Dispatches From the Culture Wars — December 16, 2025
Portside
Breaking the ICE
Breaking the ICE
Breaking the ICE
‘Rock and Pop Music Were the Unexpected Consequences of the Working-Class Entering History’
Morning Star
The Morning Star's Brett Gregory speaks with Toby Manning, author of Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music. Manning asserts that “Rock and pop music were the unexpected consequences of the working-class entering history.”
She Bucks the Music Industry’s Norms – Molly Nilsson’s Synth-Pop Puts Politics Front and Center
The New York Times
She is her own manager, books her own tours, has never had a publicist. Her latest album features a song about communism in the style of Madonna’s “Vogue.” 'I felt like I don’t need to lure people in—I’m just going to call it ‘Un-American Activities’
We’ll Never Live in a World Without Tina Turner
Rolling Stone
Nothing could ever scare the fire out of her voice, which carried the whole story of American music in it. Tina Turner’s voice will never go silent. In the end, she is the big wheel who keeps on turning, forever. The Queen of Rock and Roll.
There’s a Musician’s Union. Many Musicians Are Unaware — or Unable to Join
Rolling Stone
A wave of workers-first rhetoric is sweeping through pop. Can SAG-AFTRA and the AFM capitalize on it? This clearly poses a challenge to these unions. It’s crucial for these organizations to exploit the growing militancy of their potential membership.
music
10 of the Best Political Albums You'll Hear This Year
Green Left Weekly
Here are the best new albums that related to this month's politics. (David Crosby, Southeast Desert Metal, Indigenoise, Darren Hayman, Midnight Oil, Barbra Streisand, Arturo O'Farrill, Bobby Sessions, Glitoris, OHHMS).
books
The Realest Thing You've Ever Seen
Barnes & Noble Review
With this book, Springsteen has joined the ranks of those musicians who have also produced first-rate autobiographies. Indeed, the musician's biography has developed into its own literary genre. Long-time music critic Christgau offers a detailed appreciation of this important memoir.
books
The Genius of James Brown
The New York Review of Books
Even in the era of the Beatles and Motown's roster of stars, the brilliant James Brown established a place that was his alone. His was not about magic, it was about power that could not be denied by anyone brought within its field of influence. What the book's author also finds is a wary solitariness that paradoxically found its fullest expression in Brown's ability to give himself so completely in performance to suggest a generosity approaching self-immolation.
Lesley Gore, Feminist Hero, Dies at 68
Lesley Gore, whose song "You Don't Own Me" in 1964, became a rallying cry, proclaiming that men did not own women, "so don't tell be what to do". "The power of women just saying that phrase together: "YOU. DON'T. OWN. ME." Not to our special someones ... but to our government. Until now! Dayum! Gauntlet thrown!" (Upworthy). Gore died on February 16 after a bout with cancer.
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