Favorite Venue Royale Tastemaker Since Spring 2022
Quote “I feel like you're being sabotaged by your inner saboteur...”
Major Data Science and Economics
Graduating Spring 2027
Favorite Venue Middle East Tastemaker Since Fall 2024
Quote “If you have flappy bird on your phone don’t delete it or you can’t get it back.”
Major Media and Screen Studies
Graduating Fall 2027
Favorite Venue MGM Music Hall Tastemaker Since Fall 2024
Quote "More of me comes out when I improvise."
Nessa Barrett, Roadrunner
Photo by Taliyah Fox (Game Art and Animation)
Table of Contents
Cover Story
23
A Tale of Two Cities: Berlin's Emergence as Techno Capital
Take a tour through the death of a divided Germany and the birth of Berlin’s finest cultural export: techno.
Features
12 20 31 36
The Rise and Fall of Girl Groups in Western Music
Once pop culture’s driving force, girl groups ruled the charts — until they didn’t. Now, as pop rises in the East, the question remains: What happened to the girls who once ruled the world?
Looking Back to Look Forward: The Evolution of NostalgiaBased Sounds
Journey through the hazy, nostalgia-driven world of hypnagogic pop, where the past collides with the future to create a sound that is both unsettling and irresistibly familiar.
Lana Del Rey's Evolving Americana
Through a decade of reinvention, Lana Del Rey’s ever-shifting Americana mirrors a nation in transition.
An Ode to Rate Your Music
A deep dive into Rate Your Music — an insufferable yet beloved relic of online music discourse that has shaped taste, gatekept genres, and stood the test of time.
Shedding the Bedroom Pop Label
As artists like beabadoobee and Clairo trade lo-fi charm for bigger, bolder sounds, is the bedroom pop genre evolving or just a stepping stone to something greater?
Gender Expression Through Glam Rock
Gender-defying, boundarypushing, and unapologetically extravagant, glam rock rewrote the rules of identity and selfexpression. 38 44
Interviews
14 34
A Q&A With Fisheye: Our 2025 Battle of the Bands Winner
Tastemakers sat down with Fisheye, the indie-rock act that took home the win at this year’s Battle of the Bands, to discuss their rise to the top and what’s next.
Local Talent: Warmachine
The Boston noise-rock band talks their newest EP soulmurder, their creative process, and reflects on their time at Northeastern.
Etcetera
18
Dissects: Undonethe Sweater Song
A closer look at the song that captures the raw vulnerability that made Weezer both an altrock powerhouse and a band forever at odds with its own identity.
19
Taste of Nostalgia: Impossible Princess
Tastemakers revisits Kylie Minogue’s sixth studio album that marked her shift from pop perfection to vulnerable selfexpression.
26
Discography: Townes Van Zandt
Take a tour through the works of Townes Van Zandt, where every verse unravels the myth of a man who lived as if he had nothing to lose.
42
What Were You Listening To?
Have you ever wondered what echoes through your professors’ headphones on their walk to class? In a special edition of “What are you listening to?,” Tastemakers talks to professors.
Album Reviews
choke enough, So Close To What, In The Blue Light, and Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory
Benjamin Ingrosso, Big Night Live
Photo by Michelle Wu (Music Industry and Communication Studies)
The Weeknd & Playboi Carti Gillette Stadium
Julia
ROCK OMM ENDS
Chloe Moriondo
May 21 @ Paradise Rock Club
She's still at the shipwreck and you're not there yet, but you could be! Whether you've been a fan since “Manta Rays” or just want to dance to some indie-pop, don't leave her alone on the "shoreline" and see Chloe Moriondo at Paradise Rock Club on May 21st!
Hannah Storer (Computer Science and Game Development)
Hozier
June 23-24 @ Fenway Park
Whether it’s your “first time” or “anything but” Hozier’s Unreal Unearth tour coming to Fenway Park on 23-24th June is not to be missed! The eponymous album combines indie rock, soul and blues with lyrics inspired by Dante’s Inferno.
Beth Farr (Politics and Data Science)
Peach Pit
June 24 @ MGM Music Hall
Looking for a peachy evening of indie rock that’ll get you dancing and tug at your heartstrings all at the same time?
Go on a “Little Dive” to MGM Music Hall on June 24th to see Peach Pit tour their newest Magpie album!
Emily Seitz (Health Science and Psychology)
James Arthur
June 26 @ Leader Bank Pavillion
“Say You Won’t Let Go” of the opportunity to see James Arthur live in Boston on June 26! Whether you know him from “The X Factor” 2012 or his hit songs that defined 2010s radio, you won’t want to miss it.
Oklou has a strong fascination with other people's lives. While that may sound somewhat alarming, Marylou Mayniel is moreso talking about what she calls “the other,” or the energy that comes from the lives and situations of other people. For a decade, she has crafted her “other” playlist, which is filled with “screenshots of and pictures of the actual lives of real people,” she told Stereogum. The other can also be seen as an abstracted reflection of our own selves, and whatever feeling that comes from watching groups of people can permeate into our own conscious. It’s letting self reflection assume a third person point of view. While making this album, Mayniel states that she “start[ed] to think outside of yourself.”
This fascination serves as the primary inspiration for the album art and visuals of her debut album choke enough. On the cover, Oklou wistfully looks away from the foreground as three of her friends congregate playfully in the background. The cover represents the M.O. of the album: outrospection. Not only does Oklou physically look outwards on the cover, she looks outwards musically.
choke enough adopts a “play it as it lies” quality where Mayniel isn’t concerned about her musical persona, moreso her craft. The album is a soft and impactful culmination of her history as a classically trained musician and resident of the underground club scene
in her home country of France. Her musical influences mesh together in a unique and mystifying sound that is easy to get lost in. Mayniel mostly manages to mesh the sounds of trumpets and oboes with glitchy synths and electronic pulses.
While this combination could end up as an intense listen, Mayniel takes a softer, more restrained approach to her sound, emulating that of an early 2000’s computer game. Each song is carefully crafted with delicate instrumentals accompanied by Mayniel’s lofty and nebulous vocals. She never raises or lowers her an octave as she talk-sings over her music that’s infectious like a software virus.
In this way, Mayniel acts like the narrator, guiding you through the little world she has created for you to listen to. In the fourth track “obvious,” her quietness is most pronounced. A low vibrational almost hum-like reggaeton beat is coupled with an electronic flute and trumpet. There is no rise, no fall, just 2 minutes of this sound. She winks at the listener by telling them to “speak louder than me” because “[she] know[s] you will.” This same trumpet blends right into the strongest song on the album “ict” short for “ice cream truck.” She offers the listener a minute and half intro with the horns, then enters into a fast paced limerick about strawberry and vanilla flavored ice cream. This ode to ice cream is overlaid on a continuously rising sound. It’s somewhat nonsense but evokes a strong emotional response about the literal and physical sweetness that comes from enjoying an ice cream on a hot summer day. While listening, one could place themselves exactly in those nostalgic moments of sticky ice cream comes and drowsiness from the songs emotional response.
In the closest track to a club banger, “harvest sky,” Mayniel muses on her preference for watching people dance at clubs rather. Also in this song, she conjures up her own version of the club acting as the queen of the scarecrows performing late-autumn harvest ritual dances. She turns wheat fields into the club floor and crows into her fellow dancers. She sings about how she's obsessed with living in the present and “with no one around [her], [she] comes alive.” However, like many of the songs in the album, the lyrics aren’t the most interesting part. Instead, the brash — yet still soft — eurodance influence is in full force. They culminate into an overdue and satisfying drop followed by a minute of pure electronic euphoria.
While the album does offer the listener the ability to reflect outwards, it can be a tough one to initially fall into. As you listen to this 35-minute body of work, each song becomes more and more realized, both sonically and lyrically. The album’s first three tracks are the most restrained and stripped back. While they do their job in setting the tone, they can be a little too abstract, almost alienating. The track “thank you for recording,” is the biggest offender of this. While it does offer the ethos of the album with lyrics like “I get bored looking inside myself,” it doesn’t balance out Mayniel’s drawn back vocals and sparse instruments. It can’t seem to find its footing in the album's staunch reserve. However, a balance is struck at “obvious” and continues strongly.
The album closes with the out-of-left field “blade bird,” the first — and last track — to incorporate an acoustic guitar. There are still those signature “sounds through a screen,” as the song opens us with a distorted bird call. The songwriting and production is earnest, almost acting like a kind of epilogue for this game Mayniel has treated the listener to, a pat on the back of sorts. It also seems to act like a sort of peaceful reckoning to Mayniel. She aligns an ex-lover to a bird and reflects on how her past actions acted like a blade to it. This final track act’s as a grounding force, reminded the audience that the artists behind this is not some abstract character, but a human being.
Mayniel previously stated that she is tired of looking into her own conscience. So with this album she wanted to remove herself from herself – if that makes sense – and make something that is appreciative of the human condition. There is solace in dancing alone and eating ice cream as well as being with family and friends. Sometimes it’s best to not be so self critical and turn outwards.
With journalistic decries of 2025 America’s lack of party culture and our constant nostalgia for the early 2000s, Tate McRae should have arrived at the perfect time. Her ever-present sultry gaze and ferocious dance moves make comparisons to Britney Spears or the Pussycat Dolls seem perfectly fitting. At only 21, McRae has a keen understanding of the classic pop star formula – stage presence, singing, and songwriting – and has been able to showcase those skills as her previous viral hits bring her to increasingly larger stages and garner new attention. Even more impressively, she’s set herself apart from her rising pop peers – she’s not the brashly theatrical Chappell Roan or the comedic bombshell Sabrina Carpenter. Instead, McRae’s persona fills our current culture’s hole for a classic dancing pop star. However, despite So Close to What’s many Y2K influences and McRae’s polished image, the album itself is unfocused in its craft. McRae gets close but can’t quite seem to achieve the iconic pop album she’s striving for.
So Close to What takes much inspiration from great pop/R&B albums from the 2000s: Nelly Furtado’s Folklore and Christina Aguilera’s Stripped to name a few. However, it sadly lacks the boldness and glamour that made those projects stand out during their time. Technological advances during the 2000s elevated musical production
capabilities to new heights, allowing for more electric dance influences and the innovative mixing of pop and R&B. McRae certainly grew up listening to that sound and aspires to channel that in her music. However, without the innovation that came with that era, there’s little meaning behind her nostalgic aesthetic. McRae manages interpretation, but there’s nothing new to bring to the table. So Close to What operates solely within the creative constraints of easily digestible radio pop, impeding McRae’s artistic capacities and leaving her to craft vague lyrics against muted productions.
McRae initially rose to fame through her songwriting prowess – even having a YouTube series where she cranked out a piano-based song on the daily. A former member of the sad teenage-girl pop genre alongside Olivia Rodrigo and Gracie Abrams’ early discographies, her recent projects saw her shedding that skin for a more mature musical identity. Unfortunately, So Close to What fails to see her writing abilities evolve in the same manner. Lines like “I am not in love/ Sky has never been blue” from “No I’m not in love” are, simply put, a hard listen. “Signs” is perhaps the album’s weakest track, featuring McRae falling into the tired trope of women not stating what’s truly on their minds in their romantic relationships. Though she consistently attempts to invoke early 2000s nostalgia in all her work, it’s safe to say that the era’s misogyny should be left in the past. The album’s features also fail to elevate the project; “I know love” featuring her current partner The Kid LAROI is an uninspired so-called celebration of their relationship. Bars like “we started off friends, how we end up here?/I don't know, but I don't see no problems” hold about the same emotional impact as a sat-on box of Valentine's Day chocolates. “Bloodonmyhands” with rapper Flo Milli is similarly muddled with McRae’s lack of enunciation and Milli’s bland “boys suck”-messaged verse.
