Music | The Walrus

An illustration of a girl crowd surfing.

Groupies Deserve More Credit

October 19, 2022October 19, 2022 - by Lisa Levy

Superfans contribute just as much to culture as the male musicians they love. Why haven’t they had the shine they deserve?

Arts & Culture / Music

What I Learned as a Teenage Hip Hop Critic for Pitchfork

August 10, 2022August 11, 2022 - by Rollie Pemberton

At seventeen, I spread the gospel of underground rap to a wider audience. But BIPOC music journalists are no longer afforded opportunities like mine

Orville Peck rides a pink and aqua-coloured horse with leopard spots

Arts & Culture / Music

Orville Peck Rides Again: How the Singer Nods to Queer Country History

April 22, 2022May 2, 2022 - by Simon Lewsen

Some may reckon that Peck is subverting the genre. Instead, he’s highlighting themes that have always been part of it

Collage of Polaris Music Prize posters. Posters for Drake, Jessy Lanza, and Grimes in the foreground.

Music / November 2021

How the Polaris Prize Pictures the Music

September 22, 2021October 18, 2021 - by Meredith Holigroski

Each year, visual artists create custom posters for shortlisted albums. The results are often astonishing

Photograph of a dog wearing large headphones and smiling.

Music

Do You Have a Musical Guilty Pleasure? Claim It

December 15, 2020March 24, 2022 - by Chilly Gonzales

Why Chilly Gonzales believes Enya has the voice of an angel

The singer, Riit, holds a microphone onstage and closes her eyes as she sings. She is wearing a dark blouse and a long, translucent green skirt. Behind her onstage is another musician.

April 2020 / Music

A New Sound for Inuit Music

March 12, 2020June 16, 2020 - by Carly Lewis

Riit’s new album fuses throat singing and electropop, pushing the borders of both genres

The artist Taylor Swift smiles and looks toward the top right of the frame. The image is covered in purple glitter, except for the area around Swift's face.

Arts & Culture / Music

Taylor Swift Is the Surprising Face of Millennial Anxiety

March 2, 2020July 23, 2020 - by Joelle Kidd

Like most of my generation, Swift knows the exhaustion of constantly selling yourself as a brand

The singer Grimes, wearing a red velvet dress and with her hair in puffy orange-and-black pigtails, sits on a concrete throne and stares at the screen.

Arts & Culture / Music

The Terrifying, Techno-Dystopian Visions of Grimes’s New Album

February 27, 2020March 3, 2020 - by Simon Lewsen

The singer’s new album explores a dark truth: the most dangerous social forces are also the ones that fascinate us

Six cassettes with unspooling tape coloured in pink, red and orange

Arts & Culture / Music

When Sexism Makes for a Catchy Song

November 11, 2019 - by Tariq Hussain

My songwriting students pen misogynistic lyrics. But the music industry tells them that’s okay

A wax figure replica of Céline Dion at Madame Tussauds in Las Vegas

Arts & Culture / Cover Story / Music / September 2019

Céline Dion Is Everywhere

August 28, 2019November 18, 2022 - by Suzannah Showler

At fifty-one, Dion is wrapping up her Vegas residency with a world tour, an album, and two movies in the works. Why has it taken forty years for the world’s most talented singer to finally become cool?

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