Maura Johnston

Defend Your Ballot: Dan Weiss, Pazz and Jop 2012 Contributor

You can't really know where you're headed unless you know where you've been. For that reason, we're taking a look back at Pazz & Jop 2012 to drill down into the ballots of contributors and voters who participated. Maybe amongst the rubble we'll find clues about what lies ahead for music lovers in 20 ... More >>

100 & Single: fun., Gotye, M83, EDM, And The Beginning Of The Hot 100's Spotify Years

How do you know when you're at the dawn of a new pop era? It's not like someone sends a memo. Sure, occasionally there's a well-timed cultural event that offers a hint—the disastrous Altamont festival in December 1969, which signaled that the flower-power dream was over, or Comiskey Park's Di ... More >>

Pazz & Jop 2011: Brad Nelson On Why Lou Reed And Metallica's Lulu Was 2011's Best Album

To supplement this year's Pazz & Jop launch, Sound of the City asked a few critics to expand on the reasonings behind their voting. Here, Brad Nelson talks about the much-discussed collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica, Lulu, which topped his ballot and came in at No. 94 on the albums poll. ... More >>

Underwhelmed And Overstimulated, Part Seven: The Sorrows (And Fantastic Sound System) Of Young Drake

Shhh... He's thinking. ​Sound of the City's year-end roundtable, with contributions from Tom Ewing, Eric Harvey, Maura Johnston, Nick Murray, and Katherine St. Asaph, continues. Follow along here. Look, it's what I've been dreading talking about all year! Anyway. For the past hour, Maura, I'v ... More >>

Underwhelmed and Overstimulated, Part Nine: Working For The Weeknd

Drake and the Weeknd... enjoying themselves?​​Sound of the City's year-end roundtable, with contributions from Tom Ewing, Eric Harvey, Maura Johnston, Nick Murray, and Katherine St. Asaph, continues. Follow along here. Fellow roundtablers, As we turn down the home stretch, I have to say th ... More >>

Joe Frazier: No One's Second Banana

​Joe Frazier's death on Monday from liver cancer was overshadowed by the Penn State sex abuse scandal. Wasn't that always the way with Joe? Something or somebody always seemed to steal his thunder. He was one of the greatest heavyweight champions who ever lived, losing fights only to Muhamm ... More >>

Lady Gaga's "Yoü And I" Video: Ten Pounds Of NEBRASKAAAAAAAA! In A Five-Pound Sack Of Corn

​The video for "Yoü And I," the big, gooshy ballad on Lady Gaga's Born This Way, has leaked two days in advance of its scheduled Thursday premiere on MTV and Logo. The clip was shot in Nebraska—which gets copious shoutouts in the song, and which is the ancestral land of her "friend" Lu ... More >>

Amy Winehouse Found Dead; Overdose Suspected [Breaking]

​ We're hearing reports that R&B singer Amy Winehouse has been found dead in her North London home. The suspected cause is an alcohol or drug overdose. The singer had long been known to struggle with substance abuse issues. We'll update when more information comes through; if you have a tip, ... More >>

Live: Oberhofer And Davila 666 Continue The 4Knots Fun

Willie DavisDavila 666. ​4Knots Music Festival: Oberhofer, Davila 666 Saturday, June 16 South Street Seaport Better than: Retreating from the afternoon heat. In her essay "Hot Music for Long Nights" Maura Johnston nailed what makes New York City summer shows so wonderful. Such shows, she wri ... More >>

Huffington Post Hires Handful, Ditches AOL-ers; NPR Videos 'Inappropriately Edited'

​Since becoming a pair with his company's $315 million purchase of The Huffington Post, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and HuffPo founder Arianna Huffington have overseen the cutting of hundreds of content providers on the parent company's side, with Armstrong presiding over the laying off of over 2,00 ... More >>

Press Clips: Do Not Let Robert Thomson Behead Anyone This Week, Please

​VICTORY! for a New York City newspaper, while the rest are going down, down, in an earlier round. A new, familiar byline at New York's Vulture, and a new, familiar byline at AgencySpy. The iPad is still just The iPad, but Twitter is definitely still Twitter. Howard Kurtz at The Daily Beast is sti ... More >>

How Kanye West's Twitter Killed Music Magazines

​Today, Slate posts "an all-access, totally non-exclusive interview with the would-be king of hip-hop," Kanye West. The conceit is as follows: though the rapper stopped giving many interviews in the aftermath of his mother's death, in 2007, he's lately been on "a new-media-heavy promo offensiv ... More >>

This Week in the Voice: Gladys Carrión, City Kids Advocate and Upstate's Bureaucratic "Satan"

​Why do some people upstate consider the Bronx's Gladys Carrión their own 'Satan' incarnate? Maybe it has something to do with all the juvenile detention facilities city kids get sent to up there. Or got sent to. Because -- as the commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services -- Car ... More >>

Liz Phair Returns With Internet-Only Funstyle, Rhymes "Genius" With "Peen-ius"

​On Saturday, lizphair.com suddenly had a new album available via download for a mere $5.99, with one streaming track as a sample, or maybe a warning: "Bollywood" features our heroine rapping in different voices over, yes, a Bollywood tabla. This, in addition to the low asking price, prnt scrn ... More >>

Farewell Streaming Music Service Lala

​Lala, the streaming, cloud-based music service familiar to anyone who's googled a song in the last year or two, only to have a free Lala stream come back as the first result, is shutting down, reports Billboard. The service was bought by Apple in the waning months of 2009; after that, it was ... More >>

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