The ladyblogs are all abuzz over this month’s issue of Allure, featuring Star Trek star Zoe Saldana. The cover line under her boldface name reads, “115 Pounds of Grit and Heartache,” bait that the Internet has gleefully seized, because the business of calling out sexism is always booming. But buried within the actual profile of Saldana is another irritating trend that Hollywood ingénues willingly participate in: the casual mention of the actress’s bisexuality. … Read More
Lady Gaga
27 Awesome Photos of Cultural Icons at Prom
Now that May is here, there’s no ignoring it: our tackiest American teenage rite of passage is approaching. That’s right, it’s prom season. Whether this conjures up cringe-worthy memories or no memories at all for you, not to worry — hosts of your favorite cultural icons have gone through it too, with varying degrees of grace. Click through for a collection of some of the greatest photos of actors, politicians, musicians, and even writers in their prom-night… Read More
Celebrities Praising Celebrities: The Best Tributes From the Annual “Time 100″ List
Time magazine released its annual “Time 100” this week — a list of the 100 most influential people in the world. The list is, as usual, light on shock; it pretty much features the political figures, artists, athletes, and philanthropists you’d expect. What makes the feature compelling is the deployment of similarly well-known folks to write testimonials about the influential people they admire. Since we love hearing about the actors our favorite actors love, it warms our hearts to read, for example, Jon Hamm’s fan letter to his fellow AMC star Bryan Cranston. “Over the past five seasons,” Hamm writes, “I’ve marveled at Bryan’s ability to turn Breaking Bad’s Walter White from a feckless, terrified father and husband to a ruthless, terrifying father, husband and crime lord. The transformation is mesmerizing. The performance is fearless. Bryan is that good.” These stunt tributes don’t always work (particularly in the political realm — the only thing we want to read less than Sarah Palin’s tribute to Glenn Beck is Ted Nugent’s tribute to Sarah Palin), but when they do, they’re a joy to read. See our favorite celeb-penned tributes from the past five years of “Time 100″ below. … Read More
Music’s Greatest Gender-Defying Fashion Statements
Earlier this week we did some serious thinking about the role of gender in Shaking the Habitual, the fantastic new album by The Knife. Today, we thought we’d revisit the same topic in a rather more lighthearted way: by looking at some of music’s most memorable gender-defying fashion statements over the years. Androgyny and ambiguity have long been part of popular music, after all, and they’ve been responsible for some of its most iconic imagery. From The Knife to Grace Jones and a certain remarkable German countertenor, here are some of the best… Read More
The Musicians That Make the Best Music Videos
As we noted last week, we were both intrigued and disconcerted by the arrival of the new Beach House video for “Wishes,” which features the ever-terrifying Ray “Leland Palmer” Wise lip-synching to the song as he directs some sort of weird gymanstic-centric cult meeting in a sports stadium. It’s the latest in a series of pretty awesome videos from Beach House, and it got us thinking about other bands who’ve really embraced the medium as an art form, making consistently great videos over the years. Here are some of our favorites! … Read More
Syllabi for 10 Real College Pop-Culture Classes We’d Love to Take
We’ve all heard of Physics for Poets and Rocks for Jocks, but a few college classes skip the pretense of hard science altogether and get straight to the fun stuff. While these courses may not get you into medical school, they’ll leave you well-prepared for any cocktail party conversation, as long as you go to the kind of cocktail party where guests talk about Harry Potter and Joss Whedon. We’ve compiled the most compelling classes on TV, music, and even video games that colleges have to offer, including a selection of readings so you can hit the books without doing the whole midterm-and-paper… Read More
Intriguing Polaroid Mosaics of Celebrity Faces
When it comes to celebrity portraits, it’s hard to be original. But Italian photographer Maurizio Galimberti solves this conundrum with Celebrity Works, his collection of mosaic portraits made up of slightly tilted Polaroid photos lined up to show each subject from three different angles. The images seem to capture the celebrities deep in thought, sometimes leaning their head down or placing a hand on their chin. All portraits are arranged in the same order, but the collages are as different as the stars who populate them. Click through for a selection of photos from the series, which we discovered via Design Taxi, and visit Galimberti’s website to see more of his work. … Read More
Camille Paglia’s Most Culturally Tone-Deaf Moments
Author, critic, self-avowed dissident feminist, and veteran professor of liberal studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Camille Paglia is in many respects a shrewd woman. And yet somehow Paglia has become just as well known for her frankly insipid and often unsound pronouncements about pop culture. Most recently, she wrote an article for The Sunday Times misleadingly comparing Rihanna to Princess Diana. The pop star, who apparently returned home sloshed to find her face melding beautifully into Lady Di’s on the cover of the paper, was thrilled with herself, posting the picture on Instagram, hashtagged with the made-up word: “extraordinaRIHbehavior.” To hold you over until she sees fit to compare Miley Cyrus and Kate Middleton, we’ve rounded up her most culturally tone-deaf moments. … Read More
Modern Songs Redesigned as Retro Vinyl Singles
We’ve admired the work of Robert Penney (Penney Design) and his pixilated reimaginings of The Beatles’ Abbey Road before. His latest project recently caught our attention on Retronaut. The designer took modern singles — like Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” and “What A Waster” from English band The Libertines — and gave them a retro makeover à la 1957 and 1965. The creases, LP impressions, and faded 7″ artwork add to the effect, and we wish there were about a dozen more of these to gawk at. Penney wins bonus points for creating a 1980s-era Thom Yorke and new The Eraser cover, which looks appropriately Bowie-riffic. … Read More
50 Reasons to Be Excited About Pop Music In 2013
It is a truth universally acknowledged that in event of a nuclear holocaust two things will persist: cockroaches and pop music. In our monthly Pop for Skeptics column, Rohin Guha explains how the latter need not be a terrifying thing to navigate, nuclear holocaust or not.
No pop fan really knows what to do with himself in January. It’s a special time of year when new fads are still being cooked up and otherwise unremarkable artists — nice to see you again, Nicole Scherzinger! — stand a fair shot at selling more than just a couple records. Some enterprising pop oracles might consult science, the stars, and mathematical trends to make all kinds of predictions about what is set to become “the next big thing.” Others, like me, will wait until some stuff has happened to do that. Sure, with January finally over and done with, it’s probably a bit too late to be making prognostications about what we should look forward to in pop this year, but to borrow a phrase from last year: YOLO. Below, then, are precisely 50 reasons to look forward to pop music in 2013. … Read More
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