The album showcases numerous winks of potential. Lyrically, “Purple lace bra” paints a compelling image of McRae’s struggle for greater recognition in the industry. The repeated line “you only listen when I’m undressed” is a direct critique of pop culture media’s tendency to only pay larger attention to women when they are presented sexually, no doubt a reflection of McRae’s career as she crafted her more sensual persona. The track’s most striking line, “I’m losin' my mind ‘cause giving you head’s/The only time you think I got depth” is a vulnerably biting
commentary of McRae’s complexity reduced to solely moments of physical intimacy, valuing her body over everything else. It’s a shame then that the song’s stunning lyrics are undercut by its disappointing production – its grandiose strings and breathy vocals never seem to go anywhere exciting, instead fading into So Close to What's overall dullness. “Dear god” faces similar struggles – McRae’s fervent pleas to a higher power to keep her away from her ex comes across as more desperately funny than deeply heartbreaking. Album closer “Nostalgia” is meant to be a sentimental reflection of McRae’s family history, but opening with “Daddy went to law school and could have been an architect/now he’s turning 60 and wonder where the big dream went” does little to evoke any sense of wistfulness from listeners. Middle-class woes don’t tend to garner much sympathy.
While McRae herself is making waves, the same cannot be said for her discography. McRae and her team clearly have a vision for her as a charismatic yet messy it-girl, yet there is a pervasive sense that they haven’t found exactly how to translate that sonically. So Close to What? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Lin Luo (Psychology and Mathematics)
Kelela In the Blue Light
Released February 11, 2025
Label Warp
Genre Alternative R&B
Tasty tracks “Furry Sings the Blues (unplugged)," “Better (unplugged),” "30 Year (unplugged)," "Take Me Apart (unplugged)"
On In the Blue Light, Kelela sings the blues. Recorded over a two-day residency at the legendary New York City jazz club The Blue Note in May 2024, the new release from electronic artist Kelela presents a refreshing take on tracks from the artist's back catalogue and covers of classic songs by artists who have inspired her. As Kelela reimagines her work in the context of the blues, In the Blue Light offers a relaxing candlelit evening at the jazz club.
In the Blue Light is Kelela's tribute to the blues, particularly the clubs the genre was born in. The album is accompanied by a documentary that chronicles Kelela's long-time love of jazz and the process of rearranging and rehearsing her music. The documentary also includes clips of her performance at The Blue Note. Kelela makes it clear her residency is in honor of the artists who have come before her, dedicating one night to Joni Mitchell and another to Betty Carter. Her charming personality shines through as she speaks between tracks, cracking jokes, demanding "reparations now" and shouting out her dad, to whom she credits her love of jazz. During a tender moment of the performance, Kelela shares that she has been coming to The Blue Note for inspiration since she was only nineteen, secretly recording performances under the table to study on her drive home. During the first moments of the
documentary accompanying In the Blue Light, Kelela shares that she thought she "was going to be a jazz singer." Her selftaught expertise and appreciation of jazz and blues are clear in the recording. Kelela is a chameleon, capable of playing up her strengths as a songwriter and vocalist beyond the boundaries of genre. In cheeky versions of "Take Me Apart" and "Waitin'," Kelela experiments with jazzy vocals and bright tempos. The songs feel light and playful without losing their emotional kick. The stripped-down approach differs from her usual intricate, electronic production, which leans on synths, heavy beats, and bass. While Kelela's stellar vocals are compelling enough on their own, moments of the performance like "Bankhead" are less effective than their studio counterparts without the decadence of her electronic palette.
Kelela strips away the hard drums and effects characteristic of her studio work to introduce fans to a different side of her artistry. Although she has always delivered strong vocal performances, Kelela places her voice at the center of the album, demanding a new kind of attention from listeners. She performs alongside a live band of bass, drums, harp, piano, and background vocals, who deliver performances that are sensitive at times and domineering at others. The result is layered and dense, yet remains airy with Kelela's gentle touch. However, she doesn't completely swear off electronics. The album's dreamy opening "Enemy" is cut by the iconic drone that signals the start of "Raven." Electronic sounds don't return until the beeping at the start of an outstanding rework of "Cherry Coffee," the last track of the album, merging the new instrumentation with the futurism of her studio work.
In the Blue Light also includes the rumblings of the crowd, announcements from the ushers, and Kelela's narration between tracks, elevating the recording to evoke an authentic experience in a sleek jazz club. The superb quality of the recording makes the audience feel present in the club, a testament to the ability of sound engineer Gloria Kaba. Under Kaba's guiding hand, the harp feels crisp and light, while the keys and bass sound velvety smooth.
"Better," released as a single before the album's release, eclipses the original recording. The performance relies on Kelela and her background vocalists to build in intensity. The peak is pulled off expertly, introducing a groovy drumline at the song's
turning point. Kelela does not back down from the weight of the moment. Instead, she leans into it with an extended ending, allowing the vocalists to blow off the energy they built throughout the song. Although the mood remains light throughout the performance, Kelela is unafraid to embrace the drama, quite literally asking "Who wants more drama?" before launching into a piano version of "Blue Light." Kelela's vocals are chilling against the rich background of the keys, drawing attention to her talent as both a singer and storyteller. With angelic vocals accompanied by a light drumline, "All the Way Down" benefits similarly from the reinstrumentation.
Kelela's talent for reinterpreting her own and others' music allows for constant growth as an artist, a pattern well-established by the remix albums she has released alongside her studio albums. Her dynamic, enchanting performance of "Furry Sings the Blues" by Joni Mitchell highlights Kelela's agility and conviction. The song is perfectly suited to her voice, although it is not an easy one to sing; "Furry Sings the Blues" is composed of four unique verses and four unique choruses. Kelela understands the attitude and theatricality the song requires, using the tension created by the cluttered instrumentation to propel her delivery forwards and keep the audience under her spell.
In the Blue Light is a prime example of Kelela's openness as an artist. Recorded at a club the artist has been frequenting throughout her evolution, In the Blue Light is not only a point of arrival for Kelela's career, but a celebration of a genre that she inhabits with ease. Kelela's career has been underscored by her receptivity to influences; Her mastery of melody and pacing in blues music imbues her with a unique set of skills to continue pushing the boundaries of electronic music. As she continues to find her strengths and experiment with different styles of instrumentation, In the Blue Light offers Kelela with exciting opportunities to fold her sensibilities as a blues performer with her abilities as an electronic producer. By the end of her set, Kelela's audience can't help but imagine blues-y vocals trickling over bass-laden beats, a blissful union only she could dream up.
Joseph Brant (Political Science)
Sharon Van Etten
Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory
Released February 7, 2025
Label Jagjaguwar
Genre Alternative
Tasty Tracks “Afterlife,” “Idiot Box,” “I Want You Here”
Sharon Van Etten takes the principles of attachment theory very seriously. In typical anxious attachment style, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory gives voice to the fears dormant in the unconscious mind.
Previously an indie-rock solo artist, Van Etten’s newest album is her first project with band members Devra Hoff, Jorge Balbi, and Teeny Lieberson. This album captures the vulnerability essential to closeness — something the band learns as they develop personal and musical relationships with one another.
Psychedelic and atmospheric, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory stretches the concept of death to something very simple: the risk that things just won’t work out. Van Etten puts her background in psychology on display as she moves through this knowledge like the stages of grief — denying the realities of death to eventually accepting her powerlessness.
This album is structured around obsessive thoughts and big questions that linger in the mind. The opening track, “Live Forever,” begins by asking, “Who wants to live forever?” Van Etten repeats this provocative question incessantly over Lieberson's spacey synth strokes and Hoff’s resounding bass pulses, only to answer plainly with, “It doesn’t matter.” The rising
intensity of Van Etten’s voice turns her question into a plea and its answer into a lifeline. Meanwhile, Balibi’s steady percussive beats come in to ground this atmospheric track from a theoretical world at a distance from death to the unavoidable reality of it.
While Van Etten’s discography generally fits the indie-rock label, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory cannot be categorized so easily. The album introduces an 80s synth-leaning style while incorporating elements from a variety of genres, from shoegaze and ambient to post-punk and techno. On the whole, though, the tracklist consistently creates a heady, hypnotic state reminiscent of Portishead and Cocteau Twins. Drenched in reverb and coated in angst, the erotic heaviness in Van Etten’s sound hits like the hazy dimness of puffed smoke. Every song has a rhythm that you don’t realize you’ve been tapping your foot to until the dizziness lifts. It’s not difficult to zone out to the monotonous droning, so there are a few tracks on the album that feel muddled in their redundancy. “Trouble” and “I Can’t Imagine (Why You Feel This Way)” have little sonic development, only slightly changing tempo or varying synth gravity. Unfortunately, the lyrical complexity that defines this album often gets lost in the flatness of its sound.
That’s not to say that there is no thematic progression throughout the album. Each track explores a particular complexity in being vulnerable. Post-apocalyptic in nature, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory exposes what happens after accepting the inevitability of death. There is something undeniably vulnerable in choosing to live in this metaphorical afterlife. Once Van Etten relinquishes her desire for control over her relationships and recognizes that nothing lasts forever, she fears that she cannot trust her loved ones to meet her as she opens herself to them. In other words, “Will you see me coming home?” “Will you see me in the afterlife?”
The topic of media consumption is so overworked that it can be tricky to get right without feeling cliche. Van Etten approaches this subject from the perspective of someone having recently opened their eyes to the possibilities of human connection, only to find that people are solely focused on the ideal worlds behind their screens. On “Idiot Box,” she likens modern technology to something as frivolous as a dumbing device that makes us “nervous, tired, desensitized.” Balbi brings up the tempo and volume to a rock-like energy on this track, heightening Van Etten’s
earnestness as she repeats. “Everyone on the idiot box, / come on outside, let me hear those thoughts.” Alternatively, “Fading Beauty” reflects on the stillness in admiring the natural beauty all around. This track’s softer, misty tone contrasts the album’s overwhelming haziness and “Idiot Box”’s abrasiveness like a moment of clarity in the absence of iPhones and TV ads. While Van Etten approaches a beaten topic from a different angle, her take doesn’t add anything fresh to the common discourse.
The album is ultimately resolved in the final track, “I Want You Here.” Finally, Van Etten embraces doubt, candidly confessing to the person she loves that she wants them, even in the most impossible conditions. Abandoning the fears that she struggled with throughout the album, she submits herself to the vulnerability required to feel deeply, finally releasing the tension with her signature howls.
Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory presents a new direction for Van Etten in collaboration with Hoff, Balbi, and Lieberson. This album has a clear narrative cohesiveness that centers universal fears, but this sometimes gets lost under the trance-like effect that blankets the entire work. With more musical variation to match the thematic shifts, the powerful messaging would come through much stronger. Still, as a first project, it’s fair to say that Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory is a compelling examination of love and loss and shows signs of a successful future for the new band.
