Music | The Walrus

Photograph of the band u2 standing on a flashy street in Las Vegas

January/February 2022

Shooting Stars: A Love Letter to the Backstage Photo

January 17, 2022March 9, 2023 - by Lou D

Intimate, fascinating snapshots of Madonna, Jay-Z, and other VIPs from before Instagram changed celebrity photography forever

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

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.

Uncategorized

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

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

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

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

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 / September 2019

Céline Dion Is Everywhere

August 28, 2019January 13, 2023 - 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?

Uncategorized

In Times of Crisis, We Need Classical Music

March 19, 2019December 15, 2020 - by Kent Nagano

What will we lose if Bach and Beethoven disappear from our schools and concert halls?

December 2018

How to Make Opera Cool

January 11, 2019July 12, 2019 - by Simon Lewsen

As interest in traditional performance declines, upstart indie companies are fighting to keep the art form alive

Sections

Business

Environment

Society

Politics

Arts & Culture

Health

Fiction

Poetry

Memoir

Technology

Current Affairs

Special Series

Who We Are Now

Teen Walrus

Hope You're Well

For the Love of the Game

More Special Series ⇒

NEWSLETTERS

Weekly Newsletter

The Events Newsletter

The Walrus Lab Insider Newsletter

ANNUAL REPORT

Subscribe

Events

The Walrus Gala 2023

The Walrus Talks

The Walrus Leadership Forum

The Walrus Talks Video Room

PODCASTS

The Deep Dive

The Conversation Piece

Canadian Time Machine

Let's Talk About the Internet

What About Water

Bandwidth

Courage Inc.

The Walrus Lab

Amazon Canada First Novel Award

What We Do

Our Services

Our Projects

The Insider Newsletter

SHOP THE WALRUS