Culture Study Culture Club: 40 Best Songs of 2024 (Thus Far)
Everything but a book club
Welcome To Our New Experiment: The Culture Study Culture Club
It’s like a book club, only nothing like a book club because we’ll never talk about a book. Why? Because books are long. I love them, they generate some our best discussions in the weekly threads, but they are not particularly amendable to asynchronous online conversation. But I also know that readers of this newsletter are hungry for in-depth, insightful, and incisive conversation about cultural objects — and are also looking for ways to challenge themselves with new (or new to them) music, writing, articles, celebrity images, podcasts, TikTok trends, photography, cookbooks, the list goes on.
Here’s How It’ll Work:
Depending on the prompt, I’ll either post about it in newsletters or threads ahead of time, or I’ll do it like we’re doing today: offer a bunch of stuff for us to listen to and talk about. Timing will depend on the medium and ease of articulating reaction, and I’ll experiment with different strategies and ask for a lot of feedback. I already know this community is very skilled at having conversations about the things that matter to us, so I also think we can figure out how to best have conversations about a piece/pieces of culture. Every month, we’ll have a “challenge” that’ll give some loose guidelines on how we’ll encounter and react to the piece, just to give the discussion *slightly* more direction.
This Month’s Object:
The New York Times music critics recently released their “40 Best Songs of 2024 [Thus Far]).” Whatever you think about the New York Times or their critics, I think we can agree that it’s a pretty fantastic starting point for thinking about new music and how we feel about it. Here’s a gift link and here’s a link to the Spotify Playlist (you can also click on each song in the article to listen through YouTube).
This Month’s Challenge:
You can listen to all of these and give some thoughts or talk about the weird process of identifying “best” songs but I’m more interested in doing something a little less knee-jerky and a little more embodied. Can you listen to at least one song without any other inputs, like really listen to it, and talk about your reaction? Musically, ideologically, lyrically, sonically? What does it evoke, what does it pair well with, what’s the vibe — if it’s a skip, why? (Without being an utter asshole — to the artist or the critic or others who like it — which is a general Culture Study guideline)
Extra Challenge: Listen to one that’s squarely in your wheelhouse (for me, that’s Iron & Wine + Fiona Apple) and then listen to one that’s not, and talk about both. Or more! Opening yourself to stuff that might not automatically be your thing is admirable. It’s how we expand our taste. Here’s an opportunity to try it in earnest
Honestly, my primary feeling listening to this Iron & Wine / Fiona Apple collaboration is sadness — I know that’s weird, because it’s actually a quietly joyful song, but…..if I didn’t know two of my all-time favorite artists had a collaboration for several months, how checked out am I, and what else have I missed? That’s part of what sparked the idea for the Culture Club: how can we talk about new things we love in a place that isn’t social media?
Here’s How You Can Submit Suggestions for Future Culture Clubs:
Just click this link to fill out the very straightforward Google Form.
Who Can Hang Out in the Club:
This is an extra feature on top of the two newsletters I make free to everyone every week — in addition to the threads, and Garden Study, and the podcast. If you value this work and want to be part these much broader, generative, and rewarding conversations, consider paying slightly more than the cost of an iced coffee to be part of them every month.
So Let’s Talk About These Songs.
I know that we have so many different relations to music (and knowledge about music) and musical tastes in this community, so I cannot wait for the conversation.
As always, this is a private, subscriber-only space; don’t be butts and let’s try to make this a good space to hang out on the internet.