A reading list to clean up my life
And by life, I mean my phone and computer.
I'm infamous among my friends and peers for screenshotting my computer to reveal a hundred-plus tabs open on my browser. What most people don't realize is that I actually have two browsers open (Chrome for general use, Safari for fandom use so I don't accidentally Zoom share a ridiculous fanmade meme) and my phone has taken to telling me it can't open more tabs because I've reached the maximum 500. A lot of these tabs are open because I read something once and want to have easy access to them. But then I eventually get bogged down, and lose everything.
So I'm spending the next few days going through all these tabs, trying to clean things up. I'm going to share some pieces of interest here. A few of these may be months, even years old. But hope you enjoy this Tab-Closing Reading List. If you like these reading recs, please let me know in the comments, and maybe I'll do more (less aggressively long!) reading rec guides in the future.
Even though I'm rec'ing everything here for you to read for a variety of reasons, some of the following articles may represent perspectives I disagree with.
NME's cover story with Atarashii Gakko is an intriguing read when considering K-pop's "global" aims.
Also J-pop adjacent, Anna Sawai was phenomenal in Shōgun and deserves all the awards. Not too bad for a former Faky member, which she spoke critically about with W.
"The Evolution of the Critic: A Conversation with Mark Richardson" is a thoughtful Q&A about the craft of music criticism and who it serves nowadays.
"Your memories are like paintings", and that impacts relationships with music and albums.
Water & Music's "The State of Data in the Music Industry" is an important resource.
Why K-pop stars - I'd note mostly female ones - are turning to streaming and becomming BJs after the heyday of their careers.
"Could Ariana Grande joining Weverse start the K-popification of American music?" is a very silly headline in my opinion, because the answer is it's not just starting. I wrote a bit about this in Forget chart-topping hits: Everyone wants a "superfan", and had meant to link to this article in that piece but... it got lost in my tab hell.
"Dear Archie" by Peixuan Xie, a reflective piece on relationships and T-pop.
"The Best Hip-Hop/Rap Albums Of 2024... So Far" by Gary Suarez.
The New York Times' "The 40 Best Songs of 2024 (So Far)".
"Jodie Turner-Smith Takes Control " by E. Alex Jung. Always read E. Alex Jung.
"Sentiment Albums Hold the Seeds of Modern Fandom" by Elizabeth Minkel is fascinating for anyone interested in the history of modern fandom culture.
A Vox take attempting to answer "The real reason it costs so much to go to a concert".
Tone Glow's "Our Favorite Music, January-March 2024" is what I'm listening to as I write.
"Singer-Songwriter Hannah Bahng Is Making Her Own Waves" looks at the artistry of Bahng, who is the sister of Stray Kids' Bang Chan.
A Dazed piece about "Life after Taylor: Former Swifties reveal why they left the ‘toxic’ fandom".
A bunch of music writers ruminating about the relationship of "Music vs. Lyrics-Or is it a secret third thing".
"Fangirl Confessional" an important zine by Keidra Chaney, and the article "The Empowered Stan: Fandom can be both identity and liberation—but how do we keep our joys from being co-opted by corporate interests?" by her as well, at Fansplaining.
The Cut's "Ending a Friendship Over Taylor Swift".
Paste Magazine's "Taylor Swift Strikes Out Looking on The Tortured Poets Department" review.
"Fan Fiction: a satire", a zine by Tavi Gevinson.
Pop Excellence's "Our Favorite K-pop Singles of 2023: Introduction and Honorable Mentions". (Whoops, I really had these tabs opened for too long!)
"A Belated Eulogy for SMP (1996-2023)", it's funny I had this tab opened for ages and just saw it today because earlier I was telling someone that I feel Yeonjun of TXT's divisive first mixtape single "Gumm" is a very Hyoyeon-esque SMP song. (I also got a notification today that someone made a YouTube video panning my usage of describing SNSD's "I Got a Boy" as being like Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", so SMP power is really just rampant all around me today!!!)
"Parannoul and the New Generation of Korean Indie" by James Gui. I did actually read this, but kept the tab open to share with you all and obviously forgot to do so. Well, I guess I am now! And also his "From Dial-Up to the Digital Dawn: How the Internet Shaped the Korean Underground".