Mya Jassey (English and Media and Screen Studies)
Edible
Last July, British singer and Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall released her debut solo single, “Angel of My Dreams,” a dance-pop track that travels through her complex, long-term relationship with the music industry. The track reached immediate commercial success after its release, debuting at No. 7 on the UK singles chart and receiving unanimous praise. It was a defining moment for Thirlwall, who has continued to release boundary-pushing singles in the lead up to her debut solo album. But as the last member of Little Mix to release solo music following the group’s hiatus, it was a bittersweet kiss goodbye to a previous era, pausing to reflect on her position in one of the best-selling girl groups of all time before ascending to solo stardom.
When Little Mix announced their hiatus in December 2021, mainstream Western music was largely devoid of influential girl groups. Three years prior, the American girl group Fifth Harmony had announced their breakup to pursue individual projects. Groups that defined the late 90s and early 2000s — Destiny’s Child, The Pussycat Dolls, and the Spice Girls, to name a few — had long been disbanded. Iconic one-off collaborations led by women, a la “Lady Marmalade,” were also few and far between: 2019’s “Don’t Call Me Angel,” by Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus, and Lana Del Rey, attempted to recapture this magic for the “Charlie’s Angels” remake, but was panned for being incohesive.
As one of the last leading girl groups in the Western market, Little Mix’s hiatus felt like the final nail in the coffin, with virtually no prospective groups being able to match their success today.
Up until the members of Little Mix split up, girl groups had been making waves in the music industry as early as the mid-30s. These groups typically consisted of three or more women, all of whom could be heard harmonizing on each track. By the early 60s, girl groups were achieving unprecedented amounts of success. The Shirelles’ “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” became the first song recorded by a girl group to reach the top spot of the Billboard Hot 100, while The Supremes would go on to chart 12 songs at number one by the decade’s end.
Far more important than commercial achievements are the lasting influence girl groups throughout the decades were able to have on music. Girl groups such as Destiny’s Child had a hand in pushing the limits of the genres they occupied whose later albums blended R&B harmonies with pop hooks. Artists today continue to cite them as an influence, including Ariana Grande, who admitted that she learned how to harmonize and ad-lib by mimicking the group’s recorded tracks. The success of girl groups also created space for women within previously male-dominated genres. The Go-Go’s, an American punk-pop band whose debut album became the first and only album by an all-female band with songs written and played only by the group, had to combat sexism before their ascension to fame and during their peak. In doing so, however, The Go-Go’s were able to push the boundary of what punk could be, channeling themes of female empowerment in their lyrics and embracing pop to produce music that would become a blueprint for the artists that followed in their footsteps.
So, if girl groups were able to commercially thrive and creatively innovate for more than 50 years, what finally led to their decline in the West? Many of the quintessential groups
eventually collapsed following the departure of a member to pursue a solo career. The Supremes lasted an additional seven years after Diana Ross gave her farewell performance with the group in 1970, but never returned to the same levels of commercial success. More modern groups, like Fifth Harmony and Little Mix, met a similar fate: each group disbanded one album cycle after a key group member left for solo pursuits. In the case of The Pussycat Dolls, five of the six original members departed the group over a two-year period to start careers of their own, although this was largely unsuccessful. Breaking up to pursue a solo career was not a demise strictly limited to girl groups. Justin Timberlake’s interest in recording a debut album eventually prompted what would become a permanent hiatus for NSYNC; similarly, one of the many factors that led to The Beatles’ breakup was John Lennon’s longing to be more experimental in his music, ultimately prompting his departure. Where this differs for girl groups, however, is how often star potential is projected onto a standout member of the band by the media and fans, leaving the other members to face unjust levels of scrutiny. The Pussycat Dolls experienced this early in their run, with Nicole Scherzinger placed under a microscope as the group’s leader and the rest of the members being reduced to “glorified backup dancers” in the eyes of many. Reporting on the group was also overtly sexual and sexist, which Scherzinger has since attributed to the worsening of her bulimia.
In the wake of these groups, more and more Americans and Europeans are turning their gaze to the East, particularly to K-pop groups like Blackpink and NewJeans, who share many commonalities with iconic retired groups from the West. Those interested in joining a group are typically recruited by an entertainment agency before they undergo an intense “idol training” process, which sharpens their singing and dancing abilities. K-pop groups have always had fans throughout the globe, but the genre did not become a mainstream phenomenon until the late 2010s and early 2020s, opening the doors for them to create music on their own terms. Their presence certainly makes up for the lack of girl groups in Western music today, but it also proves the demand for more groups like these still exists, should one want to take up the torch.
• Jackson Laramee (Journalism and Communication Studies)
A Q&A with Our 2025 Battle of the Bands Winner
On Feb. 20, Tastemakers Music Magazine and WRBB radio hosted the first spring Battle of the Bands competition this year in Afterhours. Four talented bands competed, and indie rock band Fisheye came out on top! Fisheye was created by Kellan McCarthy (guitar and vocals), and he recruited Gil Avni-Heller (bass), Brendan Fullerton (drums), and Ben Gardner (saxophone) to fill out the rest of the lineup. This win was especially rewarding for the band, as this is their last semester as students at Northeastern (with the exception of Avni-Heller, who graduated last year). Tastemakers sat down with the band to celebrate their win and learn more about their inspirations and future goals.
This interview is edited for brevity and clarity.
Tastemakers (TMM): So, how did you all meet?
Gil Avni-Heller (GAH): Kellan and I met at [a] pickle [themed] party.
Kellan McCarthy (KM): He was in a band with some of my friends and I was scouting and I really needed a bassist. I brought him to a closet at the party, and I showed him a bunch of demos, and I was like, “We should become friends, and you should join my band.” That was a year ago. It wasn't for another year until the next member joined, which was Brendan. I'm in another band called Playfair, and when that band was just getting started-
Brendan Fullerton (BF): I just popped in for a practice.
KM: Brendan came over, and I was like, “Oh my God, this guy is so good.” And then Big Ben Gardner over there, he lived next to me freshman year. Our first band, I don't know if that was your first rock and roll band, Ben, but it was certainly mine.
Ben Gardner (BG): That was my first band, yeah.
KM: That was all the way back in sophomore year, and I played guitar and Ben played saxophone.
TMM: Where did the name Fisheye come from?
KM: I have a little fisheye lens, like the little clip that you clip onto your phone. I got one in high school to record skateboard clips. I used to take almost every single photo on my phone with the fisheye lens.
GAH: We need to talk about how for a long time, the band name was called Dogfight. Kellan suggested it to me, and I hated it. Finally, I was like okay, it’s growing on me, and he was like, “we're changing the band name.”
KM: The only thing I hear about the name Fisheye is people go, “Wow, that's so you.” I really like that comment.
TMM: How would you describe your sound to someone who's never heard you before?
BF: Well, last time we said it was stupid rock. I still like it.
GAH: Full-band consensus on stupid rock.
KM: I feel like we kind of sound like Peach Pit, but if you dial up the energy like a million.
TMM: Where do you get inspiration from? And are there any particular bands you're inspired by?
KM: I find a lot of my music inspiration from this one local band called Winkler, which I hold very near and dear to my heart. They're really talented musicians, and I like their sound a lot. I learned how to play guitar by watching Winkler play guitar. By the nature of that,
our sounds are kind of entwined. I'm really trying to branch out and do my own thing. I think I've definitely put my own twist on it. And you know, everyone in the band brings their own part.
TMM: What does your songwriting process look like?
KM: It's painful. Writing songs is terrible. I never really thought of myself as a singer. I'm way more of a guitarist. I play guitar for about four hours every day, and every once in a while I'll come up with a little four bar thing that I like. That could be just from whatever song I was listening to earlier in the day. I'm like, “Oh my God, that's so cool. Like, what if I do it like this?” and then I change this part, and then I add this whole thing, and then it's a new idea.
I have a whole bunch of these little sections, and then through horrible trial and error, I ram these different sections into one another. At the end of this whole battle, I have a full instrumental to write lyrics for, which I can only do in class. Software engineering class with Ben is a really good time.
BG: Perfect environment for that.
GAH: Kellan and I started playing music together like a year ago or longer, and it took about eleven months for him to write any lyrics to any songs. They definitely exist in instrumental purgatory before the lyrics come in.
KM: We played five songs for [our Battle of the Bands] set. There's probably another ten in instrumental purgatory.
TMM: How does it feel to win Battle of the Bands?
KM: I'm no stranger to battle of the bands. I played it every single year. The band knows about my intense failures. I’ve played it four times under four bands. This band was one where I had free reign to play the songs that I'm writing and I have the joy of playing them with my insanely talented friends. It was so rewarding. It's my last semester of college. Gil’s an adult, he’s already graduated, but the other two, it's our last semester.
BF: It was a very poetic way to go out.
TMM: Why do you think Fisheye was the band that you were able to win with?
BF: I think we were tight. I feel like we played very well. We have enough technicality to us where people can appreciate that, but we also have good songs.
BG: As someone who joined last, you guys already had really good chemistry as people too. You obviously got along and practices are fun. I feel like that just helped me to seamlessly integrate and enjoy playing all the songs.
GAH: We've been playing together for so long. This was our first actual gig. It's fun for us to be playing for so long, and I think that that really shows when we play live.
TMM: So, what's next for Fisheye? Are you planning on getting any of your songs out of instrumental purgatory or touring?
KM: What's really exciting is that we're working on an album right now. We're recording the whole thing in my bedroom, though, so it's probably going to sound a little wacky.
TMM: Do you have anything else to add?
KM: I'd say I'm just so happy that the music has finally been coming to fruition after so long. I've been working on these songs for two years. I've been teaching this band these songs for like, two years. It's been such a long time coming. And it's like, I'm so, I'm so, so grateful for, for everything.
BF: I was very happy for you, Kellan, when we won, because we knew the background for it. So, I'm also happy things are coming together.
GA: It's nice to finally have the songs, like, with words.
BF: They're real! The songs are real now.
• Rilyn Szabo (Behavioral Neuroscience and Design)
Photo by: Maya Abel (
Toro y Moi, Roadrunner
Photo by Maya Solanki (Design and Business)
Fiji Blue, Brighton Music Hall
Photo by Michelle Wu (Music Industry and Communication Studies)
AESPA, Prudential Center
Photo by Elizabeth Zhu (Behavioral Neuroscience)
Dissects:
Undone - The Sweater Song by Weezer
No band truly captures the changing rock landscape of the ‘90s more than the wildly successful power pop group Weezer. Striking at a time when Nirvana was shifting the cultural gaze away from the over-commercialized and oversaturated hair metal genres, Weezer lent a voice to those that seemed to clash with the very ethos of rock ‘n’ roll. To mention Nirvana and Weezer in the same breath feels counterintuitive; their aesthetics are almost entirely at odds with each other. While Kurt Cobain and company relished in their toocool-for-school grunge attitude, Weezer were never afraid of how embarrassingly dorky they were. In fact, they wore it on their sleeve. One of their biggest hits, “Buddy Holly,” is filled with Beach Boysesque harmonies, and tells the story of frontman Rivers Cuomo getting beat up after trying to act tough.
