Carina Anderson on “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson (1988)
Listen now
Description
Where biographical writing often follows a chronological progression, Carina Anderson’s brilliant podcast approaches the question of how Jackson expresses himself through his music by focusing closely on specific lyrics, sounds, and instruments as vehicles for her complex and engaging discussions of the frenetic line that Jackson walks in his relationship to his race, gender, childhood, and sociality. 
More Episodes
In focusing on U2’s “Red Hill Mining Town,” Miriam Mindel’s rigorous and exploratory podcast integrates two mutually-informing analysis: in it, Miriam builds the history of labor abuse in Appalachia alongside her granular sonic and lyrical analysis of the song itself. Listening to what she calls...
Published 09/01/20
Published 09/01/20
In her podcast, Grace Bassett places “Gimme Shelter” at the center of the anti-war and Civil Rights movements as a song that, in her words, “somehow captured the feelings of impending doom felt by many Americans” in 1969. Using the lens of apocalypse to analyze the song’s lyrical and sonic chaos,...
Published 09/01/20