Let’s get one thing straight right from the outset. Music is neither produced in nor released into a vacuum. Everything that you have ever listened to from Beethoven to Doja Cat is a product of its time and its influences. So, when someone listens to a song and says to you “oh, this sounds a lot like…” it’s probably because it does.
Spotify loves making playlists. Some may say even to an excessive extent.
Artemisia Gentileschi is, in my opinion, one of the greatest artists to ever exist.
As we enter yet another phase of lockdown after what, for many young people, has been a particularly insular, small-town Christmas period, Elena Ferrante’s newest novel offers a reflection on adolescence, family and familiarity more poignant than ever.
Microphones in 2020, an ‘album’ that is really just one 45-minute song, and The Divine Comedy, a three-volume work of poetry by an Italian who died in 1321, may sound like unapproachable museum pieces, accompanied by signs that read ‘abandon all hope of not being utterly pretentious, ye who consume’. But in our current world, whose rapid events and repetitive life create an uncomfortable dissonance for many, I have found them essential.
The Sundial Journal 