The verses on “Undone - The Sweater Song” are written in fractured English, like the musings of an infantile philosopher. “I’m me, me be, goddamn, I am” are Cuomo’s first words, a kind of pained self realization. Cuomo then inserts himself into his music, suggesting his craft is how he ought to be defined: “I can sing and hear me, know me.” But this confidence in himself is fleeting: “Oh no, it go, it gone, bye-bye” and ends with the titular unraveling. “Who I? I think, I sink, and I die.” Bridging this tragedy told in 30 words is the chorus, with its iconic Weezer crunchy guitars. Here, the song’s namesake is on full display as Cuomo draws on the image of a sweater being unraveled at the tug of a single thread.
But before “Buddy Holly” came Weezer’s first single — a song that launched them into alternative rock stardom and defined the group as a whole. Originally titled “Undone,” Cuomo changed the name after many requests from fans who simply referred to it as “the song about the sweater.” Since then, the name has been synonymous with the song. With a bit of a goofy name and the mildly amusing imagery of Cuomo lying on the floor in Superman-themed underwear, the general public had a hard time taking the track seriously. Cuomo told Billboard that when people first heard the track on the radio, they thought it was hilarious. But beneath this silly veneer lies a rather sincere, emotional core to the track and a powerful composition that remains memorable to this day.
The track begins hesitantly, with drummer Patrick Wilson leading in with a drum fill that feels like a false start. Once the iconic spacey guitar riff enters the picture, the track takes on a distinctly low-energy mood. This all comes together to create an exhausted atmosphere; it sounds like the band are at the end of their rope. This feeling is enhanced by the spoken word sections, where various acquaintances approach a man at a concert only to be greeted with indifferent one word answers.
If Cuomo’s splintering confidence is the initial tug, then the unraveling truly begins after the final chorus. Cuomo and bassist Matt Sharp conclude the chorus with a yelpy “I’ve come undone,” and the track proceeds to spiral out of control. Harmonized voices echo the riff that began the track, desperately attempting to hold together the building cacophony that underscores them. With one last triumphant build, the song completely falls apart. The whining of guitars and the discordant notes of a piano haphazardly play the track out, and it’s clear that the entire band has come undone.
Tracks like “Undone - The Sweater Song” are where Weezer shines the strongest. The subtlety both in the lyrics and the understated riff are what truly defines the track, and cemented it as one of the most famous alt-rock tracks of the ‘90s. But Weezer’s dorkiness was both a blessing and a curse. It catapulted them into mainstream success and created a unique voice for the band, but also defined expectations that they struggled to live up to. When their sophomore record Pinkerton was released — a record that committed entirely to the vulnerability that permeates “Undone - The Sweater Song” — it was met with lukewarm reception. In response, Cuomo attempted to leave this vulnerability in the past, instead pivoting entirely to the beachy power pop sound that fans had come to expect from the band. Weezer has struggled to gain serious critical acclaim since, although the popularity of songs like “Island in the Sun” or “Beverly Hills” is undeniable.
“Undone - The Sweater Song” remains as a pillar of ‘90s alt-rock, capturing an energy that few other bands could replicate. Something about its simplicity, its bombastic outro, or simply the imagery of a sweater unraveling captivated the public and cemented Weezer as one of the defining voices of its time.
• Jack Arseneau (Computer Science)
Designer: Anna Levesque
impossible princess by kylie minogue taste of nostalgia:
When Kylie Minogue's Impossible Princess was released in 1997, no one expected the Australian pop princess to exclaim "Too many, too much, too hard / Help me, this time I went too far." Fed up with the sickly-sweet songs that put her on the charts and brought her worldwide fame, Minogue’s inspiration shifted towards the techno and Britpop movements of the 1990s to recount the dark side of being an international superstar. Impossible Princess is not only an exhilarating turn in Minogue's early career but a testament to her skill as a songwriter and producer.
Minogue wrote her sixth studio album while traveling the world with her lover, French photographer Stéphane Sednaoui. Dissatisfied with her fame, the pop star lost herself to travel to escape the pressures of life in the spotlight. She picked up sounds and imagery from across the world to reconstruct herself and her influences. Minogue found true freedom and anonymity on trips exploring North America, Asia, and Australasia, and set out to capture those feelings in her music. She turned to longtime friend Nick Cave and British electronic music group Brothers in Rhythm to develop her far-sighted sonic landscape, leaving behind the dance-pop sound that made her a household name.
Impossible Princess leans towards the theatrical and cinematic. From the hints of Celtic music on "Cowboy Style" to the organized chaos of "Limbo," Minogue synthesizes years of travel and moody rumination into a solid set of pop tracks. For the first time in her career, Minogue welcomes strangeness. On the inventive "Drunk," Minogue combines cinematic strings with techno beats as her vocals jump between stereo channels. The album finds Minogue at her most punchy and adventurous, including some of her most emotionally expressive vocal performances. On "Too Far," she sings frantically, rattling off lines like "Caught up in this house / Trapped my very own
self in the snare of my mind." Across the album, Minogue toys with the elusivity of satisfaction in her fast-paced, international personal life. Impossible Princess is as much of a cry for help as it is a rejection of expectations, creating space for her to be vulnerable without sacrificing the dance-pop core at the center of her work.
Impossible Princess represents Minogue's shift to "indie pop," as it was dubbed by the British media at the time of its release. British commentators mocked her lyrical vulnerability and sonic boldness in the press, calling her "Indie Kylie" and a "fraud" for releasing music that was so different in genre from her previous work. Although the album reached the top 10 in Australia, Scotland, and the United Kingdom, Impossible Princess challenged fans and critics alike to confront her treatment as a musician and star. The album has since amassed a cult following due to its authenticity and Sednaoui's visionary art direction and photography. Few artists can pull off a "dark" era without appearing insincere or cringy. Minogue is a notable exception. She not only wrote all of the tracks but contributed to their production, marking Impossible Princess as a turning point for her level of creative control. Minogue describes the album as an "ache," an impulse she had to ride out.
As Björk famously said, "It's hard work being a Kylie…it’s like being a diplomat, or the Queen.” Firmly in control over her process, Minogue could shrink away from her expectations and duties as a pop princess. Impossible Princess is not concerned with being relatable, focusing instead on Minogue's glamorous life and her pop-star problems. On "Dreams," Minogue embraces her status as royalty as she reads a list of her basest, most human desires: "To feel the touch of a man, a woman's caress / To know the limits of torture and tenderness / These are the dreams / of an Impossible Princess."
• Joseph Brant (Political Science)
as an approach rather than a feeling. It takes root in ‘hauntology,’ which mashes sounds from the past to form crowded, muddled atmospheres. The result is lo-fi and indistinct, falling between comfort and unease, familiarity and the unknown. It is an audible manifestation of its deeper ideas.
British philosopher Jacques Derreda defines hauntology as the persistence of cultural and social elements from the past. Through the lens of the future, forks in the road become clearer, with the results of alternate choices hovering like a ghost. Think of an old friend's necklace found stashed in the drawer of a childhood bedroom. When found, the necklace transcends its tangibility as a representation of what was and what could have been, leaving its holder stuck between both worlds.
The detached, unsettling nature of hauntology provides an appeal, but an
influences and manipulating them to create something new. Like its influences, h-pop is dominated by synths. Bold and blownout, these synths ground h-pop’s otherwise washed-out mixes, making familiarity the centerpiece of an uncanny genre. H-pop’s intention is not to bring these styles back, but to trace their effect on collective memory.
Ariel Pink especially popularized h-pop by way of his commitment to the DIY aesthetic and nonchalant, streamof-consciousness lyrical style. Pink uses nostalgia to enhance the mundaneness of everyday life. On “Interesting Results” off his 2005 album House Arrest, Pink sings “Every time I pick up the pen / I get interesting results.” His lyrics are routinely this straightforward, but his ‘pop-y,’ breathy cadence, warped ambiance, and interjections of vocal whooshes, ‘ooh’s, and ‘yea’s work to create sounds so erratic they feel dreamlike.
“Hypnagogic pop uses nostalgia as an approach rather than a feeling.”
Refracted through memory, the mall lights brighten, the radio crackles comfortingly, and the TV’s light enhances the room. Instead of sharpening these memories, Pink revels in their haziness. Combined with the texture and obscurity of his production, Pink brings the past into the present, using upbeat pop structures and nostalgia’s distortion to augment its normalcy.
Where Pink’s pop-centric approach was a highlight reel of the past, other artists used h-pop’s nostalgic base to take a more holistic view. Most notably, James Ferraro and his album Far Side Virtual. Reminiscent of elevator music, shopping mall ambiance, and video game loading screens, Far Side Virtual taps into a different aspect of the collective unconscious. Ferraro examines the sounds that guide the transitory; those that fill paths but are never found at destinations. His heavy sampling creates an entirely familiar yet unidentifiable atmosphere, satirizing how little people are present in their lives. In modern society, commercialization guides attention, linking memory to fleeting trends and styles. By drawing it towards how much lies barely outside of recognition, Ferraro shows consumerism’s grasp on society, ever-changing from his references but just as pervasive decades later.
Hypnagogic pop primarily brought the atmosphere of the ‘80s and ‘90s to the new century, but as the 2010s approached, the Internet’s evolution and rapid technological innovation pushed artists to reflect on the century’s turn. Artists combined the hauntological approach with early Internet aesthetics to form the retro futuristic styles of vaporwave and chillwave. The Internet’s vastness fueled a shared vision of many
futures, allowing artists to anticipate what a future hypnagogic pop might sound like. Both styles are more electronic and sample-heavy than hypnagogic pop, keeping the same lo-fi charm but adapting it to look ahead rather than behind. Where hauntology ruminates on the pervasiveness of the past in the present, vaporwave, and chillwave go a step further, projecting that pervasiveness forward.
With the influx of DIY music and new ‘waves’ facilitated through the Internet, tracing the artists and sounds in these genres around 2010 proved difficult. Jumping on their popularity and anticipating their growth, Pitchfork launched Altered Zones, a group of blogs showcasing the best of the underground DIY scene. The spotlight on these nostalgia-centered sounds made words like ‘cassette,’ ‘tape,’ and ‘analog’ common in artists’ names and songs, dulling their novelty. Altered Zones lasted a little over a year, ending in 2011. Hypnagogic pop largely fell into obscurity alongside it, with chillwave and vaporwave’s futuristic, hyperrealistic appeals taking place.
Hypnagogic pop’s lifespan is just as enigmatic as its sound. Marked by its approach, h-pop evaded limitations as a genre, constrained only by reminiscence on the past. Though a source of interest, h-pop’s loose definition and strong sense of satire evaded any strong connection or understanding outside of its shtick. Yet, maybe remaining just out of reach was the point. Its inability to grapple with the past is what gives it its power after all.
• TC Stephens (Political Science and Philosophy)
Designer: Allison Lee ( Computer Science and Design)
Knock2, Echostage
Photo by Charlie Sturtevant (Media and Screen Studies)
Willow Avalon, Sinclair
Photo by Gagan Santosh Jain (Information Science)
At the crux of the austere capital city of the Prussian Empire sat a young, cultured man. Given the reins to Berlin at the age of 28, Frederick II had inherited a fortified military state. Yet, an ardent lover of the French language and master of the flute, Frederick II would go on to weave the arts into the fabric of bourgeois life, bring music to his royal court, commission the building of Berlin’s historic opera house, and become known as Frederick the Great.
