Email Author Maura Johnston

2012 Stories by Maura Johnston

• MTV's Video Music Awards Enters The Post-Music-Video Era

  published September 12, 2012

  MTV's annual music bacchanal, the Video Music Awards, took place on Thursday night in the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and despite its... More >>

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  FEATURED STORY

  F2K Presents: The Nine Worst September 11 Response Songs

  published Sep 11, 2012

  Today is the 11th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, a moment in American history that was pretty horrifying for reasons that have been enumerated countless times. Their effects on pop music wer... More >>

• Crossing Over: Michael Jackson, Ne-Yo, and the Sound of Pop in 2012

  published September 5, 2012

  Michael Jackson would have turned 54 last week, and to celebrate that fact—as well as the imminent release of Bad 25 (Epic), a... More >>

• Six Superlative Summer Shows

  published August 29, 2012

  By any real definition, the summer concert season comes to a close this weekend. I spent a lot of this summer running around and seeing bands;... More >>

• Kenny Chesney Is Havin' a Party

  published August 15, 2012

  Beach balls are a common sight at outdoor concerts these days, their candy-colored signaling of summertime fun serving as a way to distract... More >>

• Deftones: Here Comes the Rain

  published August 8, 2012

  Not to be one of those people who talks about the weather, but one of the prevailing narratives about this summer's concert-going season has... More >>

• Ginuwine Strips It Down

  published August 1, 2012

  Steven Soderbergh's Channing Tatum vehicle Magic Mike is a thrilling if somewhat dialogue-light film set in a male strip club in... More >>

• WEMP's Discovery Mission

  published July 25, 2012

  My column last week lamented in part the loss of radio stations with playlists emphasizing new music of the non–Top 40 variety. Almost... More >>

• Three Reasons Why Old Records Are Bigger Than Ever

  published July 18, 2012

  I've used this space to write about the wave of retro mania a few times, but now my anecdotes about the Tupac hologram and its zombie ilk have... More >>

• Usher Digs Deep on Looking 4 Myself

  published June 13, 2012

  The r&b singer Usher is still the last artist to have a diamond album—which is to say that his 2004 record Confessions, which... More >>

• Dead Sara Is Weathering the Storm

  published June 6, 2012

  A few weeks ago, I was perusing the Billboard Rock Songs chart, which for quite a while now has been the running diary of a genre in... More >>

• Mica Levi's Tweaked Take on Pop

  published May 30, 2012

  On Friday, Merrill Garbus's band tUnE-yArDs—whose spellbinding, genre-and-gender-bending album w h o k i l l More >>

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  Midyear Report: 12 for '12

  published May 23, 2012

  The year is nearly halfway over, and in an effort to keep up, I've been crafting a Spotify playlist containing the notable albums that have... More >>

• Afghan Whigs Are Uptown Again

  published May 16, 2012

  Ask Greg Dulli about the set lists he and his bandmates in the Afghan Whigs—the Cincinnati soul-punk outfit that released a string of... More >>

• White Riot at Webster Hall

  published May 2, 2012

  In the 15 years since the White Stripes formed in Detroit, Jack White has run with the fame offered to him by his namesake group's... More >>

• Carly Rae Jepsen: Crush Patrol

  published April 25, 2012

  The other night, I was on a train, sitting across from two women who were sharing a single set of headphones—communal listening for those... More >>

• Tupac's Hologram Asks, "Remember The '90s?"

  published April 18, 2012

  To hear retrospectives tell it, the '80s were an endless parade of Day-Glo, rap breaks, and excesses on the parts of stockbrokers and the... More >>

• Lil B and Other Forward-Thinking Artists Do It Themselves

  published April 11, 2012

  Last week, the New York Post reported that Spotify, the streaming-music service that came Stateside from Sweden to much fanfare last... More >>

• Madonna Has an Identity Crisis on MDNA

  published March 28, 2012

  The new album by Madonna, MDNA (Interscope), is in large part a tribute to her contributions to the pop world's gene pool. It opens with... More >>

• Muscling in at SXSW

  published March 21, 2012

  I'm not above looking silly when it comes to sussing out the name and artist behind a song that hits my ear in a particularly pleasant way.... More >>

• One Direction, Booster Club

  published March 14, 2012

  The male teen idol might be the most unfairly maligned type of musical act among the rock cognoscenti—not nearly as musically skilled as... More >>

• Charli XCX's Timeless Pain

  published March 7, 2012

  Later this week, the British singer Charli XCX—a 19-year-old Londoner (born Charlotte Aitchinson) with a goth-pop appeal that fuses the... More >>

• Getting the Drop on the Hammerstein with the Cosmic Opera

  published February 29, 2012

  Last Thursday and Friday, the Hammerstein Ballroom hosted the first installments of the Cosmic Opera, an experiential dance-music series... More >>

• The Grammys: Rock and Grohl

  published February 15, 2012

  Sunday night's Grammy awards were touted as the night America would be introduced to a pop-skewing, Americanized, thumpy version of "dance... More >>

• Skrillex Gets Deep on the Cusp of the Grammys

  published February 8, 2012

  This Sunday, the music business celebrates itself with the 54th running of the Grammy Awards, where the impossible task of categorizing pop... More >>