September 2024 I was honored to give a lecture at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of the American Musicological Society’s lecture series. It was about the 36-year-old institution that’s the Modern Rock (now Indie) 500….
In 1989 modern rock radio station WOXY started its annual countdown of the 500 best modern rock songs in its library. This tradition continues at Cincinnati’s independent internet radio station Inhailer with the 2025 Indie 500. The week leading up…
In explaining the varieties of contemporary reactionary philosophy to my non-philosopher spouse, I settled on: “dark enlightenment” (DE) is neoreaction that leans continental, TESCREAL is neoreaction that leans analytic. Even though I am firmly of the view that the continental/analytic…
Billed as her “industrial” album, Lady Gaga’s 2025 album Mayhem finally puts words to the aesthetic she’s been developing as her signature pop sound for nearly two decades. I’ve been on record since 2010 saying that her sonic and songwriting…
As Liam’s Bluesky posts above illustrate, the current occupants of the US presidency and vice presidency are seen to be deeply invested in the performance of a masculinity rooted in ressentiment or personal injury, and this style of masculinity is…
As the second quarter of the 21st century unfolds, the music industry has become one where the majority of artists basically work for little to no money, performing labor that socially reproduces musical culture while Spotify and Live Nation make…
In their “Year in Music 2024” post to their station website, Jacksonville, Florida Hip hop station Power 106.1 declared that “Women Run The World of Hip Hop.” NPR declared around the same time that “Southern women are shaping the sound…
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….
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…
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