Nursed by his successors, it was Frederick the Great’s spirit for music that has persisted throughout Berlin’s history. But as the centuries churned on, the city’s operatic, Romantic era melodies became hardened by two world wars. Berlin became a monument of brutality divided by the 96-mile Berlin Wall. Erected in 1961, the wall was a physical incarnation of the Cold War and the broader ideological tug-of-war between Western democratic capitalism and Soviet Union communism. And from this fractured city, techno would emerge — a brutalist reflection of Berlin’s past.
The contrast between the two Germanys was stark. Ruled by the Allied powers, West Germans saw political and economic freedom, a thriving middle class, and opportunities to rebuild and modernize. East Germans lived under the Soviet-established German Democratic Republic (GDR), enduring constant surveillance, a stagnant economy, and the deficiencies of collectivized statehood.
By the 1980s, the majority of youth in the GDR were disillusioned with the state’s interference in music and craved the Western culture they consumed through radio and television. Western Germany had developed a taste for English-language music from American and British countercultures, particularly punk rock, post-punk, and new wave. West Germany’s ad-hoc take on new wave, ‘Neue Deutsche Welle,’ became commercially successful within the country and had a rather surrealist way of utilizing language and sound.
The Eastern German rock movement, which arose in response to West German influence, became known as "Ostrock," and was more conservative and classical in nature. Eastern acts had to pass ‘pappe,’ a system of classification tests hailing from the 1960s to obtain a playing license in the GDR. Pop and rock acts on the GDR side like the Puhdys, Karat, City and Silly were propped up by AMIGA records — an entity of a state-owned music publisher — saw localized success. But, as the music scene evolved and the standardization of musical genres became impossible, illegal groups proliferated.
As the GDR’s iron grip over the arts grew weaker, the success of East German songs such as “Am Fenster” by City and “Alt Wie Ein Baum” by the Puhdys were able to secure publishing rights in the West and even perform there. Such eastern music that challenged the state was electrifying, yet Western music, untamed and unregulated, was sexier.
Rebellion continued to brew from 1981 to 1989 and on Oct. 9, 1989, 70,000 East Germans took to the streets calling for political reform. Within days, the GDR government collapsed, and thanks to a bureaucratic blunder, so did the Berlin Wall.
At a press conference, Politburo member Günter Schabowski mistakenly announced that travel restrictions had been lifted effective immediately. It was vague, it was unscripted, and it was enough. Thousands of East Berliners rushed to the border, where overwhelmed and unprepared guards eventually gave way, letting the crowds pour through. What followed wasn’t just a political shift but a moment of rejoice. People clambered up the Wall, popped champagne, and chipped away at the concrete with whatever they had on hand.
In the late 1980s, as electronic music from Chicago and Detroit seeped into Europe, West Berlin became a breeding ground for
acid house, with DJs like Dr. Motte, Jonzon, Rok, and Kid Paul at the forefront. Unlike commercial discos, the city’s first acid house raves thrived on a DIY ethos, taking place in unlicensed venues, warehouses, and abandoned buildings with dim lighting and measly decor. UFO Club, an underground venue run by Interfisch Records, became a nucleus for this new scene, hosting sets that blurred the line between party and countercultural protest. These early acid house gatherings laid the foundation for Berlin’s nascent techno revolution, culminating in the creation of the Love Parade in 1989, a movement that would redefine the city’s musical identity.
What started as a small demonstration organized by Dr. Motte to promote “peace, joy, and pancakes” quickly evolved into a massive street party, drawing hundreds of thousands of revelers from across Europe. At its height in the late ’90s and early 2000s, the Love Parade transformed Berlin into the global epicenter of electronic music, with floats carrying DJs and massive sound systems parading through the city. As the years passed, the Love Parade became increasingly commercialized, losing its underground roots. By the mid-2000s, the event had outgrown Berlin, moving to other German cities before ending in tragedy in 2010, when overcrowding at the Duisburg festival site led to a fatal stampede. Despite its eventual demise, the Love Parade remains one of the most important catalysts in Berlin’s musical history, pushing techno above ground.
Over the coming years, members of East and West Germany’s fringes crossed into each other’s worlds, searching for answers and abandoned spaces. Amongst these people were West Germany native Dimitri Hegemann — head of the record label Interfisch — and a group of investors who uncovered the vaults of a department store building located near the wall. Locked behind barred doors and hidden among safety deposit boxes, a club called Tresor emerged as the vanguard of Berlin’s techno scene.
It wasn’t only the clubs that formed Berlin’s new musical identity. HARDWAX, a record store opened in 1989 Kreuzberg by Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald, was a crucial force behind the city’s techno transformation. Some years prior to 1989, Derrick May, of the Belleville Three — the musicians credited with creating the techno genre in Detroit — played at Berlin’s UFO Club. Impressed by the energy of the city, he gave his number to Ernestus and invited him out to Detroit. During this trip and many thereafter, Ernestus purged record stores in Chicago, Detroit, and New York, bringing back over 1,000 sought-after vinyls that fed the DJs of Berlin. In an interview for 032C, Ernestus emphasized how the store’s role transcended simply being a place to buy records. “It was a meeting point for DJs, a hub for people who came to exchange music, ideas, and passion,” he explained. HARDWAX became the nexus of Berlin’s techno scene, offering rare, imported records from techno hubs that were otherwise unavailable. Visiting HARDWAX became a formative experience for DJs around the world, offering them a place to gauge the pulse of what was happening in other cities and absorb the innovations that were shaping the genre in real time.
By the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, Berlin’s techno scene was a phenomenon unto itself. As clubs in Frankfurt and other German cities succumbed to gentrification and mainstream ruin, Berlin emerged as the new mecca — not through sheer dominance, but through migration. Artists, DJs, and producers from across Germany and beyond gravitated toward the city, drawn by its affordability and lawlessness. Established DJs like Richie Hawtin and Chris Liebing, who had built up reputations elsewhere, relocated to Berlin, bringing with them their sounds, connections, and influence. This influx of talent helped solidify Berlin’s status as the new epicenter of techno, shifting the focus away from Frankfurt, which had once been the genre’s stronghold with legendary clubs like Omen and U60311.
But, as word of Berlin grew, so did the homogenization of the genre. Where techno once carried regional distinctions — Munich’s deep grooves, Cologne’s melodic warmth, Frankfurt’s raw intensity — Berlin’s industrial flair became the global standard. This shift is
epitomized by Berghain, a club that has come to define Berlin and the broader techno identity. Opening in 2004 as the successor to Ostgut, Berghain cultivated a distinct noir, minimalist sound established by its residents like Ben Klock and Marcel Dettmann. The club’s mystique, enforced by its infamously selective door policy, has cemented it as a global pilgrimage site for techno purists. As the influence of Berghain and its peers spread, its sound has become the blueprint for producers worldwide.
After years of musicians and activists lobbying, Berlin’s techno scene was granted UNESCO World Heritage status for its cultural contribution. What began as an underground resistance to authoritarianism is now a cultural export, commodified by tourism and global club culture.
Today, Berlin stands as a guardian of techno, grappling with how to preserve its subversive spirit in an era where counterculture is no longer confined to the underground. But, techno has endured far greater hardships than some dilettantes. It will outlast walls both concrete and ideological — a sonic force that survived Cold War surveillance, Schabowski’s blunder, and commercialization, forever reverberating through Berlin’s fractured past into its uncertain future.
Design by
Emily Kobren (Graphic and Information Design)
Ananya Chaudhari (Economics and Business Administration)
Townes Van Zandt was born into a wealthy family in Fort Worth in 1944, seemingly destined for success. Destiny didn’t work out. In college, he showed signs of bipolar disorder, was admitted into an institution to undergo electric-shock therapy, and suffered memory loss. His father died shortly after, and Van Zandt hit the road looking to find himself. What he found was a soul that had been deeply hurt, so he medicated it with lots of drugs, even more alcohol, and loads of songwriting.
Whether it was the vices, trauma, or just plain old genius that made Van Zandt the songwriter he was will never truly be known, but the result of those factors is. His talent could only be described as god-given; from the very first song he wrote it’s clear he could write like a man far older and wiser than him. Unfortunately, his actions
For The Sake of the Song (1968)
Van Zandt’s debut record, For The Sake of the Song, finds his music at its most produced, which is not its most artistically refined. Songs such as “Tecumseh Valley,” ”Waitin Around to Die,” and the title track first appear here, but none are in their best state. Van Zandt didn’t care much at all for his recorded work in this era. Typically, he would record his parts in the studio and then leave everything else to the engineers. Those engineers cared about the success of the work, and so they layered in organs, backing vocals, recorders, and even a harpsichord to make it sound like the popular Nashville country stylings of the time. The lyrics are just as soul crushing as his later work and his playing is still magnificent, but the songs in their entirety tend to lack in quality when compared to his later pieces. The album is worth a spin though, as it shows an important step in the story that is his life and career.
Tasty Tracks:
“Many a Fine Lady”
“Waitin’ Around to Die”
were never those of that man, they were those of a drunkard. He never aimed for great fame, and he certainly didn’t care about fortune. He was known to gamble away the meager money he made from his music, not because he hoped to turn it into millions, but because he knew nothing else to do with it.
Van Zandt’s music didn’t change much throughout his career, he never pushed musical boundaries or invented new genres, but he so perfected his craft that he managed to pump out work that even his peers revered. Some of those peers, like Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris, recorded his songs themselves, and their versions became the hits Van Zandt had never sought. With the help of them and many others, he became as much a man as a legend — one whose mystique you can unravel with this guide through his most notable works.
Our Mother the Mountain (1969)
Like his debut record, Our Mother the Mountain is composed entirely of original songs, with many of them relating to the time Van Zandt spent living in Colorado. But this time, there was a noticeable change in his production. While Van Zandt still did not care enough to stick around for the process, he did express his frustration with the way his debut had been handled. The resulting mix allows for Van Zandt’s playing and singing to take center stage, while the rest of the instrumentation is toned down, pushed into a supporting role. It’s on this album where his first truly great cuts are laid, as his melancholic lyrics are finally met with an equally lugubrious sound. Our Mother the Mountain also marks the first instance of Van Zandt re-recording one of his previous songs, “Tecumseh Valley,” which would subsequently be released in another four iterations across future projects. This is a trend that was common in Van Zandt’s career; He rarely believed in the perfect version of a song, and thus would continuously mess with their composition in various studio and live releases.
Tasty Tracks:
“Our Mother the Mountain” “Tecumseh Valley” “Kathleen”
Townes Van Zandt (1969)
The opening song to his self-titled 1969 record is the exact same as his debut, but it couldn’t sound more different. The second time around, “For the Sake of the Song” is much more desolate; Van Zandt’s finger picking has become the dominant instrumentation. The only percussive element is a knocking on his guitar, and he ditches his Marty Robbins impression in favor of his own, cooing vocal style. The rest of the album keeps pace with those changes, maintaining Van Zandt as the singular guiding presence, no matter what. He also builds on the most successful tracks off of Our Mother the Mountain, penning songs like “Fare Thee Well, Miss Carousel,” which tell stories of a depth and complexity only Bob Dylan had created before or since. Altogether, the album is a collection of melancholic lyrics, beautiful somber playing, and an intense vocal delivery that combine to create possibly the most soul-crushing piece of work ever put to wax.
