Most musicians can only make money on the platform by writing songs inoffensive enough to get on to one of its vapid playlistsIn the hands of some of its most gifted practitioners, songwriting is a kind of emotional alchemy. For the past week, I have been returning to a perfect example: Every Time the Sun Comes Up by the US singer Sharon Van Etten, which was released in 2014. Its lyrics might be fractured and fragmented, but it is an almost perfect portrait of self-doubt and downward spirals: one of those songs that captures feelings so deep that they go way beyond words.I went back to that song as I read a superb new book that has both educated and profoundly depressed me. Mood Machine, by the New York-based journalist Liz Pelly, is about the music-streaming giant Spotify, and how it attracted its current 615 million subscribers, making a billionaire of its Swedish co-founder and CEO, Daniel Ek. But its most compelling story centres on what Spotify has done to people’s appreciation of songs and the people who make them – much of which is down to the platform’s ubiquitous playlists.John Harris is a Guardian columnist. His memoir Maybe I’m Amazed, about his autistic son James and how music became their shared language, is published on 27 March. For more information, visit maybeimamazed.substack.com Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2025-03-09 16:38:43 UTC ]
When CJ Hauser published “The Crane Wife” in The Paris Review, an essay about repressing her needs in a relationship, calling off a wedding, and going to study whooping cranes on the Gulf Coast, it quickly became a viral hit. Three years later, her 17-piece memoir in essays of the same name... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2022-07-14 11:00:00 UTC ]
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How Josephine Baker transformed from dancer to spy. | Lit Hub History “Although they’d been dead for 30 years, I was writing their story in a taut, blow-by-blow replay as the noose of Jones’s madness pulled tighter and tighter.” Julia Scheeres on the harrowing experience of writing about the... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-07-13 10:30:04 UTC ]
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Random House buys a memoir about alcoholism and family, and Irish novelist Joseph O’Connor sells a historical trilogy to Europa. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-07-08 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Rafael Agustin dishes about "Illegally Yours," his candid new memoir about a childhood without documents, and the TV pilot that never made it. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2022-07-07 13:00:42 UTC ]
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“I grew up working class and money was a factor in everything we did,” says the poet and novelist, whose new book is the memoir “Crying in the Bathroom.” “That’s why I always write about the financial realities of my characters.” Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-07-07 09:00:11 UTC ]
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"The Pallbearers Club" is presented as a found memoir manuscript, complicated by the contradictory annotation of an enigmatic woman. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-07-04 13:00:00 UTC ]
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Dive into a tender coming-of-age memoir by Isaac Fitzgerald, a biography of Vladimir V. Putin and novels from Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Bolu Babalola and Daniel Nieh. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-06-30 09:00:24 UTC ]
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Solitary confinement is a form of torture that the prison system makes commonplace. Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2022-06-26 10:00:00 UTC ]
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Arceneaux, an astronaut on SpaceX’s Inspiration4 last September, describes how having cancer as a child changed her faith and the rest of her life in ‘Wild Ride: A Memoir of IV Drips and Rocket Ships’ (Convergent, Sept. 6). Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-06-22 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Kate Clanchy’s memoir about teaching won the Orwell prize. Then, a year later, it became the centre of a storm that would engulf the lives of the author, her critics and dozens of people in the book trade. So what happened?At the end of March, a book that had been condemned to die came back to... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-06-18 08:00:13 UTC ]
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After publishing a tell-all memoir about her family’s struggles with undiagnosed mental illness, Lindsay Wong was surprised by their reaction when she moved back in with her parents during the pandemic. Continue reading at CBC
[ CBC | 2022-06-17 15:51:56 UTC ]
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Spiegel & Grau takes on actor Rob Delaney’s memoir about the death of his young son, Julia Fine sells a novel set in 18th-century Venice to Flatiron, and more. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-06-17 04:00:00 UTC ]
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A memoir of Ativan withdrawal, a British Jamaican coming-of-age on the streets of Bristol, a tour of the sensory world of the animal kingdom, and more. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-06-16 09:00:27 UTC ]
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Ada Calhoun hoped to finish a biography of O’Hara once started by her father, the art critic Peter Schjeldahl. Instead, she wrote a searching memoir about creativity and family. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-06-15 02:06:51 UTC ]
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“In a perversion of all laws of the universe, I’m about to read my father a story before bedtime.” Séamas O’Reilly on reading his memoir to the man who taught him to love books (and skipping over the hardest bits). | Lit Hub Memoir Lousy at first impressions: When tomatoes made their debut in... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-06-11 10:30:34 UTC ]
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In her memoir “Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me,” Ada Calhoun set out to write a poet’s biography and found a connection to her father instead. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-06-09 09:00:19 UTC ]
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The comedian’s memoir was funny. But when the new show based on it tries for something deeper, it sinks into bathos. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-06-08 02:00:06 UTC ]
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In the memoir “James Patterson by James Patterson,” the best-selling author opens up — kind of — about how he came to be such a force in the literary world. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-06-06 11:00:41 UTC ]
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The actress who became America’s sweetheart in “Dirty Dancing” explores how her looks -- and her alteration of them -- affected her career Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-06-05 17:44:52 UTC ]
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Charles McGrath’s “The Summer Friend” recounts happy days and the gut punch of an untimely death. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-06-04 09:00:03 UTC ]
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