Last week the editorial staff of The New Yorker announced a "Summer Free-For-All" — they’re granting online access to all of their articles going back to 2007. (At least until September, when they unleash their subscription model.) Many, many roundups were done to mark this occasion — so many that THE AWL EVEN DID A ROUNDUP OF ROUNDUPS.
Well, I got caught up in the spirit, since The New Yorker is amazing and everything is free. I went through every article roundup compiled by The Awl and pulled all the music pieces I could find. (If I missed one, let me know.)
Of course, putting together this post took me way longer than I ever could have possibly imagined, but if just one person gets to spend four hours of their life reading a New Yorker music article because of me, it’s worth it.
Without further ado, here’s every music article in The Awl’s roundup of New Yorker roundups, in no order whatsoever.
Every Free Music Article You Should Read From The New Yorker’s Unlocked Archives:
"DELTA NIGHTS" BY BILL BUFORD, JUNE 5, 2000. A singer’s love affair with loss.
"CLARA" BY ROBERT BOLAÑO, AUGUST 4, 2008. A short fiction love story, where object of the narrator’s love is a young woman studying music.
"THE APOSTATE" BY LAWRENCE WRIGHT, AUGUST 19, 2009. Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology. (An incident of musical chairs featuring David Miscavige figures prominently in the story.)
"CHEAP WORDS" BY GEORGE PACKER, FEBRUARY 17, 2014. Amazon is good for customers. But is it good for books? (Some discussion of how music is a big part of Amazon’s model.)
"PARALLEL PLAY" BY TIM PAGE, AUGUST 20, 2007. A lifetime of restless isolation explained.(“The author’s first and most powerful obsession was music.”)
"THE MASK OF DOOM" BY TA-NEHESI COATES, SEPTEMBER 21, 2009. A nonconformist rapper’s second act.
"THE FUN STUFF" BY JAMES WOOD, NOVEMBER 29, 2010. My life as Keith Moon.
LIVING-ROOM LEOPARDS BY ARIEL LEVY, MAY 6, 2013. A new group of breeders want to undomesticate the cat. (One profiled breeder is a Swiss-born former musician.)
"THE STORY OF A SUICIDE" BY IAN PARKER, FEBRUARY 6, 2012. Two college roommates, a webcam, and a tragedy. (Tyler Clementi studied music at Rutgers.)
"MASTER OF PLAY" BY NICK PAUMGARTEN, DECEMBER 20, 2010. The many worlds of a video-game artist. (Shigeru Miyamoto also has written video game music, including helping with Donkey Kong.)
"SYMBOL OF ALL WE POSSESS" BY LILLIAN ROSS, OCTOBER 22, 1949. ”Bess Myerson, (1945) went to Columbia and studied music, married, had a baby, and is now running a music school and modelling, too.”
"SOME NOTES ON ATTUNEMENT" BY AN UNLISTED AUTHOR, BUT LISTENER ANDREA POINTED OUT THAT IT’S ZADIE SMITH, DECEMBER 17, 2012. A voyage around Joni Mitchell.
And every article in this music roundup: 15 ESSENTIAL MUSIC LONGREADS FROM THE NEW YORKER (BUZZFEED)
That’s what I could find. Comment here or tweet at us if there’s another unlocked article you really love that’s not listed here and we’ll post it here.