Tasty Tracks:
“Fare Thee Well, Miss Carousel”
“Waiting Around to Die”
“I’ll Be Here in the Morning”
Delta Momma Blues (1970)
Townes Van Zandt was divorced for the first time in 1970. He drew on the experience for inspiration when writing the songs on Delta Momma Blues, and the result was so desolate that producer Ron Frangipane made no effort to alter its sound. Frangipane saw no chance of any of the songs becoming hits, and Van Zandt, in his usual, languid nature, didn’t try to change his mind. The product is the darkest and dreariest of Van Zandt’s releases, as even those songs that are written more like classic country ballads are left to marinate in the sorrow of their lyrics, with only a sparse harp or horn here and there.
Tasty Tracks:
“Rake”
“Tower Song” “Nothin’”
High Low and In Between (1971)
After a near-death as the result of a heroin overdose, Van Zandt released High Low and in Between, surprisingly the least depressing of his early studio albums. The work is full of the classic country blues and gospel that Van Zandt grew up around, and many songs on it are emblematic of the juke joints and bars where he got his start. “No Deal” is a talking blues song, the type used for generations in the south to pass down oral tradition. The voracity of his playing and relatively upbeat lyrics and delivery are unusual for Van Zandt, but they suit him well nonetheless. Songs like “Blue Ridge Mountains” seem to come more from his energetic side, and not so much his tortured soul, while “Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold,” in a fair world, would replace Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler” as the quintessential country cards song.
Tasty Tracks:
“Blue Ridge Mountains”
“Mr. Mudd And Mr. Gold” “To Live Is To Fly”
The Late Great Townes Van Zandt (1972)
For those few who knew of Van Zandt in the early 70s, it was likely more surprising to find out that the album title was an attention grab and not an actual reference to his death. Naturally, it was Van Zandt’s manager who cooked up the scheme, as he did not share the same aversion to success. Also surprising to Van Zandt’s fans would have been the stylistic variation he plays with on the record. His prior albums had been more monolithic, keeping a single prominent sound or style from beginning to end, but Late Great instead provides classic folk tunes, country honky tonks, and singer-songwriter ballads all jammed up next to each other. Some songs are upbeat, some are more morose, some feel sparse, while others feature lush soundscapes. Altogether, they provide the most impressive collection of songs Van Zandt has ever produced.
Tasty Tracks:
“Snow Don’t Fall”
“Silver Ships of Andilar” “Poncho & Lefty”
Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas (1977)
A live album gives an artist an opportunity to display more about themselves than a studio album can. There is no truer glimpse of an artist than Live at the Old Quarter. Van Zandt is the only player on the album — he is, for once, in complete creative control of his choices, and with it, he shows the audience a portrait of a complex man. Musically, the album is phenomenal. No one ever has possessed the fingerpicking ability of Van Zandt, and with just his voice and his guitar, he makes songs more full of life than many manage with a full band.
The key to the album, however, comes in between the songs. The album was recorded in the middle of the summer in a club in Houston, TX, and from the get-go, it is established that there is no air conditioning. It was hot and humid, nearly unbearably so, and you can hear the thickness of the air in the claps from the audience. One might expect Van Zandt in this environment to exacerbate his melancholy, he is after all a tortured soul alone playing melancholic songs alone with his guitar in horrid weather. Instead, in between songs, he cracks jokes. The jokes are witty, they have good buildups and nice punchlines, but mostly they’re just pretty stupid. As with the few comedic talking blues songs he plays during the performance, the jokes typically make fun of alcoholics. They show that Van Zandt has character, and he’s not just some pouty cowboy. It makes the sad songs more real, and reinforces that he doesn’t play how he plays or sing how he sings or write how he writes, just because he thinks that’s what’ll sell, he does it because that’s who he is.
Road Songs (1994)
Kevin Eggers had been the key driving force in Van Zandt’s recording career as his manager and executive producer, but by 1972, he’d seemingly had enough of pushing an artist who simply didn’t care to be pushed. Eggers did manage to get a few more albums out of Van Zandt, but largely he let him wander. Road Songs is a collection of those wanderings, released three years before his death. The album is completely made up of covers, an interesting concept for a man so known for his unique songwriting. Nonetheless, it is as deeply touching as any of his other records, as much due to his delivery as his song selection. The album is made up of blues and folk staples interspersed with songs by contemporary artists such as Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and Bruce Springsteen. All of them, though, are united in their connection to Van Zandt. They seem to tell the stories of his life: drugs, booze, love, and loss.
Tasty Tracks:
“Dead Flowers”
“Man Gave Names to All the Animals”
“Texas River Song”
•
Gabriel Lynch (Civil Engineering)
Pom Pom Squad, Sinclair
Photo by Maya Abel (Communication and Media Studies)
Lana Del Rey's Americana evolving
To judge someone, look at the company they keep, and to judge a nation’s mood, look to its musicians. Bing Crosby captured the patriotism of the 1940s, while Bob Dylan harnessed the anti-war sentiments of the 60s. Lana Del Rey has filled this role throughout the 2010s and 2020s, with her songwriting and cultural references reflecting how the United States has felt and perceived itself over the last decade and a half.
While Lana Del Rey has been in the music industry for almost 20 years under various pseudonyms, her career truly began in 2011 with the release of “Video Games,” a haunting and melodic love song. It served as the lead single for her major label debut Born to Die, an album populated with imagery and references to the 1950s, with allusions to the lyrics of Elvis Presley on “Million Dollar Man” and mentions of James Dean on “Blue Jeans.” While the references are clear, what is more important, and what makes them more interesting, is what they represent. It’s one thing for Del Rey to compose these lyrics, and it’s something else entirely for the songs to connect with people and turn the album into the 5th best selling album of 2012.
To go back in time to 2012, this was a moment in which celebrities like Taylor Swift and Zooey Deschanel were dressing like 1950s housewives, and twee fashion — a style heavily inspired by the 60s — was all the rage. “Mad Men” was a hit on television, depicting the advertising champions of the early 1960s in New York City, albeit with a distinctly critical undertone of the decade’s sexism and racism. This fascination with the 50s and early 60s can be seen as the clear result of what the country was experiencing at the time and the challenges we faced. The United States was in the midst of recovering from the Great Recession, yet also felt accomplishment in having advanced a multiracial democracy and the election of a Black president. In this moment of economic uncertainty and anxiety, people wanted to be comforted and feel successful. By allowing cultural trendsetters to cherry pick elements of the 50s and 60s, an era that seemed to radiate
success and excess, we could bask in the glory of this time period while also feeling enlightened enough to not repeat the same injustices and mistakes. By wrapping herself in a retro persona with distinctly modern flourishes that encapsulated these emotions, Del Rey picked up on this national sentiment and caught lightning in a bottle.
Listening to Del Rey’s early music, you can hear this attempt to project confidence and coolness that’s wrapped up in a distinctly American identity. The track “American” spells it out quite clearly, with a protagonist who’s tall, handsome, and a natural flirt, and a chorus that chants “Be young, be dope, be proud like an American.” This fascination with wealth, patriotism, and the 50s and early 60s naturally brings up the Kennedy family, who served as a muse for Del Rey’s songwriting. The track “National Anthem” continues to evoke a specific pride in an American identity, and in its music video, Del Rey enlists A$AP Rocky to serve as her JFK stand-in. As the video progresses, it cuts in and out of reenactments of the Kennedy assassination and depictions of Del Rey and Rocky frolicking on their Cape Cod property. The Kennedy family served as a perfect creative inspiration while also being twinged with a sense of tragedy, another hallmark of Del Rey’s lyrical tendencies.
By 2015, this nostalgic remembrance of the 1950s and 60s had transformed from a social phenomenon to a political one. As Donald Trump emerged in the political sphere with a pledge to “Make America Great Again,” he tapped into this sentimental current while modifying it to fuel his rise. While pop culture had embraced those decades just a few years prior, many felt that Trump’s candidacy didn’t seek to bring to mind visions of Grace Kelly and sweetheart necklines but rather of a homogenous society that prioritized conformity while suppressing social unrest. Trump’s campaign ignored and directly rebuked the progressive “coexist” vision of a multicultural society, instead appealing to a “forgotten” America. This tactic was distinctly out of step with where cultural sentiments were, evidenced by his loss
of the popular vote, but was strategic enough to win the election through the Electoral College that disproportionately represented the exact Americans Trump was claiming to be forgotten.
As a figure who debuted and burnished her image in mainstream pop culture through channeling the 50s and early 60s, it is notable that by this time, Del Rey had largely stepped away from referencing those decades in her writing, again displaying a unique sense of cultural sentiments and reflecting the American mood in her writing. Indeed, her first album released under the Trump administration, Lust for Life was influenced more by the late 60s and early 70s, as Del Rey brought in Stevie Nicks as a collaborator and populated her lyrics with references to “Stairway to Heaven,” John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Elton John. By 2017, when resistance to those in political power was ubiquitous and world order felt to be slipping away, what better influences than an era that saw mass protests against an unpopular war and a counterculture that felt ignored by those in power?
Rather than simply providing a love letter to this period, Del Rey infused contemporary sentiments into her writing and mixing in imagery and references of decades past. This is clear on the track, “God Bless America - And All The Beautiful Women In It” which was inspired by the women’s march in response to Trump’s election and the surge of women’s participation in politics. This was a moment when the United States was uniquely uncertain of its own identity, increasingly made up of a cosmopolitan population with progressive social views yet governed by an administration that was diametrically opposed to this vision of the country. Del Rey again channels this confusion and uncertainty into her track “While The World Was At War” as she asks on the chorus, “Is it the end of an era, is it the end of America?”
When the time came for Del Rey to release her sixth studio album, she opted to name it Norman Fucking Rockwell!, paying homage to the painter who was both ingrained in and vividly captured American culture. While the first track of the album shares the same
name, beyond the title there is only one explicit mention of Rockwell in the lyrics — a seemingly mystifying choice. But when looking at Rockwell’s work and comparing it to Del Rey’s career, it becomes clear that they served in similar roles. Rockwell used his art to comment on elements of American culture, both good and bad, compiling a body of work that truly captured the vision of the American dream. His paintings like “Freedom From Want” and “The Problem We All Live With” depict the idealized version of America many strive to achieve, while contrasting that with the very real struggles and challenges we face in co-existing and sharing in success.
Del Rey uses the album to capture this struggle, with “The Next Best American Record” evoking the vision of pursuing something beautiful and achieving your goals, while “The greatest” bemoans the state of the world and explicitly mentions Kanye West’s Neo-Nazi spiral, the nuclear missile scare in Hawaii, and the chronic wildfires plaguing California. Where Rockwell used his paintbrush, Del Rey has used her pen to pursue the same goal of holding up a mirror to the American consciousness and telling us exactly how we feel.
In the post pandemic era, Del Rey’s music and lyrics have again taken another turn. In her twin 2021 albums releases Country Club and Blue Banisters, the center of her focus is brought to rural America to a degree it never was before. The title track “Chemtrails Over the Country Club” casts imagery of sitting back and watching chemtrails overhead. The reference provides two meanings, one alludes to the conspiracy theories that airplane chemtrails are emitting chemicals to control the public’s opinions, perhaps a hint to the wave of conspiracy theories that sprung up during the pandemic, and the second depicts the listener as viewing these planes fly away, casting themselves in “flyover country” that is often derisively used to refer to Middle America.