"LE SSERAFIM keep making their world more beautiful", an Easy-era, pre-Coachella interview.
"The Oral History of Pitchfork". This piece I had open for a long time because a)I feel like a total failure for many reasons this year, and one of them is that I can no longer ever get any sort of validation as a real music writer because Pitchfork no longer exists, and since I was in high school that meant something to me (I'm also not a music critic but even so!) b) I knew it'd be full of trauma of women writers by fans, which is something I have personally struggled with and this bit felt immensely familiar, and I think that's apparent in why I avoid certain topics and don't pitch about certain artists anymore.
"Mapes: It still gives me anxiety. There’s all this big pop stuff coming out, and I feel like I should pitch reviews, but I don’t want to because I don’t want to engage with that. And also, I don’t know who it serves, because everyone knows these things are coming out. It’s not shining a light on artists. It’s not necessary. It’s not like a smaller artist or even a mid-level artist that you’re making a case for."
It's nearly midnight as I'm writing this and I do want to actually get to sleep before 2am, and close more tabs before then, so just going to be sharing some titles with no context moving forward as I read. If they're included here, it's because I think they're worth a read, for a variety of reasons.
"Chartmetric’s Andreas Katsambas on the Power (and Limits) of Data"
"Meet ILLIT, your new K-pop obsession and Acne Studios campaign stars"
"Toward Pop Literature: A polemic", which features the K-pop-focused novel, Y/N by Esther Yi.
"Music journalism is broken. Is this how we fix it?" (Probably not by Tamar just dumping links on you at 11PM on a Sunday night)
"Gabriel Myers Hansen: Music journalists are an endangered species"
"How K-Pop Made League of Legends Immortal"
"Red Velvet: “I’m not sure if we can say that we’ve helped define K-pop”"
"What’s behind the meteoric rise of concert films?"
"Life of the Parish: Offline fan practices as spatialised meaning-making"
"When A Pop Star's Biggest Fans Become A Big Headache"
"K-pop Videos Hold the Key to Better, Weirder Storytelling, and Here Is My Proof"
"Why ‘Girls’ Rule the Internet"
"V Shares The Journey That Led to Layover – And How His BTS Members Helped Get Him There"
"K-Pop's Hip-Hop Roots: A History Of Cultural Connection On The Dancefloor"
"Jann Wenner’s Biographer: “He Revealed the Ugly Truth of Rolling Stone”"
"Between universes: Fan positionalities in the transnational circulation of K-pop"
"Jung Kook is now driving in his own lane"
"Q-Pop: Peru’s social media phenomenon Lenin Tamayo fuses Quechua and K-pop"
"Producer 250 On K-Pop, Trot & His Music Philosophy"
"K-pop turns to foreigners to solve talent shortage"
"TripleS And The Rise Of K-Pop Girls’ Crypto-Capitalism"
"To Be a Consumer of Culture Means Living in a Hostage Situation"
"The secret world of songwriting camps" (Honestly? Not much of a secret!)
"K-pop TikTok: TikTok's expansion into South Korea, TikTok Stage, and platformed glocalization"
"An Analysis of 47 Million Transactions Tells an Amazing Story about the Music Business"
This gorgeously written profile of Xiao Zhan
"Skeleton Flower: Things That Have Been Released and Set Free - A Novel by Kim Jonghyun"
"A Deep Dive Into Hallyu in Argentina"
"K- Popping: Korean Women, K-Pop, and Fandom"
"From Prickly to Pleasant: The Softening of K-pop"
"The sonic identity of K-pop girl groups: intro"
"Notes on K-pop, or, can we all just admit that NewJeans outsold your fave?" A nice list of some reads, for everything else you may be interested in that I didn't share here. For the record, I did not write this! And this person linked to NoK so clearly is aware of a newsletter called Notes on K-pop.
I only have 50 tabs open on one browser now, so it feels like a good time to blast this out to the world. Gotta do the rest soon, so maybe stay tuned for more reading recs!