On the song “Blue Banisters,” Del Rey sings of Oklahoma and a John Deere tractor, trading in her references to diamonds and St. Tropez for a more familiar and humble lifestyle. Her writing paints
these locations in an intimate light, one of families convening and children running barefoot through the backyard. This offered a window into a community that felt ignored or overlooked in the wake of the pandemic and political upheaval. Del Rey’s writing acknowledged this segment of Americans and their frustrations; she respected their lifestyles, recognizing their place in America and attempting to soothe divisions without delving into politics.
As we turn into the latter half of the 2020s, there remains a deep
warmachine is a Boston-based noise rock band who have gained traction in the local scene through playing house shows. Their most recent EP, soulmurder, features some of their most ambitious work yet. The EP came out March 7, a week after this interview took place. Three of their four band members hail from Northeastern, two of which have already graduated. Their names are Brendan Fullerton (drums), Lex Pappas (guitar), Ethan Michael (guitar), and X Niskey (bass). Tastemakers met with them to learn more about their members, process, and creative aspirations.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Tastemakers Magazine (TMM): What are all of your favorite songs at the moment?
Lex Pappas (LP): “Hi Chaos” by Mogwai. Everyone sleeps on Mogwai.
Brendan Fullerton (BF): I've been really [messing] with Wishy. That song “Love On
The Outside” is amazing. It's so good.
X Niskey (X) Spacek, especially the song “The Sheer Drop.”
Ethan Michael (EM) the Duster side project. Eiafuawn. I listen to it on CDs. My favorite is track two, “No more like that.”
TMM: have you taken most from your time here in undergrad at Northeastern?
LP: I discovered that I like to be involved in music at Northeastern. I think it connected people in a pretty organized way. They’re very resourceful, and the people were very open to everyone's backgrounds. I'll give credit to Northeastern music department for their organization.
BF: They got the practice rooms that wouldn't let us in half of the time. That was when we first started out.
includes super mishmashed collages and eccentric hand drawings with very MS-paint vibes. What do you try to communicate about your work through this art style?
: I designed the majority of the covers. I draw a lot, and so I guess browsers castle was specifically deliberate, just because I drew the castle over it and have the MS Paint background on it. All this AI stuff is coming out, and the art looks amazing. Our art is a shout against that, like I'm trying to make our covers as simple as possible, because they are made by a human being. Humanity is really inspiring to me. We've had people reach out to us, like “Do you guys want me to design your next album cover?” As in, do you want to pay me $600 and I'm always like, “How could you do me like this?” No, thanks.
Which songs of yours do you feel the proudest of?
: I think it changes all the time. Right now, it is a song called “necromancy” off the new EP. But also a lot of time I'll get in my car and I'll click on Google Drive, and listen to the whole thing, because it sounds better all together anyway. It's so intentional. It really does deserve to be listened to as a whole
: My favorite is “necromancy” because a lot went into it in terms of songwriting. The lyrics to me are important, which doesn't happen a lot in songs that I write, but for “necromancy,” they were, which is why I like that song so much.
TMM: From the newly released single, “fiction,” your sound seems to have diverged from the noise and grunginess that defined your last EP, browsers castle. What inspired this change?
BF: The rest of the EP is not like that. “fiction” is the chillest song we've ever wrote. And “necromancy,” which is on the EP, is the heaviest song we've ever written. Every song has a different sound, but it also sounds similar enough to where it feels like it should be all together in a weird way. We get a lot of trip-hop inspiration for “fiction.”
X: And a lot of post-punk too. Joy Division, the Cure, et cetera.
LP: The design is different too, because we worked in a [digital audio workstation] for this project, and I think that's what we're going to be sticking with. We worked on tape last time with browsers castle, so that was all analog.
BF: A lot more layering was done, whereas, browsers castle had to be very raw because we had very limited space on the tape.
X: I think browsers castle was 21 tracks maximum. We had to record it all one day, come back a week later and mix the whole thing by hand in one day.
BF: With a mixing board, we couldn't do any post production. Literally. Everything had to be done in studio. It's like two twelve hour days.
TMM: What does the future look like for warmachine?
LP: Guys, the future is written. We plan to keep our ethos of being as authentic as we can be, and try to continue making a lot of friends and meeting a lot of people and just having a lot of fun. We want to keep having fun with it. You can leak the tour, we're going to tour.
X: We’re touring throughout the year, up until June. It's like four shows a month. Then in June, we're going to play six shows in one week, while driving to different states in between those shows.
BF: It's gonna be a movie.
• Sam Pollak (Data Science and Economics)
Designer:
Fake vines hang from the ceiling tangled with fairy lights, bright posters cover the walls, and the soft hum of lo-fi music comes from teenagers’ bedrooms. Notebooks fill up with crayon-scribble lyrics and social media is crowded with self-produced music videos. In 2020, the genre of bedroom pop exploded, as aspiring musicians used at-home technology, literally making music in their bedrooms. Characterized by intimate lyrics and mellow, almost dream-like sounds, bedroom pop has found its own special place in the pop genre, squeezed somewhere between indie pop and alternative pop.
The exact definition of bedroom pop is heavily debated, with the definition usually shuffling some sort of balance between the technical production of the music and the specific sound. The Spotify “Bedroom Pop” playlist, influential in growing the genre, now includes a large expanse of songs that seem to lack a uniform sound. Some argue that bedroom pop must be music produced in an actual bedroom, an ode to the origins of the genre and the experience of being an amateur artist. Many young artists do not have access to expensive studio production equipment — their only option is to create music in their bedroom. Others will claim that the genre is characterized only by the soft pop, low-production sound. The hushed singing, soft piano, and slightly distorted
guitar make up the hallmark sound of the genre. But already, questions challenging this definition surface. Is all music produced in a bedroom automatically bedroom pop? What about hyperpop artists, like glaive, who spent years writing and producing music in his room? And can every soft and mellow song be considered bedroom pop, including those produced in fancy recording studios with unlimited resources? When trying to distinguish bedroom pop from neighboring pop genres, less important is the sound or the circumstances in which a song is recorded; it’s the feeling that matters. It might sound cliché, but bedroom pop invokes a sense of genuineness that is hard to replicate. The sincerity of an artist sitting on their bed pouring their heart out through a recording program on their laptop gives every song the potential to feel personal, contributing to the large success and widespread appeal of the genre. Impromptu Instagram lives and Zoom concerts present the artists in a wholly human form that is difficult to reproduce with a team of production staff in a professional studio. Why are we seeing artists straying away from their bedroom pop roots if it creates such a deep connection with their fanbases?
One name who is all too familiar to fans of the bedroom pop genre is beabadoobee. Bea Kristi brought the genre to mainstream
attention with her first popular single, “Coffee,” in 2017 and has been unstoppable ever since. Her lyrics intimately recount her thoughts on self-image, stories of her childhood, and the ups and downs of her relationships. Throughout her career, Bea has been unapologetically real, whether through Instagram lives playing her songs on guitar in her messy room, or posting random TikToks, she felt less on a pedestal than most artists feel. Her early albums Patched Up and Loveworm embraced bedroom pop to its fullest, with honest lyrics and a strippeddown instrumental sound. The standout factor in Bea’s shift from bedroom pop was her outright transparency of it. Bea began her gentle transition to leaving bedroom pop with her album Fake It Flowers, which incorporated indie rock elements of loud guitar and screaming vocals. In numerous interviews she would describe how Fake It Flowers doesn’t quite replicate the traditional bedroom pop sound, but reassured her listeners that the songs were in fact written in her room and are no less sincere than her previous releases. Beatopia, which followed Fake It Flowers, is lauded as one of her best, with songs spanning from the intimate topics of self-isolation, infidelity in her relationships, and fixing unhealthy lifestyle choices, stunning listeners with Bea’s honesty and sincerity. Although Beatopia is
definitely more along the lines of indie and alternative pop, the progression feels natural and Kristi’s music incorporates the best parts of bedroom pop, the sincerity and honesty, while utilizing the new room she has to grow as a now recognized artist with a label. This Is How Tomorrow Moves was the final stepping stone in shedding the bedroom pop label, as Bea progressed to higher-production songs and fully embraced the rock-concert vibe on tour. While the contrast between the album styles may seem obvious when listening to Bea’s albums back-to-back, each one feels more genuine than the next, allowing her to maintain the charm her music had back in her bedroom pop era.
Bedroom pop is rarely mentioned without someone uttering the name Clairo. Claire Cottrill defined the bedroom pop genre with her 2019 album Immunity, following the success of her songs “Flaming Hot Cheetos,” “Pretty Girl,” and “4EVER” in 2017 and 2018. Hushed vocals and fuzzy instrumentals make Cottrill’s first two albums Immunity and Sling perfect examples of bedroom pop. Seeing the rise in bedroom pop stardom, Cottrill fully leaned into the genre, quickly gaining traction on social media platforms. Her music mixed lo-fi sounds with soft guitar that you can’t help but bop your head to. Sling still stayed in the bedroom pop sphere, yet experimented with different genres, ultimately expanding
the bedroom pop sound to be less onedimensional. This expansion to different genres signaled that a change might be coming, but no one could predict the jazzy album that would be Charm, released in 2024. Cottrill fully left the bedroom pop genre behind, incorporating jazz elements in her third album and reinventing her artist image. On tour, she even changed the style of her Immunity and Sling song performances to fit the new jazz sound of Charm. The album is nothing short of fantastic, and such a bold and drastic change ensured that no one thought of Charm as bedroom pop.
Claire Cottrill, along with some other bedroom pop artists, is often given the label “nepo-baby.” A nepo-baby is an artist whose success is largely due to influence by an already successful parent in the same or similar industry. While some artists may have a head start through successful parents, that doesn’t necessarily diminish their talents or how deserving they are of their success. Cottrill's ability to tell intricate stories through her lyrics and create a unique sound combining elements of multiple genres demonstrates her musical gifts, however, an artist being an “industry plant” does counteract the “self-made” image that is so crucial to the bedroom pop genre. Although Cottrill
had larger access to expensive equipment and advertising, the one thing money and influential parents cannot buy is a genuine connection with an audience. Cottrill’s lyrics detailing personal struggle, relationship experience, and self-image makes her music sincere, despite her hidden advantage in the industry. However, some growing artists take advantage of the accessibility of the bedroom pop industry to gain an audience quickly, often presenting lyrics that lack sincerity and throwing poorly made songs at the TikTok audience wall hoping something sticks. The pandemic kept many people stuck in their rooms, yet creativity blossomed. As artists’ fame grew and sprouted success, they wanted to utilize their now-accessible technology to expand their music and careers. With time comes natural growth, and many traditionally bedroom pop artists chose to develop a more mature sound rather than sticking with the intimate lyrics and soft sounds they were drawn to years ago. For some artists, bedroom pop was never the goal. Many artists always dreamed of releasing music that required more complex recording equipment or instruments they couldn’t play, yet did not have the resources available to do so. Although bedroom pop will always have a special place in the music industry, it is hard to create the connection and sincerity now that was so effortless a few years ago. Bedroom pop now feels less like a genre and
more like a stepping stone between being unknown and making a space for yourself as an artist. Bedroom pop, as a concept, is one that is meant to be expanded and defined by the artists who make it. No one truly knows the definition, and to try to define it would restrict the creativity and genuineness it supports. The Spotify “Bedroom Pop” playlist now includes genres that stray far from the beabadoobee and Clairo songs of the early 2020s, with few artists fitting the original sound, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Bedroom pop is less about the specific sound or the equipment used to record tracks; it allows smaller artists to demonstrate sincere songwriting skills and show off creative potential to build an audience. However, one thing is for certain — the era of bedroom pop created artists that wrote songs unapologetically, giving them opportunities that expanded far beyond their vine-covered, fairy light lit rooms.
• Hannah Storer (Computer Science and Game Development)
Tiffany Day, Sinclair
Photo by Tiffany Nguyen (Finance)
Sinéad O’Connor - The Lion and the Cobra
Have you ever wondered what echoes through your professors’ headphones on their walk to class? In a special edition of “What are you listening to?,” Tastemakers asked six professors to share an album or artist that soundtracked their college years. Here’s what they said.
Answers edited for grammatical purposes.
Q: What’s an album or artist that got you through college?
Bruce Springsteen
As much as I dislike sounding like a walking cliché, I have to say that Bruce Springsteen was the musician who got me through college. I arrived at Northeastern in 1974 listening to The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, waited in anticipation as he was finishing up Born to Run, and wore out Darkness on the Edge of Town during my senior year. I also got to see him in 1974, ’75 and ’78 — not to mention a number of times since. His music was very different from what my friends were listening to, a lot of which leaned toward the loathsome prog-rock of Yes and Jethro Tull. Moreover, he was deeply literate and seemed to speak directly to my generation. Bruce and I have had our ups and downs over the years, but I feel privileged to have been there for his rise to stardom.
– Dan Kennedy (Journalism)
I wore this CD out — literally, I had to buy a second copy. This album changed my life — it gave me hope. A woman who used more than one kind of voice to express herself. She was a loud-rocking-screamer, a whisperer of melodic prayer, and [had] an angelic like falsetto that could land your heart. Sinead, an Irish anarchist with a bald head and a black leather jacket. Like many geniuses, she was often misunderstood. YES, I had found a musician to look up to and listen to for assurance. Sinéad O’Connor helped me believe that I could be myself, make the music I wanted to, and travel though the world standing up for what I believed in and looking like I do without apology.
– Melissa Ferrick (Music)
Air - Moon Safari
I don’t think I took a single roadtrip in college without Air’s Moon Safari in the center console. I would cycle other CDs in and out (this was well before smartphones, and I certainly couldn’t afford an MP3 player) but Moon Safari had permanent residency. I was (and still am) always in the mood for it, probably because it lives in the in-betweens: it’s electronic, but “Ce Matîn La” and “La Femme D’argent” sound organic (the album’s title is no accident); it’s lounge, but “You Make It Easy” is almost too sincere; it’s downtempo, but try not to dance to “Kelly Watch the Stars.” I love Moon Safari because it takes other things I love, like Burt Bacharach and jazz and Gershon Kingsley and Saturday morning cartoon theme songs, and turns them into the soundtrack for adventure (or at least for driving halfway across Texas and back again).
– Aaron Block (English)
G. Love & Special Sauce - Yeah, It’s That Easy
This was a hard decision between The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and G. Love & Special Sauce’s album Yeah, It’s That Easy. I decided to focus on the latter because it came out right in the fall of my freshman year at Wesleyan University, when I was missing my hometown of Philadelphia. G. Love is a musician I had seen in concert back home since his first two albums were released when I was in high school, and he often performed locally. His music references Philadelphia legends, places, and sports teams with a hip-hop sound, mixed with blues and soul. The band toured for this album in 1997-1998, and I went down to New York City with some new friends from college to see him play. It is still a core memory from that first year away that made me feel connected to home.
– Joanna Weaver (Psychology)
Missy Higgins
Getting through college in the 2000s was just about as challenging as the 23-hour download time for a song from Limewire or Napster. While everything from grunge to reggaeton made it onto the millennial version of my mixed tape (a poor quality burned CD), the Australian artist Missy Higgins was a staple. Her debut album The Sound of White and her 2007 album On a Clear Night perfectly punctuated the start and end of my undergraduate career. Her subtle social commentary and iconic queerness was exactly what I turned to when I needed a hug or a soft spot to land…and she just gets better with time.
– Cali-Ryan Collin (Human Services)
Beach House – Teen Dream
This came out when I was in college, and it’s one of very few albums that has basically never left my rotation. It’s the exact right balance between dreamy and depressing, and I’d argue it’s both at once. Need a soundtrack for a road trip? A cry in the bathroom? You’re covered. That level of emotional complexity felt revolutionary at the time. Why can’t sadness be beautiful, too? I started chasing that feeling, and through Beach House I found their influences, like Cocteau Twins, Mazzy Star, and others. But their sound is, I think, distinct from both the music that came before them and the many indie bands that followed them in the 2010s; the mood they create still feels singular.
– Shane Schweitzer (Business)
Designer:
Archana
Kalahasti (Experience Design)
Photos by
Darin
Zullo, Armaan Ajoomal & Dev
Rudnick
Gender Expression Through Glam Rock
The year is 1973, and you’re one of 5,000 people in the Hammersmith Odeon in London, reaching for a man on stage who is unlike any man you’ve seen before. With bright red hair and striking eyeliner, he tells fantastical stories under strobe lights. It’s clear that he is something much bigger than just a man. He is an alien messiah, an ostracized astronaut, and most importantly, a rock and roll star.
David Bowie is often credited as a pioneer of glam rock, a musical genre which began in the 1970s that sparked a groundbreaking movement in the UK. Glam rock was a radical acceptance of extravagant self-expression, rebellion against rigid social binaries, and flashy show of authenticity presented as fantasy. Glam rockers like Bowie were recognizable by their theatrical stage performance and flamboyant dress. Amid a period of hostility toward the queer community in the UK, glam rock was inherently political. Wearing sequins and platform-boots did more than simply play with gendered fashion — it was symbolic of a rejection of the oppressiveness of traditional gender norms and heteronormativity.
Bowie is known for inventing complex stories and characters as a tool for self-expression. While each represented a different period in his life, marked by distinct fashion styles and narrative voices, they all personified a feeling of social isolation due to their nonconformity. The protagonist of his earliest hit, Major Tom, was an astronaut lost in space, disconnected from the human world, at once shamed and
idolized — a true “Space Oddity” in a flashy leotard. Bowie’s fifth album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, told the story of Ziggy Stardust, an alien sent down to Earth to prevent the apocalypse, only to find that humanity’s only hope at salvation is a sexually enlightened rock and roll alien superstar.
For Bowie, these characters were not just fiction for fans — he came to embody the very narratives he created. Glam rock was Bowie’s storytelling apparatus, a circus on and off stage that surpassed the limitations of frivolous binaries. In becoming Ziggy Stardust, he was free to be more than a man. He was immortal, that is until 1973 at the Hammersmith, when Bowie decided to kill Stardust, literally performing his death on stage at the final show of the Ziggy Stardust Tour. There’s power in saying that Ziggy Stardust, in all of his glamourous bravado, could easily be reborn as Bowie’s darker persona, Aladdin Sane, a man at internal and musical odds with himself —“A Lad InSane.” Bowie told the world that glam rock was a celebration of the fluidity of identity and an assertion of autonomy.
While Bowie’s stardom dominates the legacy of glam rock, there would be no David Bowie without his predecessors Little Richard and Marc Bolan. Traces of Little Richard — the 1950s rock star otherwise known as “The Magnificent One,” “The King and Queen of Rock and Roll,” and “Princess Lavonne” — can be found in the careers of the most renowned artists. Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan covered his
performing in Texas, he was arrested for lewd behavior. While glam rock is praised for its revolutionary acceptance and celebration of uniqueness, it’s not uncommon in musical history for that praise to overlook people of color.
That’s not to say that early glam rockers were accepted into the mainstream without resistance. Glam rock was born during the HIV and AIDS crisis, in a moment of heightened hostility toward the queer community, but this was also a moment of unity and strength as the Gay Liberation Movement took full swing. Queerness is undeniably at the root of glam rock, even in its founders, Marc Bolan and David Bowie. Both men were openly bisexual, and the fluidity and freeness of sexuality was essential to their musical and personal identities. Not only did glam rock value campy presentation, but its lyrical themes often had homoerotic undertones. Bowie even wrote about Bolan in his song “Lady Stardust,” describing him as an androgynous singer whom beautiful women were envious of and boys longed to get a look at. Bowie says, “I smiled sadly for a love I could not obey / Lady Stardust sang his songs of darkness and dismay.”
Eventually, glam rock inspired new genres and movements. Just as showy and rebellious, punk rock introduced a biting edge that screams, “try me!” Both genres contain politically conscious messaging, subverting societal expectations as they fought to make their outcast voices heard. Meanwhile, hair metal maintained glam rock’s hedonistic drama, but it was less concerned with politics. Where the extravagant eccentricity of glam rock was an act of protest, hair metal cheapened Bowie’s efforts to skin-tight leather pants and dangly earrings. Rather than singing about otherness and belonging, they sang about partying and girls. Unlike Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols, Eddie Van Halen would never be caught saying “I am an antichrist / I am an anarchist.” While Little Richard, Bolan, and Bowie were ridiculed for their experimentation with androgyny by mainstream society, bands like Poison and Def Leppard were largely praised for it. At a distance from queerness, it was a lot easier for them to be widely accepted. On Bret Michaels, pink boas are suddenly cool and sexy — masculine, even — but on Bowie, he might as well be an alien. This raises a series of questions. Is hair metal an exploitation of glam rock’s legacy? By ignoring the necessity of glam rock, does hair metal make an appropriation of it?
Glam rock was never just about the spectacle. It was a display of authenticity, an aspiration for freedom, an encouragement to live shamelessly. At its core, glam rock calls to anyone who feels excluded or degraded for simply being who they are, telling them that, like David Bowie, they can show up as they are with pride.
• Mya Jassey (English and Media and Screen Studies)
CROSSWORD
ACROSS
5. Timothee Chalamet played this artist in a skit on SNL.
7. This beam of sunlight lost out on "Best New Artist."
8. Clearly the Grammys weren't "charmed" by this artist's album.
9. The Grammys were not hit hard or soft by this artist's album.
DOWN
1. Iconic Boston slang that is also the title of a musical that was robbed at the Oscars.
2. Don't even "Get Me Started" on how this artist didn't win a Grammy...
3. This artist was simply tortured by the Grammys.
4. This artist won an iconic feud this year.
6. A meal is featured in this one artist's Grammy-nominated album.
10. The new Y-M-C-A dance.
SPOTIFY PLAYLIST
With the 67th Annual Grammy Awards behind us, Tastemakers wanted to reflect and highlight our favorite tunes we believe were #robbed...let the Scammies begin!
"Sexy to Someone" - Clairo "Birds of a Feather" - Billie Eilish "Good Luck, Babe!" - Chappell Roan "eternal sunshine" - Ariana Grande "Got Me Started" - Troye Sivan "Romance" - Fontaines D.C. "I Had Some Help" - Post Malone ft. Morgan Wallen
"Guess" - Charli xcx and Billie Eilish "Nissan Altima" - Doechii "Guidance" - Jhene Aiko "No One Mourns the Wicked (Wicked Soundtrack)" - Stephen Schwartz "Can’t Catch Me Now" - Olivia Rodrigo
ZOOMED
Can you tell which six album covers we’ve zoomed in on?
FIND SABRINA
We’ve hidden Sabrina Carpenter somewhere in this issue. Find her and maybe something cool will happen...
